This might be a nutrition question as well but I felt this forum was better suited.
Me and my girlfriend have two cats, a 3 y-o male and 4 y-o female. We moved in May, and again in August. Ever since the first move, the boy's poop started getting looser and smellier. We have always fed the cats Purina Naturals dry cat food. We took the boy to the vet, poop and blood tests revealed nothing, but they prescribed something anyway, I think metronidazole, which had no effect. All throughout this time, he's showed no other differences in health. He's very active, friendly, playful, eats plenty, drinks plenty, and is not dehydrated based on the scruff test.
Knowing little about proper cat food, we tried switching to generic wet food (Priority brand), which made his poo basically liquid. Then we somehow decided upon Hill's Science Diet Sensitive Stomach dry food, and he showed a lot of improvement. His poop was definitely not optimal, but it was way better than it was this summer. Interestingly, he used to eat all of his food as fast as he could. Immediately upon switching to Hill's, he became a grazer.
During all this time I was pretty naive about food requirements for cats. After doing a bit of research, I noticed that people generally recommend against Hill's Science Diet. I looked at the ingredient list and the top ingredients are brewer's rice and corn gluten meal, which from what I've learned are not exactly what cats should be eating. Also, I learned that letting cats graze is bad because they should not be digesting food all day.
So I did some research, actually paying attention to ingredients this time, and eventually settled on Blue Buffalo Wilderness, and bought the salmon version. I learned that abruptly transitioning food is bad (though that should have been obvious), and transitioned our cats over 2 weeks to this food which seems to have high quality ingredients and good reviews. The cats only get 30 minutes to eat each of their two meals per day.
It's been a total of 3 weeks now. Our girl has been a real trooper, doing well with all of the different foods, but the boy is back to pooping liquid, extremely smelly liquid at that, with a lot of audible flatulence each time. So I have come here for advice. The vet just cost a lot of money and was unable to determine anything. HSD Sensitive Stomach seemed helpful for our boy's condition but has low quality non-meat ingredients. Blue Buffalo with all of it's high quality, actual meat ingredients has us at square one. What should we do?
Thanks in advance for any help
Me and my girlfriend have two cats, a 3 y-o male and 4 y-o female. We moved in May, and again in August. Ever since the first move, the boy's poop started getting looser and smellier. We have always fed the cats Purina Naturals dry cat food. We took the boy to the vet, poop and blood tests revealed nothing, but they prescribed something anyway, I think metronidazole, which had no effect. All throughout this time, he's showed no other differences in health. He's very active, friendly, playful, eats plenty, drinks plenty, and is not dehydrated based on the scruff test.
Knowing little about proper cat food, we tried switching to generic wet food (Priority brand), which made his poo basically liquid. Then we somehow decided upon Hill's Science Diet Sensitive Stomach dry food, and he showed a lot of improvement. His poop was definitely not optimal, but it was way better than it was this summer. Interestingly, he used to eat all of his food as fast as he could. Immediately upon switching to Hill's, he became a grazer.
During all this time I was pretty naive about food requirements for cats. After doing a bit of research, I noticed that people generally recommend against Hill's Science Diet. I looked at the ingredient list and the top ingredients are brewer's rice and corn gluten meal, which from what I've learned are not exactly what cats should be eating. Also, I learned that letting cats graze is bad because they should not be digesting food all day.
So I did some research, actually paying attention to ingredients this time, and eventually settled on Blue Buffalo Wilderness, and bought the salmon version. I learned that abruptly transitioning food is bad (though that should have been obvious), and transitioned our cats over 2 weeks to this food which seems to have high quality ingredients and good reviews. The cats only get 30 minutes to eat each of their two meals per day.
It's been a total of 3 weeks now. Our girl has been a real trooper, doing well with all of the different foods, but the boy is back to pooping liquid, extremely smelly liquid at that, with a lot of audible flatulence each time. So I have come here for advice. The vet just cost a lot of money and was unable to determine anything. HSD Sensitive Stomach seemed helpful for our boy's condition but has low quality non-meat ingredients. Blue Buffalo with all of it's high quality, actual meat ingredients has us at square one. What should we do?
Thanks in advance for any help
Unfortunately loose stools can be caused by stress & I've seen them just spiral down from there.
Although very soft - this is a huge improvement, as he has had weight loss also. I have been so worried and was getting his records ready to call Dr. Loops - an holistic vet who gives chronic problem advise by phone if you are not near him. (my friends had great success with his advice for both cats and dogs.)
