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- Jan 4, 2017
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I posted a few months ago about my cat, Abby. She was going through a really rough spell and the vet sent us to an internal medicine doc who thought it was most likely FIP. Other possibility was IBD but internal med vet really thought FIP was likely. The good news is that Abby is still with us so it's not FIP. The bad news is that we haven't "fixed" her and I keep feeling like we can do a better job. We've tried all sorts of foods, novel proteins, freeze-dried raw (she won't eat frozen raw), canned, etc. It was always hit or miss. Some foods she liked but ended up with bad diarrhea and smelly gas. Other foods were great for her GI tract and the litterbox but she wasn't too fond of them so she wouldn't eat all that much.
Fast forward to now. She's on 2.5mg prednisolone every evening (and will soon be switching to budesonide on the vet's recommendation). She's currently eating a frozen "gently cooked" turkey from My Perfect Pet. She loves it and is currently eating a whole patty/day. (The package says that a whole patty is the amount to feed a 10# cat. Abby is about 7.5#. She needs to put on weight, though, and is absolutely desperate to eat this food, so we've been going with 1 patty/day.) She loves her food so much that we have to give her half of a meal at a time and then wait a little while or she'll scarf the whole thing in 1 minute flat and then back it comes. Her poop is solid and not stinky. Between the "cat loves the food" and "great litterbox" it sounds like we found a winning food. The problem is that she sleeps the day away and just has no energy between about an hour or two after she eats and an hour or two before she eats again. When it's time to eat (or she thinks it's time to eat) she's incredibly perky and will trot all over the house trying to get people to feed her. She'll even play a teeny little bit. Mid-day, though, she's curled up sleeping and, at times, seems uncomfortable (hunched over). She's been on this food for about 2.5 weeks. Oh, we've been adding digestive enzymes and probiotics to the food b/c we had been doing that to other food in prior months and it appeared to be beneficial.
Before we started her on this food, she had loose stool, wasn't interested in many of the foods that we tried and spent way more time hunched over.
One more bit of info - my husband has noticed that she has had a bit of gunky eye discharge lately.
So, does this sound familiar at all to anyone or does anyone have any ideas how to proceed from here? Could feeding her too much be part of the problem? She's truly frantic for food at meal time and she hasn't been like that in the past. I think this is the best-tasting food that she's had, though, so that could be why. Does it just take a lot of time for a cat to adjust to a new food (even when she's been switching foods fairly often to try to find one she'll eat)?
Thanks for any ideas or suggestions you have to offer!
Fast forward to now. She's on 2.5mg prednisolone every evening (and will soon be switching to budesonide on the vet's recommendation). She's currently eating a frozen "gently cooked" turkey from My Perfect Pet. She loves it and is currently eating a whole patty/day. (The package says that a whole patty is the amount to feed a 10# cat. Abby is about 7.5#. She needs to put on weight, though, and is absolutely desperate to eat this food, so we've been going with 1 patty/day.) She loves her food so much that we have to give her half of a meal at a time and then wait a little while or she'll scarf the whole thing in 1 minute flat and then back it comes. Her poop is solid and not stinky. Between the "cat loves the food" and "great litterbox" it sounds like we found a winning food. The problem is that she sleeps the day away and just has no energy between about an hour or two after she eats and an hour or two before she eats again. When it's time to eat (or she thinks it's time to eat) she's incredibly perky and will trot all over the house trying to get people to feed her. She'll even play a teeny little bit. Mid-day, though, she's curled up sleeping and, at times, seems uncomfortable (hunched over). She's been on this food for about 2.5 weeks. Oh, we've been adding digestive enzymes and probiotics to the food b/c we had been doing that to other food in prior months and it appeared to be beneficial.
Before we started her on this food, she had loose stool, wasn't interested in many of the foods that we tried and spent way more time hunched over.
One more bit of info - my husband has noticed that she has had a bit of gunky eye discharge lately.
So, does this sound familiar at all to anyone or does anyone have any ideas how to proceed from here? Could feeding her too much be part of the problem? She's truly frantic for food at meal time and she hasn't been like that in the past. I think this is the best-tasting food that she's had, though, so that could be why. Does it just take a lot of time for a cat to adjust to a new food (even when she's been switching foods fairly often to try to find one she'll eat)?
Thanks for any ideas or suggestions you have to offer!
