Laxatone

[forcryinoutloud]

I read you're supposed to give laxatone on an empty stomach so it has a chance to do its job - about how long after giving it can I give Jack food?

 

[katma]

Probably half an hour..

If you're giving it for hairballs, you can instead give a tsp of unsweetened canned pumpkin several times a week. (No petrolatum in that)

Or stir 1/8 tsp (for a ten-pound cat) unflavored Metamucil into his food with a good amount of water.

My Jack (yes, I have one too!) does well with this.

These will "clear" the digestive tract, and keep stool material in the digestive tract moist and easy to pass, hairballs included. Be aure to provide Jack fresh water daily (I add it right to his food and have a water bowl too) so he can keep a moist digestive tract.

 

[maggiedemi]

If it has petroleum in it, they usually say to give it 2 hours before or 2 hours after eating.

 

[katma]

Otherwise, that food will just slide on through

Even though I gave a wrong estimate on time, I stand by my pumpkin/Metamucil advice. I haven't had to use Laxatone in years. Only had one cat who liked it.

 

[forcryinoutloud]

I ended up waiting an hour, as he was crying for food at that point and I don't like to discourage that as it's so hard to get him to eat - and now that he's on almost exclusively wet food (yay) I don't want to chance him deciding to hold off eating until he gets his small amount of kibble through the night (since he won't eat any wet at night yet - and I have tried withholding the kibble and just leaving the wet out, but it's a hard dry lump in the morning with him having obviously not even touched it).

I'm giving it to him for constipation issues. He's not full on constipated, but his BMs are not as large as all the others, and when he had his x-rays a few months ago, there was some obvious furballs trying to make their way through. Not enough to impact or anything like that. The vet said he just "needed a good BM", and since he suddenly a few weeks ago decided he didn't like the hard to get more expensive wet food I was giving him, but instead wanted the canned food I was giving the others that I can get in town (which yay on the one hand), I suspect the sudden change in food might have upset his digestion a bit.

I gave him pumpkin last week for a few days, and brought some out of the freezer today that I had frozen to trye again, but thought I'd give the laxatone a go since the pumpkin isn't doing much (maybe it takes a while?). Unfortunately they changed the product and it's not the thick malty kind that all my cats used to come running for, but is a more liquidy gel like consistency that seems to have less malt (even though it is still the malt flavor - they hate anything fish), so he's not really interested in it, which means it required putting some on my finger and scrapping it on the roof of his mouth. I'll try the laxatone for a few days, see if it gets things moving a bit better.

I would have tried switching him to this wet more slowly but he had other ideas apparently. Now he won't even look at the other food. The food I had a pet food store an hour away order in for me because I couldn't get it anywhere else. They still have six cans I am supposed to buy but now that he has no interest in that food...

Anyway. Thanks for the advice! I'll give him the laxatone a couple hours before his afternoon meal tomorrow since I don't want to make him wait two hours in the morning after I get up before he gets his wet food.