Ibd Kitty Trying New Things

[Eatingiceman]

Just a quick question if anyone here has tried naturvet digestive enzymes or raw paw slippery elm before on their cats. My cat is about 6 years old and has shown signs of IBD, the vet preformed an ultrasound and it showed cronic inflammation in her lower gi. I tried looking up reviews but I thought I'd ask this lovely community if anyone has tried these brands before and if they are safe for my kitter. Thanks for the suggestions

 

[nurseangel]

I do have a cat with digestive problems, but his problems are so intermittent that I haven't tried any preventative measures.

I would recommend contacting the vet to see what the safest route would be for your cat.

Thank you for calling us a lovely community. I'm happy to meet you and glad you have joined us. I hope you find a solution to help your kitter feel better soon!

 

[daftcat75]

IBD is a tough one to be concise about so bear with me while I try.

IBD is a syndrome of insults and injuries. The insults are inappropriate food ingredients (fruits, vegetables, starches, grains, etc) and the overgrowth of the wrong bacteria that these ingredients promote. The injury is the changes in gut membrane permeability (“leaky gut”) that results from the overgrowth of the wrong bacteria, and the allergies that develop as the immune system weaponizes against food proteins it never expects to see in the blood. It is this immune response that produces the inflammation as well as the tell-tale vomiting or diarrhea that is associated with IBD.

Treating IBD effectively is both removing the insults and healing the injuries. Slippery elm bark will go a long way to healing and sealing her gut (reversing leaky gut). Bone-in meat stock (cooking meaty bones until the meat drips off the bone and draining the liquid to give to the kitty) is a fantastic way to heal the gut. Probiotics are also essential for reestablishing the correct flora in the gut after the wrong ones have taken over for so long. But no amount of healing is going to last if you don’t also identify and remove the insults. This is easier said than done with a leaky gut.

Perhaps the best way to treat IBD is the introduction diet described on feline-nutrition.org. You will feed your cat nothing but this homemade meat stock including the fat drippings until all vomiting or diarrhea symptoms have stopped. Then you can slowly introduce the meat from the meat stock. And finally, you can try new foods, limited ingredient, novel protein, single protein, whichever. But new food trials should happen after the gut is healed or the new proteins can become new allergies.

Source:
https://feline-nutrition.org/health/feline-inflammatory-bowel-disease-nature-and-treatment

My favorite source for probiotics as well as other supplements to assist in the healing:
Pet Flora, Cat Probiotics Supplement | Vitality Science

They also have other supplements including a super-supplement called Feline Comfort (Plus). The Plus version is for particularly tough cases of diarrhea. If your cat’s IBD presents as vomiting, the standard Feline Comfort will do. One of the ingredients in Feline Comfort is slippery elm bark. But it also has other supporting ingredients to make the whole package more effective than any single ingredient.

And the best thing you can do right now is to transition to away from dry food if your cat is getting any. Dry food and IBD are pretty much incompatible. It’s like trying to seal a leaking boat with termites.

 

[Eatingiceman]

Hi thank you for the in depth reply. She is currently being fed raw single ingredient / single protein species appropriate food. Ive had her on probiotics ever since I adopted her 5 months back. I recently read about the broth thing and will be trying it out. I mostly made this thread to see if thoes brands where good and reliable quality wise. Do you think the enzymes will help or should I just get the elm? I will be working with a nutritionist to create a better homemade meal plan for her as right now I'm using a store bought brand raw food. I am new to IBD in cats but am trying to find and practice all the info I can to help my new little girl heal. Thank you for your comment!

 

[daftcat75]

Digestive enzymes can be hit or miss. Krista always looks like she’s being digested when she takes the enzymes so I don’t give them to her anymore.

Talk to the folks at Vitality Science. I got Krista through her IBD and pancreatitis with their supplements without having to use steroids. I love their probiotic. It does a great job with Krista who still has the occasional soup poop (like tonight after I gave her a liver treat earlier today—post B-12 treat.). The dirt should firm up her poops by morning.

 

[daftcat75]

To answer you original questions, digestive enzymes are hit or miss. If you suspect she isn't digesting her food (foul smelling diarrhea), you can certainly give it a shot. But not all cats respond well to digestive enzymes and not all digestive enzymes are created equally.

The Raw Paw Slippery Elm looks great! Not all cats like the taste of slippery elm bark though. If yours won't take it like this, you can look to Feline Comfort (Plus) from Vitality Science which has slippery elm bark plus a lot of other helpful ingredients for healing and sealing IBD including probiotics and digestive enzymes. The difference between the Feline Comfort and the Feline Comfort Plus is the Plus has diatomaceous earth, naturally absorbent, and used for more extreme cases. I'd say if she's not actively flaring (vomiting and/or diarrhea daily or most days), then you can probably use the non-Plus version. It comes in either a beef liver flavor or a tuna flavor which might make it easier to administer. The amount of probioitics and digestive enzymes in this powder is small enough that Krista didn't look overly distressed when taking it. Or maybe she always looked distressed because we were treating pancreatitis. But it didn't seem to make matters worse like when I added the digestive enzymes only product to her supplement stack. One last thing to mention is that if you use the probiotics from Vitality Science, they are going to darken her poop since they are soil-based. When I first started using them with her, I got alarmed thinking she was bleeding internally and producing black stools. Then she did produce a black tarry stool later in that recovery program and I got to know the difference. If you're concerned, you can always double-bag a fresh stool sample and take it down to the vet or ask your vet how to preseve a sample if yours like mine, poops outside of business hours. Thanks to probiotics, Krista is 9am and 6pm like clockwork--exactly the hours I want to be cooking and eating (thanks Krista!)

Commercial raw can be difficult on cats with IBD because of the bone content. Sadly, since Rad Cat's demise, there has been a huge hole in the market for a commercial boneless option. Stella and Chewy's Selects recently came out. I haven't tried these with Krista because I suspect she now has an egg yolk sensitivity. Poor girl! I'd love to get her back on raw because she was amazing on Rad Cat. But she just hasn't shown any interest in any homemade recipes or supplement premixes. Or the ones she did like had egg yolk which wasn't treating her right or digestive enzymes (EZ Complete) which also didn't treat her well.