Recently stray kitten stool issues and flatulence

[MeowingTruth]

I recently adopted a stray kitten I've been feeding for months, and she has stool issues. When I took her to the vet they took her blood and stool samples and found out she had a slightly raised body temperature and elevated white blood cell count. Further tests showed she is currently fighting a coronavirus. The vet gave me antibiotics to give her, a probiotic paste, and prescribed a special diet.

I couldn't find the food they wanted me to feed her ( they gave me options for wet and dry food, and I only feed my cat wet food ), but I found another food with the same purpose - Royal Canin Digest. The vet said it'll do. Almost immediately after I started feeding her the new wet food and giving her antibiotics her stool improved, it was no longer as runny and she stopped leaking drops of diarrhea randomly. It also doesn't smell as awful and the flatulence got way less frequent and less pronounced. That was day 2. Before I was feeding her Royal Canin Kitten, which is a food my other kitten grew up on, and it's pretty expensive as well, but she couldn't digest it, her poops would have undigested chunks of food in it.

Unfortunately, that's where it stopped improving - it's been over a week, and she finished her antibiotics. I keep feeding her special food, and the next vet visit is not going to happen until 1.5 weeks from now, in the meantime, it worries me that her stool is still somewhat liquid, not complete diarrhea, but also not firming up as it should. The flatulence still happens, it feels like all the progress had been made on day 2 and stopped there. I'm worried that I'm feeding her adult cat food (that digest food only exists for adult cats, there's no kitten version, and there's also no kitten version of the one the vet suggested).

She is otherwise pretty active, plays well, has an insatiable appetite, and drinks water without issues. I'm thinking about ditching the probiotic paste the vet gave me in favor of FortiFlora, which helped my other cat multiple times before because my goal is to start feeding her kitten food. Any advice is appreciated!

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

She may have another issue causing the diarrhea other than the coronavirus. I say this because the coronavirus is a VIRUS, and antibiotics do not help viruses. Since her symptoms got somewhat better, this tells me that it could be something other than the virus that is causing the problem. Besides, feline coronavirus is typically asymptomatic, or presents with mild diarrhea, NOT what you described.

As far as switching her off the probiotic paste and onto FortiFlora, Fortiflora is a single strain probiotic, which means it really doesn't do much. You didn't mention which probiotic paste you are using, but if it has more than one strain in it, it's probably better.

I completely agree with you about the food. If the food doesn't say either "kitten" or "all stages",, then I wouldn't feed it exclusively for too long. Did you ask the Vet about that?

Have you ever tried using slippery elm bark made into a syrup for your cats? It can help with diarrhea.

 

[stephanietx]

I would try another kitten food. If you're located in the US, you can give saccharomyces boulardii to help with soft stool, or mix up some slippery elm bark syrup made from slippery elm bark powder found at a health food store or natural foods store. Was she tested and treated for parasites (worms)? Many strays have intestinal parasites and that can cause the rumbly tummy and flatulence.

 

[NewKitty18]

When we adopted one of our cats we rapidly discovered that she had SEVERE GI issues. Uncontrollable (literally) diarrhea and the most ungodly smell. We called her Stink Machine (affectionate) for ages.

Eventually we learned she had giardia, and that was the most likely cause. She improved with treatment, including antibiotics, but then symptoms would return. Initially we thought the issue was reinfection, but even with careful cleaning she kept getting sick.

Finally our vet told us that she had probably developed kitty IBS (sort of) in response to the giardia infection. We were told to try a diet that with a novel protein and minimal ingredients. After much trial and error we ended up with a raw food by Small Batch. She still has a sensitive stomach after several years, but as long as we stick with that food she’s been fine.

 

[MeowingTruth]

You didn't mention which probiotic paste you are using,

Oh, my bad. The paste is called "Brit Care Cheese Cream Paste + probiotics." The only things of note in it are some vitamins and brewer yeast.

Did you ask the Vet about that?

Yup, the vet said she will be ok because digesting adult cat food is better than not digesting kitten food.

Have you ever tried using slippery elm bark made into a syrup for your cats?

Never heard of it! I'm going to give it a shot tho, thank you!

Was she tested and treated for parasites (worms)?

Yes, when I brought her home first thing I did was give her a dewormer. Funnily enough, my other cat came from the same street as a way younger kitten (I picked her up at around 2 months old, and I kept feeding Dusty until she was about 5 months old before picking her up as well), she had some diarrhea and fart problem before she got dewormed, so I naturally assumed it's the same tapeworm. It wasn't because I hadn't noticed any dead worm bits in her stool after a dewormer, and later when I took her to the vet they tested her for all kinds of parasites, and it was negative for all of them. So either she had a very minor worm problem that got solved by the dewormer, or she had none, to begin with. No fleas either, I don't think any cats in that colony had fleas. Probably because all the basements get treated.

Eventually we learned she had giardia

I was afraid of that too, but the vet tested her specifically for giardia as well, and it came out negative.

Thanks for all the replies guys, I'm going to look into slippery elm bark. In the meantime, since fortiflora isn't perfect I'm going to look around for other kinds of probiotics. Would "NaturVet, Digestive Enzymes + Pre & Probiotic" be a good replacement?

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

OK, this is weird, but the only Brit Paste I can find shows it has PREbiotics rather than PRObiotics! Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with prebiotics, but probiotics are needed as well. They do work well together. I just don't see anything in that paste that is a probiotic. As to the NaturVet, it's still not got many probiotics in it. I would be more apt to go with something like Nexabiotic, which has 23 different probiotics in it. Many folks here on this site use it for their furbabies.

If you aren't familiar with using Slippery Elm Bark, be sure to buy pure SEB, then you can either make it into a syrup or try just mixing it into his food. Refer to this thread for a link for more info on that.

Slippery elm won't thicken no matter what I do

I don't understand what am I doing wrong. I'm using pure SEB powder, without additives. I add 1 teaspoon to 1 cup of water, let it soak for a bit, then bring it to a boil, stirring all the time, and let it simmer for a while after it, also stirring all the time. I'm doing it in a metal pan. I...

thecatsite.com

 

[stephanietx]

Did the vet do a PCR diarrhea test on her to rule out uncommon parasites not picked up on an in-house fecal float? Often, kitties need more than one round of dewormer to catch the worms at various lifestages.

 

[MeowingTruth]

I would be more apt to go with something like Nexabiotic

Sadly, it's not available where I live. My options locally are just FortiFlora, Canvit probio cat, and anything from iHerb. Also, I might be dyslexic, the paste does say it's prebiotic, but my vet called it a probiotic, so I never double-checked it! Well, I'm gonna start mixing it with FortiFlora then, because that's something I already have on hand. I'll see if I can import Nexabiotic somehow without breaking the bank, thank you!

Did the vet do a PCR diarrhea test on her to rule out uncommon parasites not picked up on an in-house fecal float?

Honestly, I have no idea what kind of test they've run. They were more concerned with her blood test because there was an issue there. I'll ask them what kind of test that was.



All that said, I feel like she's improving ever since I stopped giving her antibiotics. I ran out of her special food yesterday, so I gave her my best premium food puch that has no ingredients in it apart from meat, water, and jelly, and she didn't have any diarrhea from it!
She's been more active, too, chasing my other cat around the house instead of being chased under the couch herself. Things are looking up, she might be able to get her shots on the next visit and get ready for spaying.

 

[NewKitty18]

Yay, glad she's doing better! Maybe she's experiencing some of that post-infection (or whatever) IBS and just needs that very basic diet, at least temporarily.

Also, it looks like she's a dilute calico? Our GI girl is a dilute pointed tortie.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

So glad she is showing some improvement. Yes, antibiotics can definitely cause GI issues, even though they are often given to help solve them. If we ever have to give them, we definitely give probiotics along with them, only a few hours in between so they don't interfere with each other.

 

[stephanietx]

If you have access to iherb, then you may be able to find slippery elm bark powder and some human probiotics that will work, but in much smaller doses. We used to give my boy a small dose of the human probiotic Culturelle when he had really severe diarrhea.