Advice needed for IBD cat

I have a male domestic short hair that is 3 and a half years old who has IBD. I got him from a local pound about a year ago because the people who had him before this time could not care for him because of his IBD so they let him go. In this last year he has had two IBD flareups, one started on the first day of summer and the latest started on the first day of winter. The first one started with his stools softening up and then turning into diarrhea and then blood and mucus would come out with his stools. He would start to throw up after this and get to a point where he could not keep any food down at all. My vet has access to his previous health records and he used to have these flareups all of the time so they treated him with Metronidazole and Cerenia and so we did the same thing. He was on Cerenia for 5 days to settle his stomach and he stopped throwing up and he was on Metronidazole for about a week after his stools returned to normal.

On December 22nd I noticed a change in his stools which got worse over the next few days and by Christmas he was throwing up and his stools were only partially formed. I started him on Cerenia on Christmas and then started the Metronidazole the next day because he continued to throw up and was not eating as much. I was able to get him into the vet a day after this and they found he was dehydrated from moisture going out both ends and then he got a sub-q for about a week to address this. By Jan 1st he was doing much better and eating and was able to keep it down for the last few days and was improving. He is back to normal now but he still has diarrhea and we are almost at a month from when it first started. I started him on Metronidazole on December 27th and he was switched to Tylosin Tartrate on January 16th and still no changes.

He is not using drugs to control his IBD and seems very stable for the most part other than the few flareups. This is a huge improvement from before as he was having these flareups all of the time before he was given up for adoption. In general he is doing although he is overweight so he has been on a diet shortly after he came to me and has been slowly dropping weight. He is on the very low side of normal for anemia and he had very low B12 levels. He went through a cycle of B12 shots and he is now at a shot every 6 weeks and his levels are fine now. He had a blood test last week and I also had a diarrhea test done and nothing was found that was abnormal for him. At this time there is nothing obvious that the vet can see which is why we went to Tylosin Tartrate to see if that helped him.

I tried at least 50 kinds of foods from the IBDKitties site and the only ones he will consistently eat are some of the Fancy Feast foods. When his first flareup came about he was on the Chicken Pate and then stopped eating it after but he would eat some of the fish flavoured pate ones so I would just cycle through them can after can. I switched him from the fish based foods back to chicken pate Fancy Feast but it has only been a day so no real changes. I have not tried him on raw yet as he was doing well on commercial foods and I had a bad experience with raw and my last IBD cat so I am a little gun shy. He also has Royal Canin prescription food but the only one he will eat is dry and certainly down there on his list but I can switch him to this if needed.

Because his food has been doing him fairly well for the last year where what can I do otherwise to help settle down his stools? He is currently getting Tylosin Tartrate twice a day and no other drugs at this time.

Thanks for any input to Fatboy's current issue.

Raw doesn't work for all kitties unfortunately, but have you tried  a novel protein, without grains or other irritants? 

Is he taking probiotics?

RuthM said:

 
Raw doesn't work for all kitties unfortunately, but have you tried  a novel protein, without grains or other irritants? 

Is he taking probiotics?

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He is eating Fancy Feast which has regular proteins, no grain, but it does have guar gum and is listed on the IBDKitties web site. He will eat Royal Canin hypoallergenic dry food if pressed into it so maybe I should move him onto that. I mixed Florentero into his food for a week to see if there were any changes but nothing and this was about a week ago.

Thanks again,

I would recommend only feeding him a grain free canned food.  My vet said that dry isn't as good for IBD kitties.

Is there a reason he's not on any drugs for IBD?  My cat has done very well on prednisolone.

I agree with Jenny82

My guy was on fancy feast. I noticed he started vomiting each time he ate chicken. So I stopped feeding him anything with chicken. He is allergic to chicken. This was at the same time, as he was being tested for IBD. 

Artie does have IBD. 

He is on a Novel protein diet! That means something away from chicken, beef, turkey, etc. 

He is eating Rabbit . I have gotten him Natures Variety Pride Rabbit (a mix of rabbit and pork). He will also eat Natures Variety Rabbit, and Wild Calling Rabbit. 

Artie is also taking IBD meds. Right now he is on Pepcid AC, and Prednisolone (steroid)--twice a day.  and he is taking a probiotic--Proviable.

He has not vomited since he got on the correct regimen.

At one point he was on the pepcid AC, Cerenia (5days on and 2 off), Zofran on the off days, metronidazole, and the prednisolone.....

He is doing well. Not losing weight.. holding his own. 

I did go to see a specialist in Internal Medicine. I think that is the right thing to do when a cat cannot be fully treated; and is having so many problems. 

Good Luck.. you can look and read my thread about Artie...

Canned pumpkin can help with diarrhea.  Here's a good thread on its use:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/244415/canned-pumpkin

One member said she had good luck with pumpkin cooked at home:  http://www.thecatsite.com/t/312454/ibd-help-beyond-canned-pumpkin

Thanks for the replies. I went out and bought some pumpkin today and started him with 1 tsp and I will increase that after a day and see how it goes.

IBD is caused in mammals by different things including food, other illnesses, and stress to name a few. Food is the most common either being the specific protein or one of the additives in it. Food seems to be the most common from what I have read and some people are able to control it through diet or diet and drugs. My last cat was 17 when he started to get IBD but for him in was because of weaknesses in other system and food or drugs didn't make too much difference on their own.

I think Fatboy has flareups caused by stress and not diet or illness but that is a guess. He was an apartment cat before and here he has access to the house and a 600 sq/ft deck with no ground access. In general he shows no symptoms of IBD other than throwing up, sometimes it is every week or two and other times it could be up to a month. Throughout this time his stools are perfect and other than throwing up he seemed fine. When he has had a flareup I can see the change in mood and I know he is not feeling well but when he is just throwing up I see no change. If he threw up one day I would ignore it but he threw up the day later I would give him a Cerenia pill and follow it up with another pill the next day. At most he would throw up on two consecutive days at the most and then he would be fine. What I found was neighborhood cats were jumping on a car and they were getting onto his deck and I think this was upsetting him. One day he was on his cat tower which is in the front of the house and the deck is on the other side of the house directly across from it and he jumped down and ripped out onto the deck and I noticed there was a cat on it. The other car is small enough to fit through the bars so it jumped back down and took off before Fatboy got to it. Then I could see him sniffing around the deck and acting like he was agitated. The SPCA tried to socialize him with other cats and he would have nothing to do with that so they had to segregate him. He was okay with dogs because he lived with two of them before but here there is only Fatboy so that is not really a concern. Once the car was moved and the cats could no longer get on his deck he stopped throwing up for the most part and didn't need Cerenia for months until December.

Like his last IBD flareup his stools went to liquid, his appetite dropped right off, and then the mucus and blood started but in the 6 months between these two incidents he seemed fine. He did throw up but his appetite was always good and his stools never changed. The last time I was able to address everything with a short run of drugs but this time he is fine but his stools still have not settled out. Other than his stools all symptoms are gone and he is acting and eating normally. I break up his meals and use feeders when I am not home and he eats every hour or two so it is always small portions and easy to digest. I feed him nothing but wet food although when I got him he was eating the dry prescription food so I moved him off of this. I have tried different brands of alternative protein food and he won't eat them so I am kind of stuck in this regard. The food he does eat has no grains and is good other than guar gum and he has done very well on it in the past.

I will see how the pumpkin works but if nothing else I am getting good at cleaning poop off of him.

Have you tried slippery elm? Definitely add in a daily probiotic to his wet food. 

Have you tried a novel protien like rabbit, kangeroo or lamb?

Mine has a minor food allergy. I was able to link it to some ingredient they put in grain free food and her worming tablet. The worming tablet would make her very sick 4 days later. 

I think a novel protein will help...

and steroids to help calm the inflammation.

Another suggestion: have you tried a feliway diffuser? If the problem is stress based, it could help bring the stress level down some. There are two different ones, one is especially to get cats to feel more comfortable around other cats (it's like the mother cat's lactating pheromone that helps mom cat and all the kittens get along). Not sure how much it'll help if he's just seeing the other cats, but maybe it'll tell that stressed out part of his brain they're nothing to worry about...

You could even try both kinds at once....

Just an update on Fatboy, his stool has slowly been getting better and he left a really good one on Saturday. I gave him some pumpkin every day since late last week into early this week and I also found some food that he would eat that does not have a common protein. I found he will eat the Natural Balance duck and venison limited ingredient food so I have been feeding him the venison flavour and his stools slowly got better and looked pretty good as of yesterday. He has also been throwing up every day or two for the last week and as of yesterday can no longer keep food down. I gave him a Cerenia pill yesterday in the morning and he was able to keep a little duck down in the evening but nothing since then. Today he got a small sub-q with a Cerenia injection which I hoped would work a little better but food is still coming up soon after it goes down. He did go almost a month before he threw up last weekend so he did pretty good on that front.

What I noticed before is when he was eating chicken he had runny stools but when I gave him fish based food with the pumpkin in it his stools came out wet but he also sprayed splatter out with it so it certainly looks like the food does upset him. The switch to venison certainly seems to have addressed the stool but now the throwing up is back and it did start before the venison. I will need to talk with the vet and look at other options to treat him. We are using drugs to control nausea and control diarrhea but we are not addressing the IBD at this point. We are also continuing with the treatment they were using before I got him which wasn't really working then and seems to have done the trick on the first flareup but not this one. Fatboy has been having issues since December 22nd and although the throwing up cleared up in late December the stools have only cleared up now but we are back to throwing up and not being able to keep food down.

That Guy said:

 
Just an update on Fatboy, his stool has slowly been getting better and he left a really good one on Saturday. I gave him some pumpkin every day since late last week into early this week and I also found some food that he would eat that does not have a common protein. I found he will eat the Natural Balance duck and venison limited ingredient food so I have been feeding him the venison flavour and his stools slowly got better and looked pretty good as of yesterday. He has also been throwing up every day or two for the last week and as of yesterday can no longer keep food down. I gave him a Cerenia pill yesterday in the morning and he was able to keep a little duck down in the evening but nothing since then. Today he got a small sub-q with a Cerenia injection which I hoped would work a little better but food is still coming up soon after it goes down. He did go almost a month before he threw up last weekend so he did pretty good on that front.

What I noticed before is when he was eating chicken he had runny stools but when I gave him fish based food with the pumpkin in it his stools came out wet but he also sprayed splatter out with it so it certainly looks like the food does upset him. The switch to venison certainly seems to have addressed the stool but now the throwing up is back and it did start before the venison. I will need to talk with the vet and look at other options to treat him. We are using drugs to control nausea and control diarrhea but we are not addressing the IBD at this point. We are also continuing with the treatment they were using before I got him which wasn't really working then and seems to have done the trick on the first flareup but not this one. Fatboy has been having issues since December 22nd and although the throwing up cleared up in late December the stools have only cleared up now but we are back to throwing up and not being able to keep food down.

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Have you tried slippery elm? Help prevent my IBD cat from throwing up daily. http://www.littlebigcat.com/health/slippery-elm/

Is he losing weight?  Is he still taking the tylosin?  Yes, I agree with you, that vomiting needs to be addressed asap- if your vet isn't sure I would seek out an Internal Medicine speciaist. Thanks for keeping us updated. 

He took the Tylson until yesterday and then I stopped giving it to him because he has been on it since the 16th of January and has not helped. He will be losing weight because he has not eaten for two days now but he had a sub-q today so this will help with dehydration. He left a messy stool not too long ago so that has dropped off as well. I will check with the vet first thing tomorrow and see what they think. Because his tests were normal they were thinking the next thing would be to have an ultrasound done so I will see what they say. I have not tried slippery elm because it coats their insides which can make it hard for drugs to be absorbed and he is being pilled daily.

Fatboy left a very poor stool today but he did eat a little in the afternoon and it stayed down so that is a good sign. He has an appointment for an ultrasound tomorrow morning which will hopefully give a better idea of what is up in his insides. They didn't want to try any drugs like pred because if they do they would not be able to get an ultrasound until he had been off of it for 6 weeks. As they are not sure if it is IBD or something else causing his issues they did not want to take a chance. He has a sub-q warming up right now and will get an injection of Famotidine and Cerenia which will hopefully calm things down until tomorrow. As you might guess by his name he does have some extra weight so he should be okay for another day with minimal food.

The slippery elm doesn't coat the digestive tract all day. I give my cat some in the morning with breakfast, and then I pill her at night. She doesn't seem to have any problem absorbing the medication (and in fact since I just started adding B complex to the pill - i put everything in the same gelatin capsule - she's been super active after pilling, so it definitely looks like her pills are still affecting her).

Ah, I thought he had the Ultrasound for his initial diagnosis... well, I think your wise to get it done there is a lot you can learn from it.  Please keep us posted  how it goes.

yes please let us know how it goes. 

Can you ask the vet about giving your guy 1/2 tablet of Pepcid AC, once a day; for the nausea?

He got Pepsin in the form of Famotidine last night and he has had it before and it typically doesn't seem to do much for him. He went and had an ultrasound done today but it hasn't really cleared anything up, he either has cancer or IBD. I got him from the pound and it was stated he had IBD and this was almost a year ago and he was sick before that time so if it is cancer it has been hanging around for a long time. The vet is compiling information and trying to see what the next steps should be to get to the bottom of this. I posted the ultrasound report in this thread...

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/313757/cancer-or-ibd