another maybe ibd question

Hi everyone.

I now have 3-year old cat named Rocky. Adopted in January. He is a very big sweet boy.

He was 17 pounds when I adopted him and needed to lose a pound or two. At the shelter he only got 1/3 cup of RC low cal food but he was in a cage and didn't burn many calories.

I started with that and added canned food.

He was very gassy from the start. They said he could eat anything.

I went to duck and pea (natural balance). It got much worse and he had bloody stools. Got even wors when I added the dry.

He also has irritated anal glands and very smelly poops.

Went to specialty vet few times. Anal glands were expressed, He had negative ultrasound.
They said he was fine and could eat anything. They said let him adjust.

Anything did not work

Took hm to cat vet several times.  He was at 15.5 pounds.  She found a lot of blood in his colon.

Put him on Royal Canin PV canned. Tried the dry and he got worse.

At first I was still giving him some treats. He was better so I tried the Natural Balance pea and venison. He got worse.

Now he was better for a while but still having a bit id diarhea and smellly poops. A few times he had blood on his bum.

Did nother but the PV for several weeks. Seemed better. Had a very small diarhea  and swollen anal glands. Smelly gas.

The anal glands expressed themselves. He is still having small leaks of poop.

When he got to 15 pounds I said he had to stop losing weight. I went up to 2 cans of food over 3 meals a day. He is also getting some pumpkin.

2 cans of RC PV is five dollars and 30 cents a day, almost 2k a year plus the vet. I'm not sure I can do this forever. Also I think the peas are a problem.

Vet wants to try probiotics (my suggestion) and then a test for malabsorbtion before doing a biopsy.

Any suggestions? I just lost a cat in January to renal failure (vet bills in the thousands) and I hoped to have a healthy cat for a while.

I need some help here. Maybe I am just being impatient, but.....

And I worried that he can tell how upset I am. Birdie dying kind of took alot out of me and my reserves are a bit low.

I'm so sorry you're going thru something like this after having recently lost a beloved feline .  Rocky may indeed be picking up on your feelings, but since he's been having these issues since the very beginning, I don't think they are the cause. 

He could very well have IBD, it's hard to know.  He COULD have a pea allergy, although that's not a "usual suspect" as far as allergies go and besides, the Royal Canin PV has peas in it)  . 

Have you seen this website on IBD?  http://www.ibdkitties.net/guidelines/  It might be very helpful to you.

I would highly recommend probiotics AND digestive enzymes, since it sounds like now he's having a hard time keeping his weight on. 

Check out the guidelines for what NOT to feed for IBD and see if everything you are doing falls in place, start up with the probiotics and digestive enzymes, and be thankful his untrasound was negative.  If you can, try to stick with only wet food, which it sounds like you are.