At my wits end with my little food terrorists

[Meowmee]

I don’t know what to do at this point. Merlin and Xena are getting runs on and off… Mostly on now. I have run out of what seems to be the only dry food they can eat and Merlin will eat some of the freeze dried raw food and chicken but Zena will not eat anything but the dry food and he constantly screeches at me if he doesn’t get it.

They have been eating Dr. Elsy’s grain free high-protein. But we always seem to run out of it a few days before the next delivery. And in the past they would eat some canned tuna weruva, and some of the raw freeze dried as well as some chicken that I cooked- just a few chicken drumsticks.
But now Zena won’t eat anything except dry food of any kind. Sometimes I give them a frozen raw food too and none of them will eat it they just leave it in the dish for hours. And then I put it outside or give to Fred and cinnamon. So I’m assuming that means they’re not really that hungry because otherwise they would eat it. Sometimes they have eaten it and I assume then they were really hungry. I have three different kinds I give them Furrys, Nulo and instinct frozen. I don’t understand why sometimes they eat it and sometimes they won’t… there was one flavor of instinct which I can’t find anymore which they did all eat.
It’s like they’re terrorizing me all the time, and they con me into giving them exactly what they want, lol.

I’m now not able to cook the home cooked food that I was doing for so long and I don’t know when I will be able to again. I had started adding some dry because it was getting too hard for me to do so often, and now I have a spinal fracture and I can’t do it at all.
That was what cured Merlin, and Zena of their runs when they came inside. When they first came inside they were eating meow mix or Kirkland and they seemed to be OK on that but then the diarrhea started right away for Merlin and not long after for Zena as I recall. Anyway after a few months of treating C. difficile in Merlin and then giardia in Zena, and then switching them to the home cooked that Quinn ate they were cured finally and had normal poop.

Quinn is the only one who seems OK now he seems to pretty much be able to eat anything. The only problem is sometimes he vomits- at first I thought it was the freeze dried raw but there are some days he eats it and he doesn’t vomit, other days he does. However today he ate some of the cooked chicken and the raw and he was gobbling it down so fast and vomited and I’m sure it’s because he just ate too fast etc. the. He ate some more later and he was fine.

Anyway I finally caved in to Zena and I let him in to Fred and cinnamon‘s room where he is eating some meow mix. I’m just worried that if I don’t give him some dry food he’s going to refuse the other food and get sick from not eating. But now he will get even worse runs.

I have never had cats like this before in my entire life, two with diarrhea, three big fuss pots. Quinn had diarrhea when he was a kitten but I cured of that too. They just can’t seem to eat anything usual. My cats in the past ate Kirkland dry food, little tidbits and Friskies canned food and they were all OK with it- no diarrhea no vomiting except for Wizard who ended up having IBG and lymphoma no fuss pots. But he always had a bad tum and changing his diet to raw uncooked etc. specialize foods none of that helped at all.

Sybil was a little bit of a fuss pot because at the end we had to give her a few different varieties until she would eat something, and she was kind of always like that but never like these guys, nothing major.

Please do not suggest to do home made raw etc. I can’t do that or anything that’s going to be too much work right now it’s physically impossible. I’m just not sure what to do. I’m wondering if there is some dry food out there that they can tolerate that won’t give them diarrhea because this is just starting to drive me insane.

it seems like my whole day revolves around worrying about feeding them and everybody’s various bowel or stomach problems lol. Top of that it seems now that cinnamon also gets soft stool here and there after I thought he had perfect poop. Fred is the only one who has perfect poop and pee. I did stool tests and they are all negative.

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi
What about Halo, or Forza10? I see chewy is carrying their kibble now.

 

[Kflowers]

I'm not sure if this will work, but apart from your regular order (which sounds like it's an auto-order, which is good), order whatever the smallest bag of the food that Zena will eat. That should give you a few days extra to cover the time between your auto-deliveries with something he will eat. And getting one extra bag shouldn't interfere with the auto-deliveries.

Theatrically, this extra bit will carry through month to month, with each new bag starting a couple of days later than the day it arrived. I will say, you might actually want to get a regular sized bag extra and just go with that. I tried this with treats and the count got off, so more extra is better.

And, this thought just occurred to me. With the way things have been coming and going and disappearing off the shelves for a month at time, you might want to have a couple of extra bags on hand just in case.

Unless I misunderstood the situation, which is also possible.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

I agree with K Kflowers , and store the extra in the fridge or freezer so it doesn't go bad. That should solve the issue with Zena, since it seems he knows what he wants and won't change.

As far as the diarrhea goes, can you pin that on anything food wise? Perhaps when you do have to give them something else, like the Meow Mix the others eat? Or any other food? Maybe even treats? If so, then having the extra bag of their regular food should fix the problem. If not, how about giving them a probiotic? Advita is a good one that you can add to dry food and is supposedly pretty tasty so they might lick it up even from the bottom of the bowl. I personally think it's a better probiotic than FortiFlora, but you could use that instead if you wanted. Better than nothing.

 

[Meowmee]

Hi
What about Halo, or Forza10? I see chewy is carrying their kibble now.

I tried Halo which was very expensive and it caused even worse runs due to soy I think. The diarrhea came back when I started introducing the dry food and I’ve tried a few different brands the one that is the least offensive is Dr. Elsy’s, however they still get diarrhea.
Forza 10 I haven’t tried, I haven’t heard of that before I will look into that.
But they can’t eat anything that has soy beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils etc. Dr. Elsey is the only one I could find that doesn’t have any of those ingredients and which is also grain free.

I just feel now it was a big mistake to re-introduce dry into their diet because that’s what caused all of this, and now Zena refuses to eat anything but dry food.

 

[Meowmee]

I'm not sure if this will work, but apart from your regular order (which sounds like it's an auto-order, which is good), order whatever the smallest bag of the food that Zena will eat. That should give you a few days extra to cover the time between your auto-deliveries with something he will eat. And getting one extra bag shouldn't interfere with the auto-deliveries.

Theatrically, this extra bit will carry through month to month, with each new bag starting a couple of days later than the day it arrived. I will say, you might actually want to get a regular sized bag extra and just go with that. I tried this with treats and the count got off, so more extra is better.

And, this thought just occurred to me. With the way things have been coming and going and disappearing off the shelves for a month at time, you might want to have a couple of extra bags on hand just in case.

plus I should’ve put this in the beginning of my post but this is a very important port point they started to get diarrhea when they introduced dry food back into their diet. And even with Dr. Elsies they are still getting diarrhea. I have never pinpointed it down completely to any one thing so I don’t really know what’s causing it but it did start again with the dry food. I’m hesitant to start spending even more money that I shouldn’t on the food that still giving them diarrhea I’m just not sure what to do at this point because I’m so exhausted I don’t wanna keep buying 50 million different brands and then get diarrhea from all of them. Least if I buy them on Amazon or somewhere like a chain pet store I can usually return it in a certain time or get a refund.

Unless I misunderstood the situation, which is also possible.

I don’t know if there was a smaller bag of Doctor E. Plus it costs a fortune. I really cannot do that if I were to buy two large bags of that a month and everything else that I’m buying now. The thing that started them with diarrhea again was giving them dry food and they still get it with Dr. E.

For a while I thought it was better on that but then they just went back to runs again. At one point after I did a negative stool test on Xena, only did one on him because they all share litter boxes, and he had bad runs etc. Dvm refused to treat because I can’t bring them in the right now, he just recommended to give them psyllium husk in their food.

So against my better judgment I bought some at Whole Foods that is gluten-free because I know they have probable grain sensitivities and I put it in their wet tuna food religiously feel like two weeks. There was one day when Zenas poop got harder and I thought it was working.. But Merlin’s poop got worse, and then Xena just went back to loose diarrhea again so I returned it.

I had already figured out from what happened with them when they came inside that they seem to have grain sensitivities although I can’t be 100% sure which is why I tried the grain free dry food when I introduced that in again.

I wish there was another dry food that didn’t have the peas and lentils etc. that is grain free that doesn’t cost so much. It seems like the prices of dry food have just skyrocketed unbelievably I mean I could never imagine paying $37 for a 6 pound bag of dry food, even a specialized one, in the past.

I used to feed sybil Orijen dry which she loved- she did not have a problem with the peas and all of those type of ingredients and it was grain free. I don’t remember what that cost now but I bought a large bag of it locally usually. And it lasted quite a while. But it was only for her. I think maybe wizard ate a little bit of it here, and there. Now it costs like $70 a bag. I don’t remember how many pounds it is now.

I have never worked it out completely, but it seems like it’s cheaper to do the home cooked even with buying the chicken, the chicken livers and the supplements. The problem is I can’t physically do that now. I don’t know how I’m gonna go back to doing that because I have to be very careful and it’s just too exhausting.

I really just wish they could eat some thing like Kirkland and be fine. In the past with my other kitties I could switch their food at the drop of a hat and they had no digestive issues over that. Maybe on e every 4 yrasr someone had diarrher for one day and it went away on its own.
The only thing that ever made wizard worse was giving him raw, that made him vomit immediately and once I gave him Stella freeze dried raw and he vomited immediately from that too.

I read that a woman fed her cat only chicken livers and honeydew melon for his entire life and he lives into his 20s. I don’t think she had any special supplements or anything that she gave him. Another woman I met in person told me her cat ate Friskies dry for her entire life, and lived till 22. When she was young she had a series of vaccinations and had an anaphylactic reaction so she never went to the Dvm after that either.

I don’t understand why all my cats get all these horrible diseases, and I’m trying to do my best to give them healthier food. It seems to make no difference really.

 

[Meowmee]

I agree with K Kflowers , and store the extra in the fridge or freezer so it doesn't go bad. That should solve the issue with Zena, since it seems he knows what he wants and won't change.

As far as the diarrhea goes, can you pin that on anything food wise? Perhaps when you do have to give them something else, like the Meow Mix the others eat? Or any other food? Maybe even treats? If so, then having the extra bag of their regular food should fix the problem. If not, how about giving them a probiotic? Advita is a good one that you can add to dry food and is supposedly pretty tasty so they might lick it up even from the bottom of the bowl. I personally think it's a better probiotic than FortiFlora, but you could use that instead if you wanted. Better than nothing.

Thanks. I went through all of this when Merlin and Xena came in and they both had very bad diarrhea. They got tested for everything they got treated for everything I removed the dry food and put them on the home cooked and that was the only thing that seem to help. So I’ve never really been able to pin it down to anything for sure. But I assumed they probably have grain sensitivities maybe which was in what they were eating when they were outside and when they first came inside,

however they both had a cause of diarrhea too…being C. difficile and Giardia. Marilyn was treated for T Foetus also although his test did not show that he had that.

All I can say for now is that it seems like the diarrhea came back when I added dry food back into their diet. I don’t know what it is in the food that’s causing it. Dr. Elsies they still get diarrhea but it’s not as bad as with the other foods I tried. For a while I also thought it could be some of the raw freeze dried food that made it worse but I’m not really sure to be honest.

When they had their first bouts with diarrhea I tried lots of probiotic and supplements with Merlin and they made him a lot worse so I don’t use any probiotics or supplements anymore. In fact I had to bring him to the emergency DVM because he got all swollen and bloated from the sachamoryces B and other probiotics. Which cost hundreds. I had some Forti flora leftover which I tried with Zena, and it had no positive effect on him whatsoever.

I don’t know what to do anymore I even tried psyllium husk which was gluten-free because the DVM would not give them a course of antibiotics to see if it helped. Because I can’t get them there right now. It seemed to help Zena for like one day his stool got harder, and then he just went right back to diarrhea, so, I returned it. Merlin it actually made him worse.

I’m so sick of this- it’s just taking up my entire psyche all of the time worrying about all of this. I honestly wish they could just all eat Kirkland dry or meow mix, and I didn’t have to worry about any of this stuff anymore. It would be a lot cheaper too. It’s like I have no life anymore between this and everything else I have to do.

 

[Kflowers]

I didn't mean that you would buy an extra bag every month. No, don't need to do that. Just the one time the one bag, which would give you the carry over amount for the days between when you usually get the food and each month there would be those days of food left over to carry to the next month when you got the regular bag. It works to infinity without only the one bag of extra food.

 

[Meowmee]

I think I did that and then maybe I didn’t get the next AutoShip delivery I don’t remember now, but it didn’t work. I guess I could try it but I still have to face the fact that they’re still getting diarrhea with this food also although maybe not as bad as with the other ones. A 6 pound bag of food does not seem to be enough for two cats for a month even when they’re getting other food too which is crazy, and I think I pay about $35 for it on Amazon on AutoShip so I get a slight discount- it’s just an insane price for a 6 pound bag of food.
I looked up the other food furball‘s mom mentioned and it’s even more expensive the one made in Italy. I’m so hesitant to keep spending more and more money on all these expensive foods and my cats are still getting diarrhea from them even though they’re supposed to be designed for sensitive stomachs etc. but since I can’t go back to making the home cooked I’m not sure what else I can do with this point.

I would like to know if anyone has ever found a dry food out there like this that doesn’t cost a fortune, that cured their cat diarrhea issues who had similar issues to my guys.

 

[Furballsmom]

the DVM would not give them a course of antibiotics to see if it helped. Because I can’t get them there right now.

I'm sorry if I asked this already, but you don't have the option of a home-visit vet?

There's a little bit of information in this thread including the last post;
Cat Food Similar To Dr. Elsey's Cleanprotein Chicken Formula Dry Food But Cheaper

Also, have you tried Tiki Cat Born Carnivore? It was mentioned on another site as an alternative to Dr E.

And there's this, I sorted by Low to high price, and grain free but you can do a different sorting;
https://www.chewy.com/b/dry-food-388

 

[Meowmee]

I'm sorry if I asked this already, but you don't have the option of a home-visit vet?

There's a little bit of information in this thread including the last post;
Cat Food Similar To Dr. Elsey's Cleanprotein Chicken Formula Dry Food But Cheaper

Also, have you tried Tiki Cat Born Carnivore? It was mentioned on another site as an alternative to Dr E.

And there's this, I sorted by Low to high price, and grain free but you can do a different sorting;
https://www.chewy.com/b/dry-food-388

I have been thinking about that but it will be even more outrageously expensive than my usual and I am not sure if it is even possible because my cats are scared of strangers. I will look at these links.. thanks

 

[Kflowers]

No, you're right the extra bag wouldn't work if something interfered with the auto-shipment of the regular amount.

The only thing shifting food wise I can think of is to start at Chewy.com where you can read the ingredients of each type of food and look through the dry foods to see if there is one you like the ingredients for and the price. First page I opened has 18 lb bags for $24, but and this is a serious BUT they are Purina. Just scan through the cat food on Chewy -- they have 23 pages of dry food --and see if you do better there than on Amazon.

Best Dry Cat Food: Top Brands, Low Prices (Free Shipping) | Chewy

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

The only thing I can think of regarding the diarrhea is that possibly it's the switch up of foods causing it? Especially if they get their little paws on some Meow Mix every once in awhile. AND, depending on whether or not you are feeding different Dr. Elsey's, (there are different flavors), perhaps one of the proteins is causing issues ? Or perhaps a different protein might be better? I know they have Salmon, Chicken, rabbit, duck and Turkey to choose from.

 

[Meowmee]

No, you're right the extra bag wouldn't work if something interfered with the auto-shipment of the regular amount.

The only thing shifting food wise I can think of is to start at Chewy.com where you can read the ingredients of each type of food and look through the dry foods to see if there is one you like the ingredients for and the price. First page I opened has 18 lb bags for $24, but and this is a serious BUT they are Purina. Just scan through the cat food on Chewy -- they have 23 pages of dry food --and see if you do better there than on Amazon.

Best Dry Cat Food: Top Brands, Low Prices (Free Shipping) | Chewy

I can’t remember what happened with it now. Yeah I always read all of the ingredients no matter where I buy it. I usually get it on Amazon subscribe because it’s much easier to return some thing if they can’t eat it. Or just get a credit.
The thing is I can’t really pinpoint what it is that’s causing the diarrhea which is really frustrating. For now I’m just letting him eat meow mix. I haven’t seen him poop, he usually poops upstairs in Fred and cinnamon‘s room so I don’t know if it’s still liquid, but I did scoop one poop that looks like it was and then clumped in the litter downstairs. It could’ve been Merlin too.

Merlin is eating quite a bit of the freeze dried raw brands now whereas Zena still refuses to eat anything except meow mix.

I tried putting him in the downstairs bathroom to eat his meow mix yesterday but then I forgot that he was in there and he scratched off part of the molding which has been repaired before trying to get out of there, lol. Before I went to sleep earlier I just left him in the room with Fred and cinnamon, he doesn’t mind being left in there usually he just sleeps on the bed after he eats their food and he gets along with Fred. Quinn was delighted to have me all to himself but I missed my fluffy Zena cuddling up with me too.

anyway everybody’s eating a little bit of meow mix for now. It would be funny if their diarrhea was cured by meow mix LOL. I’m going out later and I’m wondering if I should just buy a bag of Kirkland if I can get somebody to help me put it in my cart.

 

[Kflowers]

We found that the higher protein food was actually less expensive than the economy food since took less of the expensive food for them to be satisfied. However, this is something that is very individual to your cats.
Note, it was also true of the dogs, though we did not have a Labrador at the time.

 

[Meowmee]

The only thing I can think of regarding the diarrhea is that possibly it's the switch up of foods causing it? Especially if they get their little paws on some Meow Mix every once in awhile. AND, depending on whether or not you are feeding different Dr. Elsey's, (there are different flavors), perhaps one of the proteins is causing issues ? Or perhaps a different protein might be better? I know they have Salmon, Chicken, rabbit, duck and Turkey to choose from.

I don’t know however it started before any switch up. They were all on home cooked plus some fussy cat canned grain free and were ok. When I introduced a small amount of dry food in Merlin and Zena developed runs.
I tried a few high-quality brands until I tried Dr. Elsy which was the only one that didn’t have peas and lentils and stuff like that. They seemed to get a little better on that however it just came back. At some point before my injury I had started giving them a little bit of freeze dried raw too here and there.
So it had started before all of that and they never ate any meow mix only very occasionally by accident, maybe one piece… that was after I had added some dry in and before I took in Fred and Cinn I believe…it’s only now that I’m actually giving it to them.

They haven’t had any diarrhea for maybe two days now so far, fingers crossed I don’t know what will happen though. I’m giving them the chicken formula, high-protein, grain free Elsy’s and it doesn’t have any of the ingredients that I thought were possibly causing the problem. The Furrys has chicken and rabbit and the Nulo has salmon and chicken. The home cooked food they have been eating is chicken and chicken livers and they had have been OK for along time on that so I’m sticking with mostly chicken or turkey however once they got to liking Furrys which is a more recent introduction they seem to really like the rabbit also.

They have been on elseys for a long time now.

 

[Kflowers]

Meowmee even if this is confusing and frustrating, never lose track of the fact that you're a good cat mom. With time everything will come back under control. For now stick with the Esley's, which is pretty high up on the list, for the dry. I really don't think there's much better if your cats are okay with chicken. We use Esley's for treats to help SG become accustomed to chicken. We only got so far with that and no further, but they are her treats. The feeding of cats is very difficult.

 

[kakers]

If you believe this is food sensitivities you're playing the long game here. It can take 6-8 weeks to see if there improvement from a diet switch and it sounds like there have been multiple foods tried in a relatively shirt period of time.

It could be a grain sensitivity it could be a protein allergy. Cats often become allergic to chicken or fish, unfortunately. We have one cat who appears to be sensitive to grains. Another is on a diet trial to see if it's a protein allergy for her. It's entirely possible your cats have completely separate sensitivities so different ingredients that happen to be in the same food.

Your best bet is to stick with one food and only one food (not even treats) for 6-8 weeks and see if it makes a difference. Ideally that would be something with none of the ingredients you're suspicious of. In 8 weeks if it hasn't helped, you may need to try 8 weeks of a limited ingredient option. If the limited ingredient diet doesn't help try out a novel protein. Unfortunately food sensitivies are extremely challenging with cats since there's so many ingredients that can cause issues and the process of elimination can take a very long time.

 

[Meowmee]

If you believe this is food sensitivities you're playing the long game here. It can take 6-8 weeks to see if there improvement from a diet switch and it sounds like there have been multiple foods tried in a relatively shirt period of time.

It could be a grain sensitivity it could be a protein allergy. Cats often become allergic to chicken or fish, unfortunately. We have one cat who appears to be sensitive to grains. Another is on a diet trial to see if it's a protein allergy for her. It's entirely possible your cats have completely separate sensitivities so different ingredients that happen to be in the same food.

Your best bet is to stick with one food and only one food (not even treats) for 6-8 weeks and see if it makes a difference. Ideally that would be something with none of the ingredients you're suspicious of. In 8 weeks if it hasn't helped, you may need to try 8 weeks of a limited ingredient option. If the limited ingredient diet doesn't help try out a novel protein. Unfortunately food sensitivies are extremely challenging with cats since there's so many ingredients that can cause issues and the process of elimination can take a very long time.

Unfortunately that will not work. I have five cats two in a separate room most of the time and the other three who are the ones were really having the issues. They will not eat only one food, so I would risk them going into hepatic failure if I tried to do that- that’s never going to happen in this house lol. They are unbelievably stubborn, and they absolutely will not eat anything they don’t want to eat..instead will starve, they just leave it sitting there in the d and try to harass me into giving them what they want.

And this has been going on for over a year they’re not relatively short switches or anything like that. They have been on dr elsy for the dry several months at least, and still have d, but not as bad as the other dry foods. First it seemed better but then it just came back.

Plus the cats that have diarrhea when they came in from outside both had long-term severe diarrhea which I had to treat, one for C. difficile, and one for giardia. I cured them by giving them the home cooked food which I can’t do now. Even if I could do it Zena will not eat anything but any type of dry food now.

They were fine on the home cooked and fussy cat canned, it was when I started adding in dry foods which has to be like a year ago now that the problem started.

Still even with all of that I don’t have a clue what is causing all of this for sure, I’ve done everything with limited ingredients, the most expensive possible high-quality dry food etc. and they still have diarrhea.

So far since I have been feeding them all a little bit of meow mix, so far anyway, and fingers crossed, nobody has had diarrhea yet but I’m waiting for it. It has only been 2-3 days.

There was one in one of the downstairs litter that looked like it was a soft poop though so maybe there was some already… they have not been pooping upstairs in the litter box in the other separate room where I can see and I can hear that it’s all liquid etc.

 

[kakers]

Except now you have one who will only eat dry food so the canned won't work anymore either. If it is a food sensitivity you have little option, you have to figure out what they are able to eat and that's ultimately only possible by limiting what they have access to or the cats will continue to have poo issues.

Zone feeding meals is a possibility. The only one food doesn't have to be the same one food for every cat as long as the food sensitive cats only have access to their one food. Our multiple cats with different dietary needs are fed their 3 meals a day separately, behind closed doors so nobody has access to food they can't have. It's inconvenient but necessary.

If you can get the one to go back to eating wet food great, but even then keep in mind sensitivities can develop over time and even what worked before may not work now or may work for one cat but not another.