Dehydrated food?

Hi everyone! So both of my senior citizen cats have extensive health issues that we have been to the vet for several times. Keep that in mind. haha

Ive had my cats Minnie and Spaz for a year now, and this year has been a rough one in regards to food. Minnie has literally always had diarrhea so I tried her on several grain free, raw, and selective protein diets, After several vet visits, it was decided that she had IBD and will likely be on steroids forever. I also tried Royal Canin selective protein to see if it was an issue of an allergy. Well, she was doing great with more solid poops and seemed fat and happy.

Then my other cat Spaz got a UTI, likely because of the dry diet. SO I switched them to Friskies because I knew they liked it from former experience. Now they both have diarrhea, Minnie being a little worse because of leakage. Currently Minnie is back on the dry food, but that UTI freaked me out and I Would like her back on wet as well. I guess what I am asking is what affordable wet foods do you feed to your probably allergic cats? This is what I can remember we have tried:
Nutro pate
Natural Balance LID
Pride
Instinct raw and canned
Blue Buffalo wilderness and freedom
Friskies
Sheba pate
Purina one
Vital (that refridgerated food)
Royal Canin gastro high fiber, special 33, selective protein, all wet and dry

And I think thats it. I have been looking into Honest Kitchen because it seems affordable, and I am not going to lie i spend more money than i can really afford to on these ladies. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, guys.

Countlasagna said:

Hi everyone! So both of my senior citizen cats have extensive health issues that we have been to the vet for several times. Keep that in mind. haha

Ive had my cats Minnie and Spaz for a year now, and this year has been a rough one in regards to food. Minnie has literally always had diarrhea so I tried her on several grain free, raw, and selective protein diets, After several vet visits, it was decided that she had IBD and will likely be on steroids forever. I also tried Royal Canin selective protein to see if it was an issue of an allergy. Well, she was doing great with more solid poops and seemed fat and happy.

Then my other cat Spaz got a UTI, likely because of the dry diet. SO I switched them to Friskies because I knew they liked it from former experience. Now they both have diarrhea, Minnie being a little worse because of leakage. Currently Minnie is back on the dry food, but that UTI freaked me out and I Would like her back on wet as well. I guess what I am asking is what affordable wet foods do you feed to your probably allergic cats? This is what I can remember we have tried:
Nutro pate
Natural Balance LID
Pride
Instinct raw and canned
Blue Buffalo wilderness and freedom
Friskies
Sheba pate
Purina one
Vital (that refridgerated food)
Royal Canin gastro high fiber, special 33, selective protein, all wet and dry

And I think thats it. I have been looking into Honest Kitchen because it seems affordable, and I am not going to lie i spend more money than i can really afford to on these ladies. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, guys.

Click to expand...

Try Fancy Feast Classics .. Grain free and low carb  . If you wish to avoid fish  read the ingredients as a lot do contain fish .. 

Yes wet food is better (imo anyway), especially for uti cats. However, if your guys really aren't handling it well there are ways round it (and chronic diarrhoea is never going to be beneficial). One of the biggest issues is dehydration. There are ways to get hour cats drinking more so that they are compensating for the dryness of kibble. Chicken water (poach some chicken absolutely plain, and feed the poaching water) or tuna water (steep tuna canned in spring water in more water for a couple of hours. Remove tuna and feed the water) are two of the easiest ways. Water fountains and ice cubes are other things to try.

Also, it's perfectly ok to feed up to 10% (in calories) of their daily diet as unbalanced food - such as plain chicken, turkey or other plain meats they like. That will help with hydration too.

This article has more ideas to get them drinking. http://www.thecatsite.com/a/tips-to-increase-your-cat-s-water-intake

Countlasagna, do you know (or have any hints about) what ingredient(s) might be causing Minnie's IBD problem? It sounds like you've already tried to figure this out and tried novel proteins, too, but I thought I'd ask so we have more background. Has your vet given you any suggestions for Minnie's diet? (Other than, perhaps the dry food?) It can be very helpful to keep a food diary of what foods do and don't cause problems.

It's hard to suggest foods because IBD can be different. Our previous cat, for example, improved (even in her last months) when we took all the grains and fish out of her diet. Meanwhile, one of our present cats has problems with potato. I've read on TCS about carrageenan and all sorts of other ingredients, often chicken, causing problems. Sometimes feeding raw foods helps. It can be difficult to say, definitively (if only temporarily!), what causes or improves IBD without a pretty disciplined approach to feeding. But you already know that!

FWIW, if I were in your position, I'd probably try stabilizing both cats on the dry food -- it seems to keep both of them from having diarrhea, right? -- and then feeding very small amounts of foods with simple recipes, just one protein source at a time, with no grain, no potato, no peas, no carrageenan, to see how things go. Hound & Gatos has simple recipes, Wild Calling is also simple food and they have unusual meats like bison. Our cats, alas, hated Wild Calling and looked at me like a traitor when I tried to feed it to them! Some Weruva recipes are pretty simple, too. Our previous cat ate a fair bit of Weruva and the present cats like it, too. And, as @2Cats4Me mentioned, some Fancy Feast recipes are simple, too.

You mentioned dehydrated foods in your thread title. Some cats seem to do well on Stella & Chewy's or Primal. Our cats eat and enjoy both of those brands; if you go for Primal, I'd suggest turkey or pork since they have no fish. Primal will send freeze-dried samples if you ask; it's easy to rehydrate. Our cats also love Rad Cat, which is only sold frozen.

If all else fails with canned or raw foods but your cats' digestive tracts will settle again on the dry food, I'm all for @Columbine 's suggestion of feeding more water! We got our previous cat a fountain and she did enjoy it.

Good luck! IBD can be very, very difficult to crack. Which reminds me: there's a great site, http://www.ibdkitties.net/ that you might want to check out. I found it very helpful when we were trying to feed Brooksie.

Have you tried Nature's Variety Instinct Limited Ingredients?

Here are some threads about The Honest Kitchen:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/290315/honest-kitchen

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/286068/hs-anyone-tried-honest-kitchen

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/287751/the-honest-kitchen-grace-not-going-over-well

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/283454/looking-on-switching-over-to-honest-kitchen-any-advice

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/195291/honest-kitchen

It's heavy on carbs and fruit / veggies

Note that The Honest Kitchen is a dry powder. Water must be added to the powder before serving and allowed to fully rehydrate for a few minutes before it can be served.

You may want to consider canned foods that are gum free, or do a little research in that area. Guar gum, derived from the guar bean, can have an adverse effect on some cats digestive systems. Carrageenan is usually considered a big no-no among some people with IBD cats, carrageenan causes inflammation of the colon. Our cats IBD cleared up on freeze dried raw, more affordable than canned although we still do about 25% canned, (Nature's Variety). We use Primal FD.