Adult cat switched to raw food, does not poop

[franskvinna]

Hi everybody!

Four months ago we adopted from a divorce situation the loveliest Siberian cat. Kastor is 7 1/2 years old and was eating free fed, good quality dry and Latz fish foods in sauce (wouldn't have any other flavor). He regurgitated his food once in a while at the beginning, then more and more often, combined with less appetite, even though we ended up feeding him a teaspoon's worth of food at a time. The vet squeezed his belly, concluded the vomiting was caused by constipation, gave him an enema, sold us some fiber dry food, and sent us on our way. Poor kitty had projectile vomiting while in the carriage, but no pooping and we still had to wait a few days more and give him paraffine oil so that he would go.
After reading on these forums among other sites about raw feeding, we decided to include raw meat his diet to improve it (might have been already when we visited the vet). We were always still mixing the raw meat with Latz wet fish food so he'd eat it.
A couple of weeks ago maybe, while reading up the feeding guide of the frozen raw meat products we served him, I realized that I was serving him only ground meat and bone cubes, which had way more bone than required >_

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

It's possible there is too much calcium in this new raw diet,and in that case you can increase the amount of pure meat a little bit, but I would think you would be witnessing a little bit of straining if he were truly constipated

  Naturally, raw fed cats do poop a WHOLE LOT less than cats fed dry food, and less than cats fed wet food too.  But normally they still poop once every couple of days, minimum. 

I recall one raw fed cat who had a problem digesting bone.  They ended up taking an xray and found his entire digestive tract was full of those bones!  Sorry, I don't remember if he ended up having troubles pooping or not...think his issue may have been vomiting.  Anyway, they resolved it be stopping feeding bones and instead fed him a different form of calcium...eggshells, I think. 

 

[sophie1]

First question I'd have is:  could he be pooping somewhere other than the litter box?  Raw food poops don't smell, so maybe worth a careful look around the house including under furniture & beds.

Otherwise, it could indeed be that the food has too much bone for him.  They're usually in the 10-15% range but some cats do better on less.  If you can't find an alternative commercial raw food (Rad Cat would be great), try cutting the bone content with meals of plain meat and liver.  Buy boneless meat e.g. chicken thigh or breast meat and chicken liver, mix in a 90% meat 10% liver ratio, cut up into small pieces or put through a food processor, and freeze meal sized portions.  Feed meals of this alternating with your usual raw meals.  Don't worry about supplementing, just try it for a few days.

If that's not it, and your vet doesn't think there's anything else to be concerned about, then maybe he's just an outlier who truly doesn't need to poop that often.  Cheers!  However, he should still pee twice a day.  Do you have a water bowl or fountain and is it maintained (e.g. change water in bowl daily)?  and located favorably?  I discovered that one of my cats wouldn't drink from the bowl until I moved it across the room from the food dish.  You could also try adding a bit of water to his food.  Good hydration might help, also.

 

[franskvinna]

Thank you for your answers! Took me a while to get back to the computer. The day after I posted we got another bag of the Fiber Response dry food, and he went within the hour after eating some. We had given paraffin oil also, so hard to tell which one did the trick. We gave again Fiber Response today in the morning and this evening, and he went again an hour ago for another nine inch long log of poop in two days 

I guess for now we'll just continue with his normal raw food regimen and give the Fiber Response if he doesn't go after three days or so. But we'll look into your suggestions also.

When it comes to the calcium, this is what came to my mind at first as well, since we had been giving for a few weeks about four times more than the recommended amount of bone, which was a 4g daily. But the bone is ground with the meat in the raw food we feed him, so no big pieces to digest, and we had already gone back to the normal dosage of 4g a day average a week or so before the latest episode of constipation. Perhaps it takes a while after returning to normal levels to change the situation in the guts... Also, his poop is not grey-white even though he's fed raw, but still dark brown. I've read that it's good to add egg yolk to the food once in a while, we could just use all of it and add the ground shells whenever we serve the yolk

We give on average per day something like 120 grams of food of which 4 grams of bones, so... closer to 3% bone, which wouldn't really be much? In comparison the meat+bone raw frozen cubes we gave with the Latz food earlier had 30% bone mass (4.3% calcium). We're living in Finland, so no Rad Cat around (except for Kastor, he's a rad cat ) but the local frozen brand seems to be of really good quality.

I really don't know what kind of magic ingredient is included in the Fiber Response, it's nearly infuriating how fast it works when we otherwise feed the cat high quality food, which he also enjoys better and thrives on! Oh well, let's see... Thanks again for the advice!

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Adding egg yolks once or twice  week is a good idea, but don't add in raw egg whites when you do that.  And don't add in any egg shells to any meat that already has the bone ground into it.  That would just be adding MORE calcium.  What I would do if he continues to have issues is what Sophie1 suggested, and that is to simply give him a meal of PLAIN meat once in awhile.  When I say plain, I mean absolutely no bone in it....maybe a cut up chicken breast or thigh, or something similar. 

I haven't fed raw for awhile now (long story), but when I was doing it, I don't recall their stools being grayish white.  I think they were still brown, sometimes light, sometimes dark, depending on what protein I was feeding.  One of mine really liked beef, so his were darker, as I recall. 

Also, a 9 in stool? Yikes! 

  I'd say he was backed up for sure.  Strange he wasn't really showing signs of constipation, but I'm just glad he was able to get it out 

 

[franskvinna]

I know, right? And no straining at all, ever 

 he's usually frantically landscaping in his litter box for a whole few minutes once he's decided to go, and it happens every time he does that, so we would notice. I think he might just very stubbornly dislike pooping, so he keeps it in until he really has to go... 

Also, looking at the texture, on the first day perhaps a couple inches worth of it was from five days' worth of raw meat, and the rest from just a couple servings of the fiber response... If he really utilizes that much of the raw food, though, wouldn't he be bound to be always constipated, because the amount of waste would be so small that it would take ages for enough "pressure" to build? Could probiotics or anything else simply accelerate his transit?

He's only ever getting a 30% bone mass cube of 20g of meat every other day, so he does have bone free meat every other day (where liver replaces the bone-meat). The liver is beef but everything else is chicken. Any idea how much eggshell to add? How finely should it be ground?

 

[sophie1]

 
He's only ever getting a 30% bone mass cube of 20g of meat every other day, so he does have bone free meat every other day (where liver replaces the bone-meat). The liver is beef but everything else is chicken. Any idea how much eggshell to add? How finely should it be ground?

If you are giving bone, don't add eggshells!  Eggshells are used to provide calcium in diets that don't include bone.

In order to figure out how much bone that 30% cube is contributing....how many grams per day total does he get?  And is the bone meal 20g that is 30% bone (i.e. 6g bone), or did I not parse that sentence correctly.

Have you tried chicken instead of beef liver?  I have no idea why beef liver would be causing the constipation, but it's just worth a try.

 

[franskvinna]

Thanks Sophie, I do understand both add calcium

And yes, you understood that sentence correctly.

The local raw food brand carries only beef and perhaps also pig liver, but they do have a chicken internal organ mix, so I'll check this out.

Kastor has now been eating raw in the morning and fiber dry food in the evening, and has visited his litter box with astounding regularity. We're returning to 2 days raw / one day fiber dry food, let's see what happens... He's nearly overnight developed skin bumps though, so I'll head over to the health section to inquire about this. Thanks for your replies