Cat with Diarrhea
Answered by: Kerry Hackett
Question from: Tanya Weldon
Posted on: November 18, 2008

I have my cat for 2 years. She has problems with loose bowels recently and is scooting (I have had to remove my carpet). She was originally from the SPCA and came to me via friends who moved away; they informed me that I would need to wipe her when she came inside as she would have hard crusty poop on her bum (they fed her really cheap food but I have upgraded it.)

About 2-3 months later she had really severely loose bowel movements. I took her to the vet who gave her medication (which I would have to wrestle her to the ground and wrap her in a towel to give; she spits out pills and finds them in pill pockets). It seemed to clear up for a while but never entirely. I have been trying to improve her food, no more dry, am using canned (I am vegetarian, I know she should have real meat but it disgusts me).

At present it seems to seep out of her bottom,whenever she stand up from resting a little residue will be left behind. Her fur is a little dull and she has dandruff (she doesn`t like it if I put flax or fish oil in her food) Hope you can help (she goes outside most of the time- not at night)

Although you are a vegetarian, you are living with a obligate carnivore, who should, if at all possible, be respected as such. Therefore, she needs to eat what her body was designed to digest and metabolize: raw meat. You can find out quite a bit more about this by looking at the work of Richard Pitcairn, "Natural Health for Dogs and Cats", "The Complete Herbal Handbook for the Dog and Cat" by Juliette de Bairacli Levy and "The Barf Diet" by Ian Billinghurst; all of these books contain recipes as well. If for some reason you still feel you cannot prepare these foods yourself, there are quite a number of companies who manufacture raw food diets and sell them frozen in packets. All you would have to do is thaw the meal and place it in her dish. However, I would caution you to change her food over slowly as an abrupt change can result in further digestive upset. A good rule of thumb is to take a minimum of two weeks to change an animal’s food. For the first three to four days, add one quarter of the total amount in new (raw) food to her old food, so three quarters old food, one quarter, new. Then for the following three to four days, try it at half and half. The final three to four days, use three quarters new food with one quarter old. Feed her twice a day with no free feeding otherwise.

To this, you might want to add one half to one teaspoon Slippery Elm powder (Ulmus fulva) at each meal (ie: twice a day) as well as one quarter the human dose of a good pro biotic supplement (not yogurt). The powder is used in herbal medicine to balance intestinal function and the pro biotic should replace the "good" bacteria lost through her ongoing diarrhea. Try using both of these for at least a month. If her bowels have normalized by then, you can discontinue both the powder and the pro biotic.

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