Dry food intolerance?

[trexmurphy]

Hello!

Looking for advice for my 5 year old fuzzy orange kitty who has been dealing with diarrhea for the last week and chronic soft stools since we adopted him 2 years ago.

A bit of back story - In January, our orange guy was diagnosed via ultrasound with IBD triggered by suspected protein allergies, having dealt with chronic soft stools and ups and downs in behaviour/appetite since we adopted him in 2021. Based on this, he was prescribed prednisolone and Royal Canin hydrolyzed dry food to eat exclusively. This food resulted in projectile vomiting and diarrhea until it cleared his system. We then tried him on RC canned select protein (pea and duck) and that actually firmed up his stools decently, while taking reduced prednisolone every other day. We did however notice some upper GI symptoms (like wanting o regurgitate) on the RC pea and duck + still some on and off stools, so our vet suggested we try a novel protein and we opted for Rayne rabbit - the pate wasn't palatable but he ate the dry food equivalent. Similar to the RC hydrolyzed kibble, this led to another episode of completely liquid diarrhea until it cleared his system, including not making it to the litter box and pooping in the bathtub (at least a relative easy place to sanitize!).

For the last few months, we settled him back into RC pea and duck + pred + probiotics and he was doing alright, all things considered. A week ago, we tried to give him 10 kibbles of FirstMate duck and blueberries dry food (single protein) and that resulted in another saga of liquid poop multiple times a day, low appetite, this time lasting on and off for the last 6 days and has not yet resolved. Our vet recommended increasing his prednisolone dose temporarily to get past this incident. We of course feel terrible for putting our kitty through this, especially since he was doing alright prior the kibble experiment.

Long winded back story, but this latest incident led us to wonder if others have experienced a cat who just didn't tolerate any dry food but didn't have an evident protein allergy? We realized that all of the vet-guided testing we've tried so far have been kibble-based - hydrolyzed, rabbit. And now also this latest side track duck kibble incident. The only time we have given our cat exclusively canned food has been the RC pea and duck, and this has had the best result (though not perfect). We ran this dry food intolerance hypothesis by our vet and they said they had never heard of an intolerance to kibble before and are pretty confident our kitty reacts poorly to a protein. We're at a bit of a loss because we want to follow the vet's recommendation but are also curious to test out other canned foods that could have better results than the RC pea and duck. We also don't want to cause unnecessary suffering to our kitty. Looking for any similar experiences or advice! TIA!

 

[Alldara]

Dry food is harder to digest. The body must hydrate it first and then break it down. Perhaps his body is not ready for that at all.

Both my cats with allergies also had a hard time with peas and chickpeas. Rice and wheat ended up being the ones they could handle easily.

 

[trexmurphy]

Dry food is harder to digest. The body must hydrate it first and then break it down. Perhaps his body is not ready for that at all.

Both my cats with allergies also had a hard time with peas and chickpeas. Rice and wheat ended up being the ones they could handle easily.

Dry food is harder to digest. The body must hydrate it first and then break it down. Perhaps his body is not ready for that at all.

Both my cats with allergies also had a hard time with peas and chickpeas. Rice and wheat ended up being the ones they could handle easily.

Thank you for the reply! Glad you could find what works for your cats We've asked about other non-protein allergens and our vet has shrugged it off as being unlikely but I do think we should be looking into it.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi! The first three ingredients in the FirstMate dry food you fed him is duck meal, potato, and chicken fat. The RC pea and duck does not contain either potato or chicken fat. So, I would suspect one of those two ingredients could be your culprit. More than likely, it is the chicken fat. See if you can find another dry food without chicken of any kind in it.

 

[trexmurphy]

Hi! The first three ingredients in the FirstMate dry food you fed him is duck meal, potato, and chicken fat. The RC pea and duck does not contain either potato or chicken fat. So, I would suspect one of those two ingredients could be your culprit. More than likely, it is the chicken fat. See if you can find another dry food without chicken of any kind in it.

Thank you for the reply! This is a great suggestion - on the FirstMate website they make note that "The chicken fat used in FirstMate Pet Foods is processed free of protein, eliminating the risk of allergies derived from chicken." However, perhaps it is still a problem ingredient for our special orange guy and we will consider other options without any chicken ingredients at all.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Don't forget the potato as another possible problem. You might take a closer look at the ingredients in both products and see if something else stands out.

 

[Alldara]

Thank you for the reply! This is a great suggestion - on the FirstMate website they make note that "The chicken fat used in FirstMate Pet Foods is processed free of protein, eliminating the risk of allergies derived from chicken." However, perhaps it is still a problem ingredient for our special orange guy and we will consider other options without any chicken ingredients at all.

Purina says the same thing about their beef fat. Magnus still reacts to the beef fat.

 

[daftcat75]

IBD is more than a little misunderstood by vets. True protein allergies are rather rare. What happens is that inappropriate ingredients, usually the carby/starchy fillers and not the proteins themselves create microbiome changes which in turn lead to inflammation in the gut. Inflammation in the gut causes changes in the gut lining permeability which allows larger food particles through into the bloodstream than there would be in a healthy gut lining. The immune system is sent in to clean up all this rowdy behavior. The trouble is, the immune system is only equipped to key in on protein sequences. In other words, the carbs blow off the doors and only the proteins are caught in the roundup. This creates a learned allergy and false blame. It's not really chicken that your cat is allergic to. It's the smaller pieces of partially digested chicken protein that your immune system is sick of seeing on the wrong side of the gut. The best way to handle that is to eliminate the carby/starchy hoodlums that keep busting open the gut doors (the inflammation/membrane permeability issue) and to switch proteins to one your cat's immune system doesn't already have an APB (all points bulletin in cop talk) out on.

Dry food and IBD are pretty much incompatible because there's too many pro-inflammatory ingredients in dry food and not enough truly limited ingredient and novel protein recipes (as you are finding out with the chicken fat.) Natural flavors, eggs, chicken liver, or poultry by-products may all be chicken under a different name. You're going to have a much easier time finding truly novel proteins and limited ingredient recipes that aren't just marketing with wet foods.

My two best recommendations for IBD kitties are Rawz singe protein pates (try the rabbit or rabbit with pumpkin) and Mouser. (Rawz is not a raw food. It just sounds like it.)

Incredible Pets sells both by the can. You can try a few flavors without committing to a case.
Search: 10 results found for "mouser" - Incredible Pets
Search: 51 results found for "rawz" - Incredible Pets

 

[trexmurphy]

Thank you for this great explanation, much appreciated! Is it possible that a cat's gut can tighten the 'doors' (with help from medication) after an extended period with no exposure to the pesky starches that may be causing the inflammation so that he might be able to tolerate a protein that his body once previously identified as a threat? Or does every new food from here on out need to be completely novel? Wondering if our previous failed testing of Rayne rabbit kibble means that it is no longer a truly novel protein.

And thank you for the food brand suggestions - we are going to look into these options once we get the current diarrhea episode under control.

 

[daftcat75]

Thank you for this great explanation, much appreciated! Is it possible that a cat's gut can tighten the 'doors' (with help from medication) after an extended period with no exposure to the pesky starches that may be causing the inflammation so that he might be able to tolerate a protein that his body once previously identified as a threat? Or does every new food from here on out need to be completely novel? Wondering if our previous failed testing of Rayne rabbit kibble means that it is no longer a truly novel protein.

And thank you for the food brand suggestions - we are going to look into these options once we get the current diarrhea episode under control.

Yes. If you limit the exposure to irritants (the carby/starchy ingredients and some gums) and you use a novel protein, and he will likely need some medication to control the inflammation, IBD is a manageable condition and can have remissions where you have figured out the right food and medicine to keep his gut healthy. Usually what happens is that he will likely start out on a fairly high dose of steroids to suppress the immune response and control the inflammation. It’s during this time that you are encouraged to look for new foods that agree with him. After some period of no butt or gut episodes, you can work with your vet (or hopefully an IM specialist) to slowly reduce the steroids looking for the minimum dose that keeps everything under control. If you chose a food that doesn’t irritate, it is quite possible that his gut will heal and you may be able to reduce to a very small dose of steroids or get him off completely.

Sacchromyces Boulardii is a yeast based probiotic that has some soothing qualities and is also a scavenger for some bad actors in the gut. Those microbiome changes can allow some bad actors to flourish. Those that attack the gut wall like E. coli will also attack the s.boulardii which has a similar structure to the gut wall. The yeast binds up the attacker and shows it the backdoor. S boulardii doesn’t colonize like bacteria probiotics. It has to be given twice a day to achieve a steady state. But it also clears out within a few days after stopping it. I like the Jarrow brand the best. I have a cat that doesn’t like the taste I repack those huge human sized Jarrow capsules into cat sized capsules. Many cats do like the taste and you can mix it into their food about a quarter capsule twice a day. Start slow and work up to it. Cut back if he gets constipated. If he doesn’t like the taste, there are a few cat brands that contain s boulardii. I just don’t know them offhand.

 

[lisahe]

Well stated daftcat75 ! Starchy hoodlums and thuggish thickeners are what cause our cats' problems, too.

FeebysOwner mentioned potato: that's been off the cats' menu for years because it made Edwina barf. Edwina's all about inflammation, though we've been feeding her a pretty low-carb diet for years. Tapioca's the last carby thing to go so no more Sheba (which had relatively low carbs), which she absolutely loved. More homemade food, though, is a big plus.

She does get very small quantities of Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein chicken food, which our other cat eats a lot of after deciding she's not happy eating much wet food. (Fortunately she's changing her mind back and going back to more wet food...) Dr. E's chicken dry food is very low in carbs, only 2.7% (or so?) dry matter carbs, better than many, many (many!) wet foods. She's been especially happy with Rawz and Nulo's chicken/duck mousse, which she really laps up.

Wondering if our previous failed testing of Rayne rabbit kibble means that it is no longer a truly novel protein.

trexmurphy, that food has potato so if your cat has issues with potato, the food wouldn't work for him.

 

[FeebysOwner]

I just feel that you start small in trying to resolve a possible food intolerance and work out from there. Taking too much on at once is a surefire way to disaster to knowing nothing in the end. The more changes you make at one time, the more it confuses the issue. One step at a time.

 

[lisahe]

I just feel that you start small in trying to resolve a possible food intolerance and work out from there. Taking too much on at once is a surefire way to disaster to knowing nothing in the end. The more changes you make at one time, the more it confuses the issue. One step at a time.

I couldn't agree more! My most solid results have come when I took things one at a time.

I confess, though, that I sometimes take out more than one thing at a time, which means there's uncertainty about what was causing the problem. I'm okay with that if the menu can get by without all those ingredients, though.

 

[daftcat75]

I just feel that you start small in trying to resolve a possible food intolerance and work out from there. Taking too much on at once is a surefire way to disaster to knowing nothing in the end. The more changes you make at one time, the more it confuses the issue. One step at a time.

For some cats, the diet change might be enough. For others, they need the steroids first because everything they try is ending in disaster. I agree that it’s easier to determine the effects of a change when there’s fewer changes to evaluate. But some cats need a team effort; a combination approach.

 

[Alldara]

For some cats, the diet change might be enough. For others, they need the steroids first because everything they try is ending in disaster. I agree that it’s easier to determine the effects of a change when there’s fewer changes to evaluate. But some cats need a team effort; a combination approach.

The food still should be addressed as protein first, and then other ingredients

I think that's what FeebysOwner means by starting small and one step at a time. Hopefully, correction will be made if I'm wrong about my interpretation!

Magnus was given steroids to start, and then we started with protein. Then we had to watch. We are still unsure if he also cannot have carrots or peas. But he hasn't had any issues with grains, starches or gums.