At a loss and need some advice

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
I began feeding my two 100% raw January 1st.  All had been going very well until about a week ago.  I had noticed one of my two cats slowly needing more and more toppers to eat any of her raw, unless it was plain meat only (no calcium supp).  Well, Thursday night I got home and realized she had thrown up that day, which has happened from time to time and I wasn't surprised since the morning meal had been ground goat + supplements, not her favorite.  She continued to eat her two PM meals okay.  Friday morning, she wouldn't get out of bed.  When she finally did, she started vomiting.  She wouldn't touch anything I offered her to eat and was clearly in pain.  Before I could get her to the vet, she had vomited a second time.

The vet felt it was an acute GI problem, no blockage on the x-ray, and gave her fluids, B12 and a Cerenia shot.  I started feeding her only cooked chicken breast and she ate a little at each meal, but by last night stopped eating again.  She also had some diarrhea last night.  This morning she vomited again, but has since seemed to finally turn a corner.  She doesn't really want any plain chicken anymore, but has eaten three small meals today of S&C freeze-dried raw.

Before all of this happened, I was really starting to doubt myself with raw.  I've definitely seen some great improvements, but I also still see lots of digestive discomfort after eating (and yes, I use probiotics and at times, digestive enzymes), plus having to add more and more toppers instead of less and less.  I think as I've been trying to transition to boneless frankenprey, keeping one ground meal in the AM, and started adding calcium supplements (MCHA or eggshell), their lack of wanting to eat any raw has increased. And now with Emmy getting so sick I just don't even know where to go from here.  I'm still unsure why she got so sick, since Allie has eaten all of the same foods and has been okay, but also don't know what else would have caused it.  

By the way, I had them on S&C freeze dried raw for a full month before switching them to real raw, and the main reason I started to switch them is because they started refusing the S&C.  Seems they need more variety or that food just isn't completely suitable for them on a full-time basis.  Ugh, I wish my girls would just eat whole prey and make everything so much easier, but they won't touch anything with bones no matter how hard I try.  And now they seem to hate the calcium supplements as well.

Anyways, I guess I just needed to vent and get some advice/opinions on how I should proceed, if anyone has any.  Sorry to be such a downer, it's been a really rough weekend for me and Emmy still isn't completely out of the woods yet. 


Thanks!
 

ldg

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Jun 25, 2002
Messages
41,310
Purraise
842
Location
Fighting for ferals in NW NJ!
First of all, I'm so sorry for your baby girl. :(

And many of us know the frustration and sense of discouragement. :hugs: :hugs: :hugs:

I have to say, after what happened with Carolina's Lucky, then Mac, and CatNamedPanda's Boo, it seems that sometimes during a transition to raw, if it's within the first few weeks/months, sometimes they seem to develop an "intolerance" to raw. Carolina and CatNamedPanda basically put their kitties back on the food they were eating for a week or two, and just started over, with a new very slow introduction. It worked for Lucky, and is currently working for Mac and Boo. Here is where in the thread the issue is discussed (as opposed to trying to pin it on an ingredient) http://www.thecatsite.com/t/254754/boo-is-suddenly-having-issues-with-raw#post_3311568

Although this sounds more like she had a virus. One just circled through my group of cats (well, six of the 8). Even Chumley threw up twice and skipped several meals. :eek: (The real difference is he loves food - any kind of food. He's never needed any toppers on raw).

I do know that when I transitioned, I went through the same issue with some of them not seeming to like the food, and I was driving myself nuts getting some of them to eat it. Also, Spooky got constipated, and refused to eat no matter the amount of toppers.

In the end, I took a step back, and just started over. Even now, I keep S&C freeze dried chicken on hand just in case someone decides they don't want frankenprey. I include HT ground mixes in their menu rotation, and Spook really prefers the ground food to frankenprey. But sometimes she'll just refuse to eat, and she doesn't like S&C freeze dried. So I'll feed her canned for a few meals, and then offer her raw again.

I don't view raw as an "all or nothing" thing. I view it as a healthy diet over which I have control. But I don't try to force it on them - I view the toppers as enticement. But if they don't work....

For instance, when I discovered Sheldon couldn't keep down red meat if it was a full meal (including ground HT goat), I split the red meat meals into 50% red meat, 50% white meat. At the HT goat meal, the others all get 100% ground goat, but he gets HT ground pork instead.

Question: the vet did an x-ray of Emmy? Saw no blockage - but did the vet tell you that small bits of bone were throughout her system?

Spooky got very constipated on the commercial and HT ground raw about 8 or 10 weeks into our raw transition. The x-ray found no blockage, but the vet showed me the x-ray, and there was a lot of undigested ground up bone bits from her stomach through to her colon. The vet said none of them were any kind of size that would be any problem, but it was clear she wasn't digesting all of it. And my assumption is that is normal, as their systems are still adjusting to the new food, and it requires a very different environment than was needed for cooked, highly processed mush. But clearly it didn't make her feel very good at that point, so I put her back on canned and just started over. :dk:

If I were in your situation, I'd put her back on canned for a little while, and then reintroduce raw. Let things settle down. And when you reintroduce the raw, use the HT proteins she did prefer. I know many cats do just fine with red meat - but just as many, if not more, have a problem with red meats. So if you use HT to reintroduce raw, maybe stick with ligher meats - chicken, pork, turkey? I don't know what proteins they've been eating.

But if they won't eat bone and don't like the supplements, I'd say... feed them ground!

BTW, have you tried tripe? This seems to be one of those things cats either love or hate. I have four that love it, and four that hate it. But for many, it was just the ticket to getting their cats eating the food.

With all this wandering, I don't know if I've been of any help. Hopefully others will chime in with other ideas or experiences. :hugs: :hugs: :hugs: and :vibes: :vibes: :vibes:
 
Last edited:
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #3

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
Thanks Laurie!  I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you around to always encourage me and give me such wonderful advice and information!
 
 And yes, after I posted this I found the thread on Boo and just chimed in a little there also.  

My vet didn't point out the bone, but I will probably call them tomorrow and have her take another look just to be sure.  The odd thing though is that I've been moving away from bone more and more since I was trying to get them on boneless frankenprey.  But it could still be part of the issue. The only things she pointed out on the x-ray were that the stomach and upper small intestines had quite a bit of gas/air and that all of the intestines looked a bit inflamed. Otherwise she said everything looked good.

Emmy's illness seemed very much like food poisoning to me.  She was vomiting several times and several of them happened more than 12 hours after any food, plus she was constantly hunched in pain (her eyes said it all).  She wouldn't touch any food/water and then later had diarrhea.  The only reason she started to eat was because we got her hydrated again with the lactated ringers, the cerenia and B12.  That's why I got pretty concerned last night when she stopped eating again, as it was then 24 hours after she had received those things and they had obviously worn off.  Still, at least she is now headed in the right direction and keeping the S&C down today.  I did try canned last night but she wanted nothing to do with it.

I'm wondering if all of these kitties that get sick in the transition are also doing so because they can't yet handle the bacteria in the meat.  Maybe that bacteria slowly builds up to the point where they start getting sick on it, so you have to back off to get their gut flora to rebalance and then slowly start again.  Just a thought.  I know the bacteria isn't supposed to be a problem given their digestive systems, but maybe it can be until their bodies are adjusted to it. This event just really seemed like a toxicity issue more than just not digesting bone.  But I'll probably never really know.

It's just extra hard when you're 100% responsible for their diet and something like this happens.  I've been worried sick for three days myself over it!  Hopefully this will be our first and LAST bad transition experience! 
 

vball91

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Jan 14, 2013
Messages
3,853
Purraise
252
Location
CO, USA
tamgirl, I started transitioning my cat to raw mid-January, so I can relate somewhat. I've been lucky in the sense that she doesn't reject raw, but I still use a ton of toppers. I also have to rotate the foods and toppers very frequently. She just seems to easily tire of a food. She'll love something new and then only lick at it 2 meals later. I was getting frustrated when something LDG wrote really resonated with me. Aria is already eating so much healthier than she has ever! I should let Aria just take the transition at her own pace. And that worked for us. I listened to what she told me she liked and what she didn't, and we're about 90% raw now. I still leave a little dry food out at night but she hardly eats it.

I also started with frankenprey, but she didn't seem to like that so much, so I tried ground (again at Laurie's suggestion), and that worked so much better. While I would still like to transition to frankenprey later, that will be up to her. If we stay at ground, that's ok.

I'm not sure why your poor girl Emmy is vomiting other than the reset thing or a problem with undigested bones that Laurie mentioned. I don't think it's the food since Allie is fine. Sending vibes that Emmy is better soon. I just wanted to share my story with you so that you know you're not alone. Hugs.
 

ldg

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Jun 25, 2002
Messages
41,310
Purraise
842
Location
Fighting for ferals in NW NJ!
It's natural to want to blame the food (meaning bacteria) when we're still relatively new to raw feeding. :heart2: When anything went "off" the first few months I was feeding raw, we flew to the vet. Others have done the same. Yet fecals turned up nothing. Another member's kitty did turn out to have giardia, but that's not from the food, and he was only rescued a few months earlier.

The symptoms don't sound like food poisoning at all to me. Have you ever had food poisoning? I have, several times. And only Emmy had it. When the food is the source of the problem, it won't normally affect one cat. When I got food poisoning, Gary did too. ;)

The vomiting hours after eating the food, then followed by diarrhea actually sounds like a virus. Did she have a lot of diarrhea? Frequently going to the box, elimintaing small amounts (or a large amount) frequently? Because my kitties went off their food, threw up undigested food 3 to 6 hours after eating, then had diarrhea once or twice, but only when they would normally have gone, and as their normal raw poop, was still that "raw fed" small volume.

Several didn't have the diarrhea. A couple that had the diarrhea didn't vomit. But I knew it wasn't the foid, because it started with one, then the next day a different one, etc, and it resolved within 1 to 3 days for each cat that got it; two didn't get it.

If the problem for kitties during transition were bacteria, it would show up in fecals, which has yet to happen in all the kitties I've seen transition this past year+ , or in that of my own cats. And a bacterial food poisoning that involves salmonella or E. coli would affect all cats eating the food, and the diarrhea would be much worse, and they'd be running fevers.

No, I suspect it's something more akin to a person that's been eating a junk food/fast food diet suddenly becoming a raw vegan. Instead of digesting raw bone, our stomachs would be coping with raw carrots, beans, etc. But I think that would be a similar shock, and something that might cause some gastric upset the first 4-6 months, until our bodies adjust. :heart3:
 
Last edited:

ritz

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Apr 2, 2010
Messages
4,656
Purraise
282
Location
Annapolis, MD
I'm inclined to think it's a stomach virus, maybe not the kind humans get but delayed onset of effects from no longer eating "fast food". 

Ritz couldn't keep anything down for about 36 hours (I thought maybe she ate string) so I took her to the vets.  He of course blamed "bad meat".  She got some anti-nausea meds and was fine within a day or two.

In any case, vibes for Emmy. 
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #7

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
She only had diarrhea once and it was on Saturday night, after she'd been eating plain cooked chicken all day, so it was probably that then. Later tonight I'll post a pic of how she looked when she was really sick. Perhaps it was a stomach virus. I just hope and pray Allie doesn't get it now! Still, I'm going to keep Emmy off of raw until I know she's really ready for it. She's fine with the freeze-dried raw for now anyways. :)Thanks to all of you for posting your experiences. It really helps a lot! I just get really stressed and depressed when one of my girls is sick. It breaks my heart because they can't tell you what's wrong and you can't assure them it's going to be okay, even though your biggest fear is that it won't. At least we seem to be through the worst of it for Emmy now. Knock on wood!
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #9

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
Here is a pic of her taken Friday morning, when she was at her worst and in obvious pain.  I took it to show my vet how she was hunched up all morning like this and I'm glad I did because she was running around at the vet like nothing was wrong. 
Tonight she's outside in the enclosure "chasing" the dove. 
  She also refused to eat the S&C freeze dried tonight, but instead wanted some of Allie's plain raw turkey so I went ahead and let her eat some.  She ate about an ounce and I usually feed them 1.5 ounces each meal, so I was just happy she ate most of it.  I decided to leave out the calcium when feeding frankenprey and instead make sure it's added to something else that they'll definitely eat, like plain meat baby food. 
 Just for now anyways. 
 

auntie crazy

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Feb 4, 2006
Messages
2,435
Purraise
60
I'm so glad Emmy is feeling better!
 

You wondered if this episode could be related to a digestive system not yet accustomed to dealing with bacteria succumbing to a pathogen in the food. Please be reassured this is highly unlikely. First, if Emmy has been eating raw since the beginning of January, her system has had over 8 weeks to "adjust" to an (assumed) higher bacterial load. That's plenty of time to make such an adjustment, especially given the immune system improvement and digestive system healing that accompanies a shift from standard commercial diets to raw. Second, if she was eating kibble, then trust me, she was already consuming bacterial loads, and almost certainly higher than what would be found in fresh, raw meats.


I'm just curious, what are you using as a calcium supplement? How much and how often are you feeding it?

AC
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #12

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
It's funny you ask about calcium supplements because that is the one thing that seems to be giving me the most trouble right now. I have both MCHA and eggshell, but MCHA tends to be too much for them to want to eat their PMR well and for some reason some of my eggshell has a weird smell and one of them completely refuses it. The eggshell I have been using is the Membrell one, but I should be getting some from the "know what you feed" website that also sells Alnutrin.As far as the amount, I've been following the recommendations here, 1/2 cap per ounce of meat of MCHA or1/32 tsp of eggshell per ounce of meat. If using beef I reduce the amount further due to such a different profile. The other problem I'm starting to have with both of my two is supplementation in their ground food. Maybe they're just preferring less and less ground, but because their other two meals are boneless PMR, I put all of their supplements into the ground and have to use LOTS of toppers to get them to eat it. They usually leave some behind which I don't like since they're not getting all of their supplements that way. Here is what I'm adding to the ground daily:- slightly less than 1/32 tsp of vitamin mix (LDG's recipe!), don't think the cats have any problem with this one- egg yolk (added to ground mix, not at each meal in order to get 1-2 egg yolks in them each week), they're not a fan of egg yolks so this creates some of the problem I think, particularly the texture even when broken out over several meals- 1/2 cap egg yolk lechithin, may have the same problem as plain egg yolk- 250 mg krill oil, one Emmy hates this but she's the one that needs it the most. - Small amount of probiotic, no issues with this one- Calcium supplement, I've started adding this into the ground so that they will eat their entire PMR meals but again may be causing problems with the eggshell.Any thoughts or recommendations? I want them to enjoy their food and they absolutely do when it's just plain meat, but of course they can't live on that alone! LOL. They are getting their liver and organ meats in with freeze dried versions sprinkled onto either the ground or the PMR. No issues with either of those. :)
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #13

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
Gosh, sorry that post is all compacted together. I had several paragraphs with supplements broken out, but for some reason it threw everything into one large paragraph. Also, my smiley options are gone. Is there a problem with the forum?
 

ldg

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Jun 25, 2002
Messages
41,310
Purraise
842
Location
Fighting for ferals in NW NJ!
Well, for a week or so, consider giving the egg yolk and lecithin a miss? See if that is part of the problem.

Also, for the two cats that I give krill to instead of salmon oil, they don't really like it. So I just pill them with it. Is there a salmon or krill oil that comes in the dose you're using, and can you consider just piling them with it, rather than having them eat it? :dk:

....and I really hope the KnowWhatYouFeed eggshell works for them. :cross:
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #15

tamgirl99

TCS Member
Thread starter
Alpha Cat
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
666
Purraise
3
Location
Dallas area
I will have to look to see if there is a smaller krill oil cap I could pill them with. One of mine doesn't mind it so I wouldn't have to pill her. And yes, I think I will skip the egg yolk for a bit to see how that goes. And maybe just try giving it separately or with some plain meat baby food to see if they'll eat it that way.Unfortunately, the knowwhatyoufeed eggshell arrived yesterday and it has the same smell, so it didn't go over real well. I think I will have to continue putting that in their ground meal, at least until they are completely comfortable with PMR. Thanks Laurie!
 
Top