anyone here with an IBD cat?

my 18 1/2 yr old girl has IBD and CRF (renal failure)

she is eating an enormous amount of food!!

the vet said that iBD makes it hard for them to absorb the nutrients from food, that is why she is eating so much

i worry though, at her age, that maybe she is senile and is eating because she can't remember that she just ate like, an hour ago....

her wt fluctuates about 6 to 9 oz, either way. she will start to go down, and just when i am getting worried
her wt comes back up again.

she is about a 9 lb cat (most of her life she was over 11lbs)

she eats as many as THREE tuna fish size cans of GOOD QUALITY cat food, per day

(right now she is eating Sensible choice because its good for her CRF, also she eats Natural Life lamaderm and others)

i am afraid she will explode, but of course she never does.

then i worry that IBD is perhaps only part of the reason for the over eating, i wonder if she has a cancer somewhere, and she is eating to keep up with it-

when my parent's cancers metastisized, they both were not able to maintain their wt, no matter how much they ate.

so i worry that she has had a cancer all this time, and now it has metastisized and it will get harder for her to maintain her wt..


a year ago a vet told me she had lymphoma, but was not able to tell me how he came to that conclusion.
he wanted to do an ultrasound, not to diagnose her, but to tell me how much longer she had to live

something seemed odd about it all, so i took her to anohter vet, who said there was no reason to think she had a lymphoma, other than the fact that they are common in older cats

so, now i wonder, who was right?

if i just knew of one other cat who ate as much as she does, who has IBD i would not worry so much

anyone know anyone, even???

Has she been checked for hyperthyroid?? when was the last blood work...

do you have access to a feline specialist??

I have a 17.5 yr old with crf , i found she slowed her eating when I moved her to canned only then to raw ... I will note she doesnt have anything wrong other than the crf..

..and I have never heard of over eating as a symptom of IBD I always thought it to be the opposite ie loss of appetite and low energy.

To me this sound more likely hyperthyroid. Has she been tested? If not might be a very good idea.

Plenty of huggs to your baby

i have an IBD girl, who although she doesnt overeat does eat more than my others. and we are having trouble getting weight on her. Of course she is our little project. Good luck with your girl. Def. go to the vet!

I have an IBD cat....are you treating it with anything? You can try a probiotic like acidophilus, 1 billion cells per day split in 2 meals, which will help tremendously, but not solve the problem. Your vet should prescribe something like flagyl and maybe even a steroid shot. My IBD cat doesn't really overeat, but he gets hungry a little faster than the other. Tis could also be because he refuses to eat dry, so can't tide himself over.

Also, you mentioned tuna? Fish is a big enemy of IBD. As are Chicken, turkey, beef, wheat, soy and anything else that goes into traditional foods. You could either do a prescription diet, a limited ingredient wet diet, such as Cal Natural Venison, Evanger's Pheasant, or Eagle Pack Duck and Oatmeal, or you could go grain-free raw.

As for the cancer, have them run a CBC and do chest X-Rays and you should have your answer.

I'm not sure if my cat has IBD or just a food intolerance but I have to feed him a "hypoallergenic" diet. Right now I'm feeding him a potato and duck recipe by Medi-Cal. Its a Canadian prescription diet offered by vet clinics. I'm trying him out on Nature's Balance venison and pea right now as well. I probably will give him one meal of wet venison and pea in the morning and a dry meal of the Rx stuff at night. The Rx stuff has pro-biotics etc that seems to help his gut. Also I found that I have to feed him two meals 12 hours apart. Its almost like he needs that amount of time for his gut to rest. If I feed him any other food or give him more meals he gets diarrhea. He is young and doesn't have any other medical problems like your kitty has but I hope this info helps a little bit.

I had an IBD kitty for about 4 years until she succumbed to her illness- adopted her when she was 12. She had already been through a lot in her life; she had one eye, enough said.

My main advice is make sure you have several brands of food your cat can eat and tolerate, and continue alternating them. My cat got accustomed to Waltham wet food. At a certain point Waltham changed their food entirely. When we could no longer get her food, she stopped eating almost completely, including the food we made for her. What little she did eat, she had horrible diarrhea.

I think someone else posted about this, how their IBD kitty only eats X wet and X dry food. In our cat's case, as the illness progressed, she became more fixed to everything and was much less tolerant to upsets of routine, and and anything different. For example if we stayed out late or went away and had a sitter visit our home, our cat, if stressed, would get into the cycle of stress, diarrhea, causing more stress, etc. And she would stop using the litter box.

If your cat is like this one, I would say vary the routine enough so that moderate change does not unhinge your kitty. And definitely use a couple brands of food. Good luck.

We also have a kitty with IBD. He was eating Iams dry for years, without any problems. Then all heck broke loose! So our vet tried him on Eukanuba Low Residue dry. It worked for a few months, until his body decided no-no. He is currently eating a prescription diet, green peas and rabbit, or green peas and duck, dry and wet. He loves it, and he is thriving!

But we have another kitty with hyperthyroid. I would have yours checked for that also!!!

Good luck.

I am sorry to hear your girl now has an additional health issue. I have had kitties with ibd (most recently Patrick my crf/hyperthyroidism kitty also had either this or lymphoma..we treated him as if it were ibd, and he went on to have another year and a half of life after a prognosis of 2-3 months).

In my kitties, the symptoms of IBD were loose stools, vomitting, losing weight. In one case, food allergies were related, in Patrick that was not the case, and he did not need to be restricted as to which proteins he ate. I'm not sure there is a one size fits all dietary approach for ibd.

To be honest, I'd get your kitty checked for Hyperthyroidism. It is certanly not uncommon in a kitty this age, and we diagnosed it with Patrick by two things: 1) night howling which stopped once medication for hypert was begun and 2) though normal, then high normal, his thyroid levels were TOO high for a cat his age (the ranges given as normal are for an adult cat, imo). We tracked the change, it was persistently up, that was enough for us to diagnose him with hypert and begin medication, the course of treatment I began.

The one issue with a kitty with both crf and hypert is that once you treat the hypert, the crf may worsen. It requires careful dosing for the hypert.

Wish you all the best,