Miralax for Chronic Constipation??

My vet told me it wouldn't hurt my chubby one to stay on it, but I alternate it with milk and yogurt now to make him poop instead.  I now give him 1/4 cup of goat milk warmed up, or about 2 tablespoons of plain yogurt at night as a bedtime snack, and he seems to do better with that than with the Miralax.  He poops normal poops on the milk and yogurt schedule.  I just give whichever I have in the house at the time. He didn't poop much with the Miralax, he was on 1/4 tsp a day split into morning and evening meals, and he is 18 pounds.  It just seemed the Miralax wasn't doing well, so my vet said I could try small amounts of milk.  He told me not to give him cow milk though, that it has sugar and all sorts of stuff added.  It worked better for us.  He is a yogurt fiend though, so I give him plain yogurt as well, it seems to work too. 

Buster has been on a daily dose of Miralax for over 5 years on the advice of our vet. Just make sure your cat stays hydrated.

Grammom said:

 
 I know hydration is very important....I recently bought him a fountain that keeps the water moving and he seems to drink more.

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Some other ways to get more liquid into Lucky - Boil some chicken and save the water (I freeze the chicken water into ice cubes and use as needed). Water out of the tuna can (high sodium so I would only do this occasionally). Catsip or Whiskas Catmilk (not all cats will drink this - of the nine cats we have only four of them really like it - but it is inexpensive and worth a try). As a treat we give Buster chicken or turkey Gerber baby food. It is just chicken and water - no seasonings. He really loves it and the water content is fairly high.

My cat had chronic constipation for several months, and while Miralax worked pretty well, I did notice it started to be less effective after a couple of months. I tried other remedies like adding soluble fiber or slippery elm bark, and none of those worked for the long term either. What helped her the most was actually probiotics! It's been about 8 months since I started adding probiotics to every meal, and she has a bowel movement almost every day and I don't even need to add Miralax any more. I sprinkle half a capsule of PB8 Acidophilus on her food twice a day. I also started adding pet enzymes to her food, and I'm not sure if that helps or not, but I know the probiotics do.

I used Slippery Elm Bark too.  I cook it in homemade chicken broth, it gels up solid enough for me to scoop out by the spoonful.  Surprisingly my old girl likes the stuff even without the chicken broth, even though it smells of vegetation to me.  My old girl's (she's 18) constipation was complicated by her not eating or drinking enough.  Adding the broth adds liquid but to our surprise once she got over her not-eating funk the constipation lessened.

Have any of you all tried yogurt for constipation and did it work??

Oops I just got the answer to my question, my cat just let out a lot of poop after 4 hours of giving him plain yogurt [emoji]128524[/emoji]

Well, if that is a solution, you sure are lucky your cat will eat yogurt.  I've offered it to mine, just as a treat, just to see what they'd do, because they are curious when the dog gets it in his meal, and none of them will look at it.

Actually I had to use a syringe , but he is a pretty laidback cat

HK has chronic constipation and he's been on miralax for a while now.  we get it into him twice a day by adding 1/8tsp to about 1/4tsp of water, letting it melt, stirring and then adding it to some gravy from a gravy lovers cat food or the juice from a fancy feast grilled flavor.  HK thinks the gravy is a real treat and can't wait most of the time to lick it all up.  we have to rotate flavors so he doesn't get bored.

there is some lactic acid in yogurt, and cats are lactose intolerant, so could that be what causes the cats to go?  might they get extra gas from the yogurt, as well?

I didn't notice extra gas. He basically made a bowel movement hours later witout the gas...but every cat is different.

For about a month I used miralax, started out wit 1/8 and slowly increased to 1 to 1 1/2 tsp...his body got adapted to it and it stopped working. I constantly have to try something new with his constipation issue