Innova EVO?

Ok...my two cats and I have had a really bad time since October. They both got respiratory infections then. Then one of them got a UTI...and then ate a string (and puked it up just fine a few days later). Then the other one got a UTI and the vet tech suggested I switch them both over to Purina One Urinary Tract Health. I did that. 

I transitioned them slowly and one of them did not like the food at first. Eventually she started eating it. The transition happened in the middle of December.

Around Christmas, I noticed some "poopy spots" around the house where a dirty cat bottom had sat; didn't think too much of it and cleaned it up. 

Last week, they both started having diarrhea out of the blue. I took them both to the vet and she checked for giardia but found nothing. She took blood from one cat (couldn't get it from the other fussbudget) and said that that one might have inflammatory bowel disease and steroids would clear it up. I freaked. 

I'm thinking it might be the Urinary Tract food...I bought a small bag of Innova EVO chicken and turkey...would that be ok for them? They seem to like the flavor and I'm treating it like a treat right now...just a few kibbles for each. 

Should I switch them to this food?

P.S. They're also eating the Friskies Special Diet wet twice a day with some extra water in it as well. 

Which special diet? (For what?) And is it a pate? The Friskies traditional pate foods are actually pretty good for cats - high protein, low carb. :nod:

The EVO dry food is a high protein food that is low carbs - one of the lowest, in fact, for a dry food. But it does have peas, and some cats don't digest them very well. So if they're improving on this food over the Purina One, then I'd use it.

Of course, an all wet, or mostly wet food diet, is best for their health long term. http://www.catinfo.org

ETA: a number of cats seem to have a problem with the Purina One. It's very high carb, which many cats just do not do well with. Cats are obligate carnivores, and are biologically designed to get their nutrition from other animals - not grains or vegetables or starches.

I bought the Friskies Special Diet for urinary health and they took right to it, no problems whatsoever. It is the pate kind and they also have a chicken chunks with gravy kind with which I like to vary the flavors. I saw that it was on the 'ok' list for the ibdkitties.net site, too, which cheered me immensely. I was just worried that Innova EVO was too rich for their urinary needs...

I've taken up all of the Purina dry and hoping that this will clear them of the diarrhea before the vet pushes steroids at me again. I felt so overwhelmed and saddened that she immediately jumped to saying "when Seffie gets over the sniffles, we'll start her on steroids" without even telling me why she thought the diarrhea hit both cats at once. 

She also immediately dismissed my thought that it could be the dry food because it had been a month since I switched them over. 
 

They're a bit heavy, too, my babies, so less dry food should help overall, shouldn't it?

Just a note about the "Special Diet" food, I don't know if you know this already but it is "acidified". I have a CRF cat and I found out (after my mother went and bought a case for her of course) that she shouldn't be eating it. 

And isn't IBD incurable? My boss's cat has it, he has had every type of test done and he was just put on steroids which within a couple weeks of him being on them made him develop heart failure... and he's only 9 years old. Steroids are awful. 

IBD can be very difficult to manage, but diet can go a long way. Whether or not IBD is curable is... debatable. Many kitties with IBD (not all) when put on a raw food diet at least go into remission.

Steroids are actually typically handled very well by cats. There are potential side effects of course, but they are metabolised and handled very differently by cats than in people.

signorinasirena, I think your vet is wrong to dismiss the Purina dry as a source of the problem. See how they do on this food before making any further decisions!

So sorry to hear about your Kitties' problems.  

I would stick with the wet food exclusively - at least until they are healthy again.

(By the way, it seems to me that some Vets jump on IBD very easily -

this could just be a diet issue and not a "disease")

Also, I would recommend mixing in a little warm water with the canned foods

and mix it up with a fork. They tend to like the warmer temperature,

and the aditional water will surely help.

Finally, I'd consider adding a probiotic to their food. That always helps my kitties.

You can use one for humans, just twist open the capsule and mix it in.

You might start with about a third of a capsule at a time and see how they do.

Oh, there was one type of probiotic that cats should not have -

I will see if I can find it in the other thread, unless someone else remembers what is was?

OK, it seems to be some types of  "E. faecium" - rather than sort through the details, I'd just avoid that particular ingredient.  

Another vote for less dry and more wet.
I'm waiting to see what LDG says about the urinary wet food you are feeding; it may be better to go with the regular kinds.

Update: Two doses of probiotics - one Proviable sprinkle capsule per cat, per day - and my two little fuzzy faces have pooped mostly normal! I'm ecstatic and so is everyone else b/c they don't have to hear about my cats' poops now. 

...and that vet wanted to jump directly onto steroids... GRRR.

I've just been sprinkling the capsules on a "taster" dose of their Friskies Special Diet wet food and mixing it in before giving it to them. They each wolf down their small portion and then I give them the rest of their morning portion of wet food. (I'm thinking one 5.5 oz can each per day total broken into 2 to 3 feedings daily)

I really am just going to go for mostly wet now; I'll just give dry as a treat from now on. Like...1/8 of a cup of dry in a forage ball while I'm at work and then, when I get home and after 10+ minutes of play, I'll break out the dry again and play "toss the kibble," where each cat gets one kibble tossed so they have to chase it to eat it. At the end of that game, they'll each have only gotten 20 or less kibbles, and that's it until the next day. 

Oh, and about the Friskies Special Diet...I know it's a cheaper food, but they love it. AND it's  on this chart from www.catinfo.org w/ low carbs, a pretty good amount of protein and low phosphorus: http://www.catinfo.org/docs/Food Chart Public 9-22-12.pdf Also, it is on the ibdkitties.net list of good wet foods for kitties who suffer from IBD (which mine may or may not; better to err on the safe side, right?)

Here's to hoping my babies are back to normal and that they stay that way! 

Thank you all for the encouragement and advice; I get so overwhelmed and your good thoughts and vibes really help. 

Aw, that's great news!

Even if labeled "IBD," I still think it's best to address the problem through diet before resorting to meds anyway. But I never though this was IBD, I think it was the purina food!

But that's just great news!

Minka said:

Another vote for less dry and more wet.
I'm waiting to see what LDG says about the urinary wet food you are feeding; it may be better to go with the regular kinds.

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I just looked at the ingredients in the canned special diets. There's no urine acidifier. The only real difference between those and the classic pate style foods is that these use brewer's rice instead of just rice - and they're formulated to be lower in magnesium. I recently read that they're rethinking the role of magnesium in crystal formation, but if the brewer's rice isn't a problem for the kitties, then ... :dk:

Update 2: Unfortunately, my happy cat poops didn't last.

Po had an accident last night and, this morning, Seffie is back to it too.

Maybe I should switch them back to their old wet food? I was giving them some Blue Buffalo and trying to wean them off the yellow plastic Meow Mix cans when the vet tech said to switch them to Special Diet dry and wet. I also notice that they seem itchier, too. Could it be the Brewer's rice in the wet food?!?

I'll still give them the probiotics...shouldn't I?

I knew it felt too miraculous. :'-(

Okay, just to make sure I've got it right, since the beginning of this thread, the only thing they've been eating is the Friskies Special Diet wet and the probiotic, right?
If so, I might move them over to Friskies classics and continue the probiotic and see how that goes. It's may be the brewers rice.

Yup. That's what I'll try over tonight/ this weekend. This morning, I read through the canned ingredients and found that the non-pate chicken chunks variety of the special diet doesn't have the rice in it, so that's what I'll give them until I can stop at the store on the way home.

Might the brewer's rice make them itchier?

Trial and error, right? They seem so normal...I think they're getting tired of the runny poos though. :-(

Yup, they could have allergies to rice/grain along with their intestinal intolerance to it. Its quite possible. :nod:

It's so frustrating and devastating! I hate seeing them suffer like this and when they have accidents on the carpet, it stresses my boyfriend out (it's his house). 

When I moved out of my parents' house about 5 years ago, my cats adjusted well to the move and ate regular canned Friskies pate and those Meow Mix yellow plastic cans of food just fine; they also ate dry food by grazing and it was Purina Indoor Cat Chow. 

Reading into their fatness and attributing it to the corn in the cat chow, I eventually switched them to this Hairball Formula Nature's Recipe Dry that they loved. It had Chicken and Brown Rice: http://www.naturesrecipe.com/cat-food/indoor/chicken-brown-rice-dry-recipe

On this dry, the only problem was Po's first UTI. No diarrhea, no itchies. (With regards to the UTI, my Seffie cat scarfed both bowls of wet and Po was left with only dry, which she was fine with, but her bladder was not.)

Now, with just the Special Diet wet food, they're itchy around the outsides of their ears and they've got this stupid diarrhea. 

The old dry food had brown rice, not brewer's rice. Is there a difference? Perhaps they're not allergic to brown rice, just this new, crappier stuff...?

Its possible, brewers rice is like.. The rice leftovers or something like that. Just rice blob mush. You'd have to look it up, I can't remember.

I'm worrying myself to death over this; I feel sick. 

I can't believe that I'm more than likely the cause of this terrible upset! 

I'm going to stop tonight and get some regular Friskies (they used to eat it years ago with no problem), Blue Buffalo stuff (that they ate for awhile with no problem), and maybe some Meow Mix (that they ate for years with no problem and I fed it to them again when they were sick this past October b/c Po wasn't interested in food for a few days.) 

I just want them well again! 

Sorry to hear that they are still having trouble - hang in there, we will help you sort it out. 

I'd stick with the Friskies Poultry Platter for now due to the limited ingredients and low carbs,

or if you have a PetSmart nearby, try Grreat Choice Poultry Platter - that is PetSmart's version - similar but with NO rice at all. 

Yes, I'd continue the probiotic, but not too much...

more is not necessarily better in this case.

Please let us know how they are doing!
 

Thanks, guys. On the advice of LDG and others, I'm taking out everything with brewers rice in their diet. Hopefully that will help resolve the issues they're having; they're perfectly normal apart from the itchiness and the diarrhea! 

I've bought some classic Fancy Feast and some Blue Buffalo Wilderness (that they used to eat before the evil food switch) just to see how they fare. Hopefully not having brewers rice in the recipes will clear it out and the probiotics will return their little systems to normal. Please God this is just a food allergy...

Just being able to talk it out and discuss it with you all is just such a balm to my over-worried mind. Thank you. I will definitely keep you all posted as they progress; I should see something over the weekend (TGIF!!!) and they haven't had ANY brewers rice food today at all. 

signorinasirena said:

I can't believe that I'm more than likely the cause of this terrible upset! 

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Do not blame yourself for this. There's no way you could have known about any of this. It's not like the pet food companies tell us any of this information. Most of us only come here After we've had a problem.

I truly hope it's just the brewers rice. 

If it is, how long do you think it should be before I see some change? I've got them on the Fancy Feast classics, which have no grains, and am giving them each one Proviable probiotic a day. I started this yesterday and they each just had puddle poop. 

I know I'm not expecting a miracle, but any ideas?