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Hi there! Long time lurker, first time poster. :-) My vet had really not been very helpful in trying to get my cat's probable IBD under control.... So part of my question is should I try a new vet??
My 14yo cat Bugs has been vomiting almost daily for the past 1-2 years at least.... In the beginning he would throw up the cheap dry food I was feeding him with barely any digested, but now it happens hours later, and there's rarely any solid food in it. About a year ago he had a full physical and X-rays but nothing was found, no abnormalities, so vet said he probably has some sort of IBD and put him on Iams Veterinary Intestinal Plus low residue dry food. (I was not feeding any wet food to them at this time... I know better now.) After a couple of months with this food (not sure of the exact timeframe as I had another sick older kitty to worry about at the time) the issue came back and I decided to switch them to Acana Wild Prairie. He did quite well for a long time on this alone, but since the beginning of the year he's been vomiting quite regularly again.
Fast forward to "today," he still has the Acana Wild Prairie dry food out, but I have been giving him wet food as well. We've recently adopted two kittens who get wet food 2x a day (+ the Acana out all day for them to graze), and Bugs always tries to finish their leftovers so to keep him from eating theirs, he gets his own. He was initially getting what I'd consider to be cheap wet food (Sheba, Fancy Feast) and was still throwing up, so I thought I'd try the Iams Vet intestinal plus wet food, but he wasn't a big fan of that and it didn't seem to help anyway. I tried a few things like Wellness Core, weruva/bff, both with not-so-great results... but recently he seems to like Royal Canin Digest Sensitive. There are some days when he doesn't vomit, but they are still few and far between, so this still doesn't seem like the ideal solution. I've recently added a probiotic which has seemed to improve his stools (often somewhat loose/wet but not diarrhea), but not the vomiting problem. I also tried Natures Variety Instinct Ltd Ingredient turkey, but that hasn't helped either...
I am not sure where to go from here... He does have quite a bit of undercoat and sheds a lot, so I have started mixing in a tiny bit of hairball gel into his food 1x day thinking he might not be passing them very well. After reading here, I am going to purchase the egg lecithin and the hairball relief tablets with the slippery elm to see if those may help as well.
The other thing I am thinking is a potential food allergy, but I have no idea where to start there..... On one hand I am tempted to jump right to a homemade or raw diet but I am not sure if that's the ideal first step.... It's very hard to do this for one but not the others....
I mention all of this not looking for specific answers necessarily, but if there's some way to point me in a particular direction to help me help my Bugs feel better. I feel like this is something a vet should be helping me with though, right? I just don't feel like I am getting that kind of support at this point... Is there some sort of guide or walk through or just someone else's experience trying to deal with their cat's IBD or food allergies that someone can point me to in these forums or on other sites?
My 14yo cat Bugs has been vomiting almost daily for the past 1-2 years at least.... In the beginning he would throw up the cheap dry food I was feeding him with barely any digested, but now it happens hours later, and there's rarely any solid food in it. About a year ago he had a full physical and X-rays but nothing was found, no abnormalities, so vet said he probably has some sort of IBD and put him on Iams Veterinary Intestinal Plus low residue dry food. (I was not feeding any wet food to them at this time... I know better now.) After a couple of months with this food (not sure of the exact timeframe as I had another sick older kitty to worry about at the time) the issue came back and I decided to switch them to Acana Wild Prairie. He did quite well for a long time on this alone, but since the beginning of the year he's been vomiting quite regularly again.
Fast forward to "today," he still has the Acana Wild Prairie dry food out, but I have been giving him wet food as well. We've recently adopted two kittens who get wet food 2x a day (+ the Acana out all day for them to graze), and Bugs always tries to finish their leftovers so to keep him from eating theirs, he gets his own. He was initially getting what I'd consider to be cheap wet food (Sheba, Fancy Feast) and was still throwing up, so I thought I'd try the Iams Vet intestinal plus wet food, but he wasn't a big fan of that and it didn't seem to help anyway. I tried a few things like Wellness Core, weruva/bff, both with not-so-great results... but recently he seems to like Royal Canin Digest Sensitive. There are some days when he doesn't vomit, but they are still few and far between, so this still doesn't seem like the ideal solution. I've recently added a probiotic which has seemed to improve his stools (often somewhat loose/wet but not diarrhea), but not the vomiting problem. I also tried Natures Variety Instinct Ltd Ingredient turkey, but that hasn't helped either...
I am not sure where to go from here... He does have quite a bit of undercoat and sheds a lot, so I have started mixing in a tiny bit of hairball gel into his food 1x day thinking he might not be passing them very well. After reading here, I am going to purchase the egg lecithin and the hairball relief tablets with the slippery elm to see if those may help as well.
The other thing I am thinking is a potential food allergy, but I have no idea where to start there..... On one hand I am tempted to jump right to a homemade or raw diet but I am not sure if that's the ideal first step.... It's very hard to do this for one but not the others....
I mention all of this not looking for specific answers necessarily, but if there's some way to point me in a particular direction to help me help my Bugs feel better. I feel like this is something a vet should be helping me with though, right? I just don't feel like I am getting that kind of support at this point... Is there some sort of guide or walk through or just someone else's experience trying to deal with their cat's IBD or food allergies that someone can point me to in these forums or on other sites?
