Cat Can't Poop

[SkittlesTheCat]

I have about a 10 year old 15 pound shorthair cat named Skittles. I am not sure about Skittles' age as my wife and I adopted him as a stray cat and the vet estimated that he was about 2 years old at the time and that was 8 years ago. Recently, I noticed 2 days ago, he has had trouble going poop. He would squat in his litter box and try to poop, but nothing would come out. I notice urine in his litterbox, but no poop. He's an indoor cat so there's no where else he would be going. He also seems to have lost his appetite, but will eat entire tubes Churu of liquid cat treats. Starting years ago, he lost appetite for moist food. He likes to lick the liquid broth or gravy part off, but leaves the solid food so his diet is mostly dry cat food and a 1x or 2x daily Churu tube. I think I should take him to the vet and have him checked, but I'm wondering if it would be better to go directly to the pet emergency hospital. Would the vet actually be able to diagnose my cat and find the issue or would they just refer me to a pet hospital and charge me for the visit? Would the vet likely need to do an X-ray or ultrasound? Aside from loss of appetite for solid food (he lost interest in moist food years ago) and the pooping issue, he has been behaving normal. Any idea what the issue could be? He chewed on some small plastic Christmas lights about 2 weeks ago. Chewed a couple bulbs, found the plastic pieces on the floor. He has also been chewing cardboard. That's the only unusual thing he has done lately that comes to mind.

 

[Caspers Human]

If a cat hasn't made a deposit in the litter box in two days, you should call a vet, right away.

A cat can, occasionally skip one day in the litter box but, if it's been more than two days, he needs to be seen by a vet.

Lethargy and refusal to eat are likely signs that your cat is having digestive issues that need to be addressed, very soon.

Generally speaking, a vet should take X-rays and/or ultrasound to determine if there is a blockage. If there is no blockage, the vet might give the cat laxatives to make him poop or they might give the cat an enema. In either case, this is likely going to need an overnight stay at the vet.

Afterward, the vet might prescribe medicines like Cisapride to help poop or they might recommend OTC remedies like Miralax.

Our cat, Casper, has had digestive problems similar to your cat and those are the things that happened when we took Casper to the vet.

As for long-term care... WATER! WATER! WATER! You need to encourage your cat to drink as much water as possible.

A cat's diet should be, at minimum, 50% dry food and 50% wet food. If the cat eats dry food, exclusively, it can lead to problems like this. The solution is water. Water keeps the cat's stools from becoming too hard.

Drinking plenty of water also helps prevent urinary crystals. Drinking more water dilutes the cat's urine, making crystal formation less likely. Dilute cat urine is less smelly, too!

Bottom line: Call the vet, ASAP...
X-rays and an emema, if necessary. Another course of action might be called for if the vet finds something out of the ordinary. Medicine & OTC, home remedies, per vet's instructions. Encourage the cat to drink more water. Try to introduce some wet food into the diet, if you can.

 

[silent meowlook]

Hi. As mentioned above a trip to the emergency vet is needed. I would expect they would do blood work and X-rays.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Since he doesn't eat wet food anymore, but DOES like Churus, try adding a little water to the Churus. If you feed the Churu's from the tube, try putting them in his food dish instead, with some water. I give my 15 lb boy two similar items per day and add water to them even though he still eats wet food, but he also has a tendency towards constipation. I don't mix the water in, just put some warm filtered water in the bowl, (maybe 1/2 tablespoon), then squeeze the tube food into the water and give it to him. He laps it all up. I also give him daily doses of Miralax to keep him on a semi-regular schedule. Sometimes even the Miralax doesn' do the trick, and when that happens I dose him with Laxatone, that oily gel that comes a tube. Our Vet said it was ok to give him extra of that until he poops, then back off to once a week or so. He has been constipated almost his entire life, but never needed an enema. Nor xrays. Our Vet can feel if there is backed up stool in his colon.

 

[JillysMlee]

Made an account here just to respond to this post!!

We have two maine coons, long hair and chronic hairballs. After you find out what's wrong at the vet, I would highly recommend these two things that have helped our cats GREATLY with passing stools as a preventative:

1. 1/8 teaspoon of plain miralax in their wet food twice a week.

2. A laxative called LAXATONE, which can be found on Amazon. We give our boys a teaspoon 2 days a week on the days they do not get theor miralax.

Hope this helped!! Let us know how your kitty is!

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

I really appreciate the advice. I took Skittles to the emergency vet hospital this afternoon. They did x-rays and the radiologist recommended an enema. As you can see, he's very constipated. I thought he was a 14-15 lb cat, but he actually weighed in at 17.8 lbs. He was 12-14 lbs years ago when he was an indoor / outdoor cat. The vet thought that there might be a blockage in the x-ray photo shown below. It looks like there was some round object which we later thought might be a small children's plastic coin, but the object did not show up on the other 5-6 images. They ultimately did not think it was a foreign object and it's upstream from the build-up anyway.

So they did an enema. They put I think around 60-65 mL of fluid into his rear, but nothing came out. They also gave him subcutaneous fluids to keep him hydrated. At home, he has tried to go poop a few times, but still nothing is coming out. Same response as before. He's had one dosage of lactulose 2 hours ago and will follow up every 8 hours. I also plan to add in some Miralax, but the challenge will be getting him to digest it. If it's a pill, I'll try to crush it up into a Churu tube. I like the vet hospital. The staff was helpful. But I really hope he can get it out naturally as I'm not sure if I can afford $2k / night hospitalization for an unknown duration + ~$900 every time he needs an enema not even counting the xrays. It's real money real fast.

 

[JillysMlee]

I really appreciate the advice. I took Skittles to the emergency vet hospital this afternoon. They did x-rays and the radiologist recommended an enema. As you can see, he's very constipated. I thought he was a 14-15 lb cat, but he actually weighed in at 17.8 lbs. He was 12-14 lbs years ago when he was an indoor / outdoor cat. The vet thought that there might be a blockage in the x-ray photo shown below. It looks like there was some round object which we later thought might be a small children's plastic coin, but the object did not show up on the other 5-6 images. They ultimately did not think it was a foreign object and it's upstream from the build-up anyway.

So they did an enema. They put I think around 60-65 mL of fluid into his rear, but nothing came out. They also gave him subcutaneous fluids to keep him hydrated. At home, he has tried to go poop a few times, but still nothing is coming out. Same response as before. He's had one dosage of lactulose 2 hours ago and will follow up every 8 hours. I also plan to add in some Miralax, but the challenge will be getting him to digest it. If it's a pill, I'll try to crush it up into a Churu tube. I like the vet hospital. The staff was helpful. But I really hope he can get it out naturally as I'm not sure if I can afford $2k / night hospitalization for an unknown duration + ~$900 every time he needs an enema not even counting the xrays. It's real money real fast.

View attachment 489405

Oi... that looks uncomfortable. Poor skittles! and I can see the ring they are talking about.

I know the money can be really tough.. I guess another suggestion of mine would be pet insurence! I have healthy paws, and when we had to get our cat operated on, It was 10,000 dollars, but we got 8000 back via a check in the mail. It's paid for itself and I would highly recommend it.

There is a 30 day waiting period... so in the meantime have you thought about a gofundme? You could create one and post it around here and on other social media to spread the word about your boy.

 

[silent meowlook]

What is this?

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

Yeah, the vet noticed that small circular shape as well. We initially thought it might be one of my daughter's toys that he ate, but it did not show up on any of the other ~6 xrays. The radiologist was not concerned about it. Oh, he does have an RFID chip, but the chip would be much smaller than that.

 

[silent meowlook]

Can you post the lateral X-ray? That X-ray is concerning. I don’t like all the gas. Gas/air show up black in an X-ray. I wonder if this is a hair impaction. Is he vomiting? Another diagnostic that can be done is an abdominal ultrasound. I do hope he has some relief soon.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Has he pooped YET? What did they say since they weren't able to get any poop out even with an enema? Were they concerned? Is he impacted? If so, they might need to manually go in and "dig" it out, with anesthesia, of course.

Kind of shocked they weren't concerned with that foreign object that is obvious in the one view. I get that it is above all that stool, but still, it IS in there, and shouldn't be.

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

From Friday, I just noticed that they actually sent me all the x-rays. Here they are:

Thorax 1:

Thorax 2:

Thorax 3:

Abdomen 1:

Abdomen 2:

Abdomen 3:

If you want to see one of the images closer, I can zoom in and post. I have a IDEXX link with all the images that can zoom, but it contains some personal ID info that I don't want to post.

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

" If so, they might need to manually go in and "dig" it out, with anesthesia, of course. "

That's what I ended up doing. Since he did not poop after the enema with sedation on Friday, I took Skittles back to the vet hospital and they did a full sedation (deeper than Friday) and extracted as much poop as they could, but could not get all the poop. They said there was one hard golf-ball sized stool near his anus that they broke up and removed, but as you can see on the x-ray below, they still left a lot. They were working on him a while and his body temp started to drop and they were concerned about that otherwise they would have gone longer.

Here's an image after the extraction.

I was hoping they could remove a lot more as he still looks very backed up, but they said there was a really hard chunk that they removed near his anus and what remains is loose and saturated and thought he should be able to poop it out on his own. Last night, he did not really try. This morning however, he did try once and nothing came out. So after spending $4.1k in the past two days for all that treatment, I feel pretty discouraged about that. We're not going to give him any more solid food until he has a BM. They gave us some moist food to try. He does not seem to be drinking water or eating food. But when I gave him a bath this morning he definitely still has all his strength. I also ended up with several scratches from the bathing. He spent a while grooming after the bath. (I dried him with towel and hair dryer.) They put him on IV for 6 hours before doing the extraction yesterday so he likely got hydrated from that. He urinated a couple times and ate half a tube of a Churu. We have been giving him the laxative the vet gave us with the pain med. They also added in something that should make his colon contract. No bleeding from the extraction. He was up most of the night last night trying to escape the bathroom. Putting him in the bathroom was probably a bad idea. Vet recommended keeping him in one room for the night since he was coming off sedation. Now he can roam throughout the house and is sleeping on a heating pad.

I really don't know where to go from here. I feel very discouraged since he was not able to immediately poop out the rest of the stuff last night, either at vet or overnight. Understandably, he is probably sore from the procedure. I watched most of it and it was...rough, but necessary. I suspect I'll need to take him back to the vet at least daily to get injected with fluids until he starts drinking again on his own. Maybe he still has some drugs in his system / memories of vomiting the prior days that make him not want to drink. We also got him a cat water fountain, but so far that does not seem to help (he also has a large clean bucket of water that I dump and refill at least once daily with fresh water). I'm hoping that he can get through this with time. Aside from giving him fluids and time to rest, I honestly don't know what to try next. I love Skittles and have been praying for him. But I can't keep spending $2k / day and getting minimal tangible results from the effort.

 

[fionasmom]

My Graycie has constipation issues which have been ongoing, not going to get into the whole story here as there is nothing that you have not tried. At one point, she was left with a remainder of poop that I was told that she would pass. I was not happy about that, but she did. Going for fluids is hopefully not too expensive, and I would keep using the laxative and let him have soft, wet food like those treat packages and absolutely no dry food.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

I would keep using the laxative and let him have soft, wet food like those treat packages and absolutely no dry food.

Agreed. And in the future, you might want to start adding Miralax dissolved in a little bit of water daily to his wet food. I don't see any reason you could not start that now, with your Vet's approval of course.

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

I agree about removing dry food from his diet. I won't give him any dry food until he is no longer constipated and long-term I want him only on wet food with maybe a little dry food during the day. I bought some Miralax Friday night per the vet's recommendation. She said I could start adding some to his food if he does not take the prescription cat laxative. He resists taking any medicine although pill is slightly easier than liquids. He'll just let the liquids fall out of his mouth, but the pill at least I can get far enough back into his mouth that after 1 or 2 attempts, he'll swallow it.

I talked to the vet hospital today and they were not too concerned about his lack of BM or loss of appetite. They said that can be a side effect of the general anesthesia and said that sometimes it can take up to 5 days for a cat to go potty after that. He had a very stressful past 2 days at the hospital and was up most of the night last night. They said since he was well hydrated yesterday via the IV, he might not be thirsty yet. They said to watch if he is straining while trying to do a BM and to let him rest today. So that's what I am doing.

 

[silent meowlook]

Hi. Thank you for posting that. In my opinion, and I am not a veterinarian, I don’t see how that can be cleared other than with surgery. There is a massive amount of stuff in there all through the GI track. Manual extraction cannot get to all of that. I would still be concerned for a foreign body since whatever that was, was in one X-ray. Maybe they didn’t see it in the others, but then why was it in one. There has to be an explanation. Maybe it just wasn’t visible with the other images, but it was seen on one. So..,

I just don’t see how they can expect to clear all of that.

I am so sorry you and your cat are going through this.

 

[SkittlesTheCat]

Update: Took Skittles to local vet yesterday. Fees are far more reasonable so that's good. Injected with 150 mL of fluids in the morning. Failed to poop in the afternoon after many attempts. Took back to vet in afternoon for a quick enema w/o sedation. Still can't poop. Took back to vet this morning for enema with sedation. Asked vet if something like this has ever required surgery and she said no and that you can't really cut into the large intestine or colon and extract stuff (you can, but she has never seen a case that required that). Might do another x-ray. They followed up with the radiologist on the thing that looked like a foreign object and the radiologist confirmed that it's just part of the stomach. Anyhow, this really unfortunate, but Skittles does not seem to be in much pain. He does not yelp or cry while pooping...walks normally, jumps up on counters, etc. Purrs when sitting next to me. I just don't know what it takes to get the poop out, but I like our local vet so that's good.

 

[Caspers Human]

Just for knowledge... When our cat, Casper, got sick like this the vet found that he had a perineal hernia that makes it hard for him to eliminate. We had to go through a few rounds of treatment at the vet before they discovered the problem.

The vet said that there is a surgery that can address a hernia like this but, when we had him looked at by a specialist, they said that it would cost in excess of $4,000. We just don't have that kind of money lying around so we elected to forego surgery. Instead, we keep Casper on a diet of soft food and give him Miralax on a regular (but not daily) basis. We have Cisapride on hand in case he needs a little bit of help to push out a deposit. (Cisapride makes bowel contractions stronger.)

Above, when I said, "Water! Water! Water!" those are the exact words our vet used. She pounded her fist on the table as she said it.

Since then, we have learned to keep Casper's diet skewed toward wet food, only supplementing with dry food. Make sure there's water available... Casper likes to drink from the dripping faucet in the bath tub. We know he's been drinking because he often comes up for attention in bed with a wet head. (Yuck! Wet cat! ) But, we just laugh a little bit and take it in stride because, at least, we know he's drinking enough water.

Well, that's our story, anyhow. With a little luck, your Skittles will soldier through this and you can just keep up by maintaining his diet, making sure he drinks and use OTC remedies like Miralax when necessary.

Sending Get Well Vibes!
Fingers crossed!
Thoughts and prayers be with you!

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Update: Skittles does not seem to be in much pain. He does not yelp or cry while pooping

Does this mean that he IS pooping now? Just not a huge amount, which one would expect looking at the xray?