Kitten with Horrible Diarrhea for a Month

Hello Everyone,

I was hoping I could get some help on what to do with my 5 month old tuxedo kitten, "Butler".  We adopted him from a rescue shelter a month ago and for the entire time we've had him, he's had HORRIBLE diarrhea.  In some cases, it can be nothing but water.  He has not been declawed, but has been neutered.  He is playful, energetic, has a veracious appetite, and is affectionate.  I have another cat in the house, she is a 2 year old, spayed female and in good health.

I've taken him to two different vets 3 times now.  His urinalysis came back normal.  They saw no signs of worms.  But they did find he had a bacterial infection of his gut the first visit so they gave him antibiotics.  The diarrhea didn't clear up, so after 10 days they tested his stool again and found he had another gut infection, only this time with a different bacteria.

Instead of more antibiotics, the vet put him on I/D prescription food, K-Pectin, probiotics, and psyllium.  I am not able to give him the K-Pectin anymore as he will drool/vomit the medication out whenever I give it to him, but even when I did give it to him and he managed to swallow it, it didn't help.  It's also been 7 days since giving him the probiotic and the psyllium, and things haven't improved. 

I also switched him to PRIMAL'S Raw Diet 7 days ago to see if that would help, but unfortunately aside from a more "expected color" of stool (was originally mustard color), it still has the consistency of runny ketchup, or at it's worst, water.

To add to the problems, he's now associating his litterbox with painful elimination.  He has taken to defecating/urinating on our bed (he is no longer allowed in any of the bedrooms), going in the sink (now have Ssscat to fix this), or eliminating on my office floor (carpet).  Please note, I have cleaned all of these areas with Nature's Miracle, and have purchased "Cat Attract Scooping Litter" for the 3 litter boxes I have in the house (at least 1 on each floor he's allowed on).  I have tried 3 different types of litter: "Cat Attract" (scooping, odorless), "Tiddy Cat" (non-scooping, scented), and newspaper clippings.  But I still catch him going outside the box. 

He also wears a Sentry Calming Collar when he has roam of the allowed rooms of the house.

His "nest" is our guest bathroom on our second floor.  He has his bed in a small carrier, a large litterbox, food/water bowl on/in the sink (to keep him from eliminating in it), and a Feliway Pheromone Plugin.  I have had to shut the doors to the bathtub as he was preferring it to his litterbox.  He stays in this room only when we sleep, or when we are not at home to watch him.  Otherwise he is out and playing.

I clean his litterbox twice a day, some times 3 times (he defecates about every 1-2 hours).  He has had two different types of boxes: hooded, and one with a low wall and wide bottom.  He seems to prefer very little litter in his box, so I only keep about two cups in them, which makes the scooping aspect of the litter moot.  I wash the boxes out with plain water every 3 days.

I have read over as many posts on the subject in these forums as I could find and have tried covering all of the bases, but he still has diarrhea.  And I suspect that as long as he has diarrhea problems, we'll continue to have litterbox problems.

Any assistance will be grateful.

Thank You.

What was your boy Butler eating when he was at the shelter?  Is the poop especially smelly? Do you notice any straining or mucous in the stool and was Tritrichomonas ruled out?

I feel for you, I really do!  I adopted two kittens, and my male tuxie is Buster. Coincidently, Buster was treated for coccidia at the shelter but was certified to be parasite free. When I brought him home, he still had runny, god-awful smelling poop. We first took him to the vet for xrays to make sure there was no bowel obstruction!  My vet tested him on 2 different occasions, fecal float negative for parasites but she thought thinks the Albon and Panacur was harsh on his intestines so recommended FortaFlora. It has taken a couple of weeks to finally see a difference. That plus, when I brought mine home, I immediately gave them canned Wellness Kitten food too quickly, instead or gradually mixing it with their dry Hills Kitten kibble. (as a former owner of a diabetic cat, I dislike dry food!)  So now I am back to giving my Buster his dry food, mixing only small amounts of Wellness Kitten canned food.

Thank you for the response!

 What was your boy Butler eating when he was at the shelter?  Is the poop especially smelly? Do you notice any straining or mucous in the stool and was Tritrichomonas ruled out?

Click to expand...

He was eating Science Diet Kitten Food.  When we brought him home, he had no interest in the food.  And after a day of him not eating, he found my other cat's food: Purina Sensitive Systems and seemed to love it.  So I went through the process of transitioning him to Purina.  But he ultimately just ended up only eating the Purina food around the Science Diet.

The stool, in terms of smell, has been very unusual.  While on the Purina food and I/D prescription food, his stool smelled potently like sweetened yogurt.  I would describe it as being "disgustingly sweet".  After switching it over to the raw diet, his stool has taken on a putrid odor that smells like moldy stool -- like bowel and water damage mixed together.  It's also increased in potency.  Like even a little bit of stool stinks up an entire floor of my house.

And yes, I have noticed mucous in his stool and sometimes froth.

I'm not sure if Tritrichomonas was ruled out.  He's had two stool samples where they were looking for worms and were testing for infection.  I know they said they were looking at it under a slide.

You have to wonder if he doesn't still have something bacterial going on, but it seems like he should be acting sick if that was the case. How is he today? Does he drink water?  Did they do another Culture and Sensitivy on the stool after the last set of anbitiotics he was on?  That is odd about the smell, I will keep looking.  Poor little guy, I hope he feels better soon, you too! 

Here's a list that I used a lot as a guideline, I took it to my vet and we went over the likely causes. I'm not a vet, I was in constant contact with my vet though with my older deceased kitty Tiger, so we know eachother pretty well. 

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=1+2122&aid=3573

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/pethe...roduction_to_digestive_disorders_of_cats.html

Posting an update on little Butler...

Last Sunday I was cleaning out his litterbox when he jumped in and went to the bathroom right in front of me.  It was then that I spotted "rice-like" bits in his stool.  I knew immediately he had tapeworms as soon as I saw it.  I was really surprised he had worms given that he's been tested twice and it came back negative both times.  I had also never noticed this in his stool before, but I hadn't really looked THAT close at it before.  He had also been treated for "worms" at the shelter, but I suspect it must have been round worms.  The vet said it will take 10 days for the worms to be out of his system and it's only been four days so far, but the diarrhea is still horrible.

Up until last Thursday I kept him in a bathroom while we were out of the house or in bed.  He did well for the most part, but over the past 48 hours he's been defecating and urinating all over the house, despite having three clean litterboxes devoted solely to him.  I'm beginning to worry that he'll become a cat that will never reliably use the litterbox and if that happens, there is a chance my husband will not be able to tolerate a cat that is soiling the house and will ask me to surrender him.  I have been trying so hard to make his litterboxes inviting to him, but despite everything, he's still not using them as he should.  I'm at a loss and worried this will be a life long problem, or that my husband will demand that I give him to someone else.

I'm glad you found the root of the cause and he's being treated!  But I know on the runny poop.     You might ask your vet if it would help to give him a probiotic because that medication is hard on their system too.   I highly recommend Cat Attract Litter, and I would not hesitate to confine him to a spare bathroom during this time.

My male tuxie kitten Buster finally now has firm poop. I switched him back to Hill's Kitten dry food that he got at the shelter and am gradually working to get him switched to canned Wellness Kitten again.  Don't worry yet about the Litterbox problems,  it just takes time to get rid of the worms. Sending healing vibes for the little guy.

Thanks for the response, Ruth!

The worms should be out of his system by now.  He had soft stools up until 4 days ago.  After reading an article talking about helping a cat with diarrhea, it stated to not free-feed the cat, but instead feed him 2-3 meals a day for 20 minutes each.  That way he doesn't have a steady stream of poop all day long and you have a good idea on when to expect it.  So 4 days ago, I fed him only the PRIMAL Raw Diet Chicken & Salmon formula food twice a day and his stool was actually solid for the entire time I did this.  I didn't give him any more psyllium during this time and I ran out of probiotics.  He only went to the bathroom twice all day, instead of a dozen times like when he was being free-fed.  Yesterday, I tried giving him some of the dry Purina Sensitive System food my other cat likes and within a few hours, he had diarrhea again.  So I think it's safe to say that my kitten has some sort of food intolerance given that every dry food I put him on, regardless of slowly transitioning him into it, he always get's diarrhea a few hours later.  My vet did mention on one occasion that sometimes kittens' system have a hard time switching from mother's milk to regular food and they will often grow out of it.  So that might be another possibility.

I switched his litter back to the Cat Attract scooping litter last Sunday and he has had only one accident since and I think that was more marking territory (dog bed) than actually not wanting to use the litterbox.

So I think I'm finally on the right track.  I've ordered more PRIMAL Raw Diet food, only going to try turkey formula this time and see how that goes.  I think this is just going to take a while to find out what does and doesn't irritate his system.  In terms of the litterbox problems, Cat Attract litter is expensive ($30 a bag at the store, $25 from Amazon) and he can easily go through a bag in about 2-3 weeks.  So I might buy a cheaper form of clay clumping litter and mix Cat Attract in it at 2/3rds and try to ween him off of it over time.  I have a friend whose cat only goes on walnut litter and it took her about 6 months to transition him off of it.  :S

Thanks!