blood in stool - dry stools - raw food link?

[b-roc]

I just cleaned the litter box and for the second time in as many weeks I found small traces of bright red blood on some of the stool. My cat was thought to have come down with stomatitis about a month ago but that appears to have not been the case. She was on 10 days of prednisone and antibiotics but that ended two weeks ago. At the time one of her facial lymph nodes was swollen as was the stoma on one side. All of that has subsequently gone away and her appetite and activity have returned to normal. She does have food allergies and is on a raw food diet. Her poops are regularly dry and crumbly (no more diarrhea since going 100% raw some months ago). She is a 3.5 years old indoor only cat so I’m not thinking she has parasites. I do think she could have IBD. She does have allergies to chicken, turkey and quail.  I read that bright red blood indicates a problem in the lower intestine / colon. My question is, whereas this has only occurred twice in 2 weeks, is it time to be concerned or do you think this could be a somewhat normal occurrence given how dry her stools are as a result of the raw diet? I don’t want to do nothing but I’m not looking to accrue more vet bills. We’ve spent hundreds of dollars on her in November only to discover we don’t think she has stomatitis. Has anyone else had experienced this on occasion, especially if on a raw food diet that produces very dry, crumbly stools?  We are feeding Nature's Variety frozen lamb and frozen rabbit at the moment.

Cross posting to this forum per a recomendation from another thread.

 

[ritz]

My first thought is constipation. She once had blood on her stool (pre-raw).
If I feed Ritz too much rabbit and/or chicken breast (both low in fat), her stools will become very hard. So I make sure I alternate high fat with low fat, sometimes even in the same day.
Are you feeding NV raw frozen (as opposed to freeze dried raw)? I assume the raw frozen and note that lamb is 12% fat and rabbit 10%, though I'm not sure how to interpret that: 12% calories from fat? If so, that's a little low.
You might try increasing her fat calories slightly--egg yolks are relatively fatty--and seeing if that helps.

 

[b-roc]

Yes, it is NV frozen raw. I appreciate the egg suggestion but she is allergic to all things chicken so that is out as well as turkey and quail. Any other thoughts? I was thinking chunks of beef from the grocery store made for beef stew.

I have read that the bone content is around 15% for NV. How are people determining that? It's not written on the bag.

 

[ritz]

Oh, of course, I completely forgot that NV has a relatively high bone content.
Sorry, brain freeze.
Excellent idea--I would dilute the bone percentage by adding chunks of beef.
I honestly don't know where the 15% of bone statistic comes from, but it's widely 'known'.
I do know NV doesn't differentiate all that much between cats and dogs, raw food wise. Dogs can handle a higher percentage of bone than cats.

 

[peaches08]

Somewhere here in the forum the bone content was calculated, but even if I found it I can't link it on my phone. However, I remember the bone content being pretty high. It does sound like your cat is dealing with constipation and there are lots of options for you. Yes, you can try any cuts of beef to dilute the bone. If you want to feed beef by itself, you can feed 15% of the diet as unbalanced. So if you feed twice a day, you can feed straight beef unbalanced twice a week. You can add real butter for additional fat if you'd like (since Ritz mentioned fat). You can add water to the food to increase water intake, although if it's IBS I don't know how much that would help. It won't hurt though. You can add Miralax to the food to increase water in the colon. Another thought is making your own raw and using egg shells for the calcium source which might be less constipating.

 

[b-roc]

You can add Miralax to the food to increase water in the colon.

Do you give her miralax daily or just while she is constipated?