Success Story of Cat with Long Term IBD

Hello, everyone!

I just wanted to share the story of our cat Buckles in hopes it might help someone else.

Buckles is almost 9 years old and has had IBD his whole life. He had chronic diarrhea, nausea, and bloating. The stools were completely liquid, often tan, and frequently contained blood. He was miserable. He was seen by many different vets, several times a year. They switched him to a couple different types of IBD cat food over the course of his life, probiotics, antibiotics, medications, etc. We tried everything. The vets tried everything. Eventually we had a vet who suggested that we try to switch him to raw food. We tried a few different brands, but Buckles wouldn't eat any of it.

Eventually the vet prescribed a relatively high-dose of Prednisilone, which would be permanent, and meant to be used in conjunction with an IBD cat food by Royal Canin. We started him on this, and he now had semi-okay stools, but still had diarrhea about 70% of the time. The doctor thought that this might be "as good as we get" with Buckles.

A few months into the treatment, Buckles started having really strange muscle spasms. They were worrisome. We called the vet, who told us that it was a side effect of the steroids, and we should being the process to wean him off of them. We asked what his treatment plan would be afterward, and he said it was likely to be a combination of permanent antibiotics, weekly B12 shots at the vet, and another medication to keep him from being nauseous from the other medications.

This sounded pretty horrible to us, so we decided to give raw food one last shot. We weaned him off the Prednisilone with help from the vet, and went to the pet store where we stumbled upon Stella & Chewy's Chick Chick Chicken raw food. They have it in both packaged, frozen raw and freeze dried. Buckles actually would eat it and loved it! We slowly transitioned him over a period of several weeks. We liked the idea of Stella & Chewy's since it was made for us (we are both very busy and did not have time to commit to making our own raw food, and we were worried we'd do it incorrectly) and we could buy it locally. It's pricey, but significantly less than his vet bills, medication, and IBD cat food!

Within the first day of him being completely, 100% transitioned over, he has been symptom free ever since. He is not on any medication, and his stomach became noticeably softer and less distended. He has had completely normal cat stools ever since, to the point where we can't tell the difference between his and his brother's in the litter box. He isn't nauseous and has a ton of energy. We are overjoyed! It has been months since there have been any problems with Buckles... the longest it's been in his entire kitty life.

I just wanted to share my IBD cat story in hopes that it might give someone else hope! We were worried about Buckles his whole life and now we finally don't have to. I hope his story can help someone else's cat. Obviously, consult your veterinarian before doing anything.

Thanks!

Thank you very much for sharing your story.  IBD is such a heartbreaking disease that it is always a joy to hear a success story.  We have a lot of members and guests who are undoubtedly reading your post with great interest.   Here's wishing Buckles many more symptom-free years! 

Just fantastic !  Continued best wishes to Buckles.

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Congratulations Buckles!

Yay, Buckles!

Congrats! That's amazing!

So happy to read your success story.  In fact, we started using Stella & Chewy's freeze dried raw awhile back to supplement our cat.  He took to it immediately, within minutes, maybe seconds, he ate it all up. I've also tried Primal and he likes that brand too.  

Congrats on your success story with Buckles.   

Thank you for sharing. One of mine has this also. As someone who's had a lot of side effects from Prednisone myself, I hate the idea of giving it to my pets. I always like a more natural approach.

After reading this thread I'm encouraged to give raw packaged food a try. @carolyn625 which type does Buckles (cute name!) like best? The raw or freeze dried? I like how you just add cool water and mix the freeze dried type. That makes for light packages. @Neely how is your kitty doing now?

Hi Ginny!

So at first he ate the raw after it dethawed and was super happy about it. Then we made the mistake of trying to go on a vacation. The cats have a pet sitter come twice a day since Buckles is allergic to D (his brother)'s food, and D refuses to eat Buckles food in typical cat fashion. But, the cats get anxious between the times of day that she arrives, and then they scarf down their food and throw it up everywhere. So in an effort to make them slightly more comfortable between her arrival times, we put out a little bit of the freeze dried raw without water mixed in. Soon, Buckles stopped eating the dethawed raw altogether, and now he won't eat anything at all except the freeze dried without water. Yes, I realize this is not how he's supposed to be eating it... but... there's not much I can do, haha. Cats! Can't live with them, can't live without them. It did stop them from throwing up everywhere though.

Does he just like chicken only or are there lots of other flavors?  My kitty Honey has been throwing up lately and not eating.  She just had X-rays yesterday which showed a thickening of the small intestines.  She got a shot of cerenia, sub-q fluids, prednisolone 5mg and was like a new kitty.  She ate supper last night but afterwards I saw her leaning her chin over the water bowl like she didn't want to sit down or that her tummy was sore.  Poor baby!  Tonight she was just as bad as last night.  I did get her to eat some Fancy Feast tuna.  I'm really hoping Chewy's makes tuna flavor, which seems to be what Honey loves.  I"m so tired none of this is making sense so I'll just have to do some searches tomorrow on different raw foods available.  Raw food or freeze dried food might be the cure for Honey, but not if she won't eat it.  

Yep, there are a ton of other flavors! There is chicken, goose, turkey, salmon and chicken, salmon and cod, and rabbit. Buckles is super picky too - he REALLY loves tuna. It took a couple of weeks to wean him off his regular food that was making him sick. We weaned him over by slowly mixing in the Stella and Chewy's. If you switch over too fast, it can make them a lot more sick. I'm so sorry to hear about Honey! I would call the vet - maybe she is having a reaction to one of the shots they gave her.