Kitten Diarrhea

Hello! My six-month-old kitten went into his litter box tonight, and I heard a strange noise. Kind of like a stomach gurgling. I picked him up and he had diarrhea near his butt hole. I looked in the litter box and saw a puddle of diarrhea. Basically, light yellowish brown (like his normal poop), but in a puddle.

He's eating, drinking and playing normally.

Earlier tonight, I did change his wet food. We keep dry food out 24/7 (Wellness kitten pellets) and then we feed him a variety of Blue Buffalo kitten wet food in the morning and evening. I ran out of wet food and didn't have time to run to Petco. So I picked up a can of Fancy Feast in grocery store. It was one of their fancy kinds with gravy in the plastic cartons.

Do you think it was the abrupt change in food?

Yes indeed!

Most definitely.

The fancy feast ones in gravy have some garbage fillers and fake stuff, that is not nice slices of meat in there, that's why many will lick the gravy and not eat the phony meat chunks,, fancy feast is okay as long as it says classics, which are the grain free pate type.

In the future, any type of diet change should always be a gradual transition, you sent his system in to full throttle with the new food

Another woman in a different post asked almost the same thing. I posted this to help her out.

"Originally Posted by LisNGriffin  
 

Hi there! I am not sure how much help I can be, but I adopted a kitten (3mo) in November. And I had the same problem! The smell was horrible, and all I could say was his poop looked like a steamy pile of cow dung. Lol..

It was going on for about a week, and I decided to take him to the vet. 

They said it was most likely the food change (literally within one day from adoption my food was different than what he was getting)

So they gave me 4 cans of wet food, (Hills Veterinarian Wet food) and pills ("TYLOSIN TARTRATE 50MG") With instructions: Give one teaspoon of wet food every hour or 2 for 4 days. And as for the pills, Give 1/2 (half) tablet every 12 hours for 7 days.

It cleared him right up and his poops are great now! No more horrible smell and all is solid! Also, he is on Hills Veterinarian special kitten food (hard)

Hope this helps. And good luck!   "

DEFINITELY the change of food..especially fancy feast. Yuck! Hope he feels better. 

Thanks, all! I plan to go get him his regular food this afternoon.

Hopefully it gets his tummy back on track. I fed him the fancy feast last night around 7 p.m., and his tummy is still growling and I think he had diarrhea again this morning.

I feel so bad. Never again.

FF gravy ones are the worst, they're loaded with wheat gluten which can and does trigger diarrhea. If you need to pick up quick grocery store food buy the FF classic pate only. 

Thanks, all!

Two more quick questions:

1.) Would it be normal for him to still have diarrhea from the cat food? I think he ate it Thursday night. He's still eating, drinking and playing normally. At what point should I get worried?

2.) We keep dry food out for him 24/7 at the recommendation of the vet. We also feed him half a can of wet food in the morning and at night. We got him a giant supply of his wet food. Should we be giving it to him? Or, should we wait for his diarrhea to clear up? When we put it out, he eats it.