My sick kitty

Ok, so my 'kitty' is now 8 years old... but he is quite sick.

My cat has been suffering on and off with what I suspect may be colitis. Every so often he'll go for about a week where he throws up after each meal. I now feed him 1/4 of his daily portions of cat food at a time, 4 times a day. He's on dry cat food since wet seems to make it worse. Often, he'll finish eating and shortly after I'll hear him meow sadly. I'll see that he's trying to have a bowel movement in a corner somewhere (not in his litter box when he gets bad). Nothing comes out, maybe a very small amount of soft, foul-smelling bm that has mucus and some blood in it.

Then, he'll go somewhere else to through up. His vomit starts as semi-digested food and by the third 'thrust' it's all bile. Then he may try to use the little box a few more times to no avail. Sometimes I'll clean out his litter box and find that he has had very foul-smelling diarrhea.

He used to be overweight, but now he's a "healthy weight". Ironic.

I've taken him to the vet about this twice. Sunflower doesn't do well at a vet's office and gets 'feral' there- even though it's an all-cat clinic. Both times the vet wouldn't even touch Sunny, instead he listened to my description of his symptoms and then gave me a laxative for him (which worked at first). The second time the vet suggested that we put Sunflower to sleep so that he could be examined and given a battery of tests so that we could determine the problem by process of elimination. Those tests would cost $600. I've already spent $200 for the first two 'examinations' and the medicine associated with them so I can't afford $600 just to poke my kitty and hope we can get an inkling about what might happen.

I made some changes to his life- got him some cat grass, put a water filter in his bowl, etc. and they seemed to work for a while... but now the symptoms are back again.

I feel that I should change his diet, but am not sure what would be best in his situation. Any suggestions? Or general insight? I'll take all the second opinions I can get.

The symptoms together sound like probable IBD to me which is very difficult to diagnose even with a biopsy. It's usually a diagnosis of elimination. IBD is also difficult to treat as every cat is individual and what may resolve the symptoms for one kitty may not work for another. It's really trial and error. However, one thing that is commonly recommended is trying a novel protein limited ingredient diet. Basically you want a single protein of something he hasn't had before (like venison, lamb, duck, etc.) with as few other ingredients as possible. The idea is to eliminate as many possible inflammation triggers as possible. The other standard allopathic treatment is a low dose of prednisolone to combat the inflammation and stabilize the condition while the diet change is going on. I'm surprised that you said that wet food seems to make the symptoms worse as wet food in general is much better nutrition for cats and has fewer grains/starches that are often triggers. However, one thing you may want to avoid in wet food is carrageenan which is a common ingredient that has been linked to IBD.

Here are a couple of good sites on IBD.

http://www.ibdkitties.net/

http://healthypets.mercola.com/site...012/09/24/pets-gi-inflammation-treatment.aspx

Could he have a blockage? What dry food is he eating? One of my boys was vomiting after eating his dry food until I starting mixing in Wellness Core Grain-free(dry). No more episodes. Unfortunately I can't afford that for 8 cats, so I've also started feeding better quality canned food more often. Still no more problems with vomitting.