Lactulose- your experience

[Oliver813]

My 18 yr old 6lb male kitty has constipation/hard stool issues like I posted the other day. The vet prescribed lactulose today for him. They want me to give him 3ml 3x's a day- every 8 hours. I know she also mentioned I could do it 2x's a day but have to reread the dosage. He has not had any bloodwork so I do not know if he is diabetic or not. The last time at the vet she said that since he is 18 years old there was no need to run bloodwork because at his age if it shows his kidneys are not good there really isn't anything we can do. I fear he will get the diarrhea. He is one who goes poop where ever he gets the urge sometimes. Thank goodness he isn't like that with pea.

They also said I need to feed him Royal Canine Fiber Response dry food and Royal Canine Gastro intestinal moderate calorie wet food.
He can have nothing else.

I think she said I was to use the lactulose daily and not stop. I read that it is high in sugar so now I worry about diabetes.

 

[jefferd18]

I think she said I was to use the lactulose daily and not stop. I read that it is high in sugar so now I worry about diabetes.
[/QUOTE]

Have you voiced your concerns to his vet?
Small amounts of dairy products provided on a daily basis can help loosen a cat's stool. Since cats are lactose intolerant that makes perfect sense. To be honest, I would follow your vet's directions.

 

[stephanietx]

Does your kitty have a sensitive tummy? What are you feeding now? I'm wondering why the vet suggested ONLY those two foods.

I had a female cat who was on lactulose and it helps, but we also started adding plain canned pumpkin to her wet food and that helped as well. What really helped was putting her on a grain free canned food.

 

[kittyluv387]

I did lactulose for a little bit but moved into miralax indefinitely, for my constipated boy.

 

[molly92]

I used lactulose a little bit, but I found Miralax to be much more effective in the short term and probiotics to be effective in the long term. I don't think we had diarrhea issues with any of them, but this was a 6 year old cat.

If he's not drinking abnormally large amounts and he's not overweight, I wouldn't be that worried about diabetes personally.

I think constipation prone cats (and all cats really) should be on wet food only if they'll eat it, but many vets don't agree. I also don't love the extra fiber diets for constipation-prone cats long term because fiber bulks up the stool and I worry about colons getting stretched out too much and megacolon developing.

 

[kittyluv387]

I used lactulose a little bit, but I found Miralax to be much more effective in the short term and probiotics to be effective in the long term. I don't think we had diarrhea issues with any of them, but this was a 6 year old cat.

If he's not drinking abnormally large amounts and he's not overweight, I wouldn't be that worried about diabetes personally.

I think constipation prone cats (and all cats really) should be on wet food only if they'll eat it, but many vets don't agree. I also don't love the extra fiber diets for constipation-prone cats long term because fiber bulks up the stool and I worry about colons getting stretched out too much and megacolon developing.

I actually am starting to think dry food causes permanent enlargement to their colons even if they might not have megacolon. 2 out of our 3 cats we got as adults and they both have varying degrees of constipation even with non dry food. I'm sure in their past they ate a lot of dry food. My one cat I have had as a 5 month old kitten and I started feeding him non dry food pretty quickly after I got him and he doesn't have constipation.

 

[Oliver813]

So our old guy has been on the lactulose 3mls 2x's a day. Tonight I noticed he had very loose stool. Yesterday it was formed and this morning it was formed. Now it is a puddle.
The vet won't be in until Monday. I wasn't sure if I should cut down the amount of Lactulose to a lower dose. They told me only to feed him the Royal Canin wet cat food for gastro intestinal and the Royal Canin Fiber Response dry cat food.
Any suggestions?

 

[stephanietx]

I have a kitty who eats RC Gastro HE dry and Science Diet i/d wet. That pretty much keeps his bowels stable, though we do feed him a small serving of grain free food as well. I would think cutting back on the lactulose to once a day might be helpful. If he still has loose stool, cut down to half the dose.

 

[molly92]

So our old guy has been on the lactulose 3mls 2x's a day. Tonight I noticed he had very loose stool. Yesterday it was formed and this morning it was formed. Now it is a puddle.
The vet won't be in until Monday. I wasn't sure if I should cut down the amount of Lactulose to a lower dose. They told me only to feed him the Royal Canin wet cat food for gastro intestinal and the Royal Canin Fiber Response dry cat food.
Any suggestions?

I think you would be able to cut down on lactulose. It's similar to Miralax, and I know you can scale that up and down based on need. Obviously talk to your vet when you can for long term management, but in the meantime you can try doing 1.5 mls 2x's a day and see how that goes.

 

[teeveecat]

So our old guy has been on the lactulose 3mls 2x's a day. Tonight I noticed he had very loose stool. Yesterday it was formed and this morning it was formed. Now it is a puddle.
The vet won't be in until Monday. I wasn't sure if I should cut down the amount of Lactulose to a lower dose. They told me only to feed him the Royal Canin wet cat food for gastro intestinal and the Royal Canin Fiber Response dry cat food.
Any suggestions?

How's it going with the constipation. I also have a geriatric cat who gets constipated frequently. She has CKD and Miralax sometimes doesn't do the job so I switch to Lactulose. 3 ml's two times a day is a pretty large dosage for cats. My vet prescribed 2 ml's twice a day and that caused very loose stools for a day when it started working a few days later. Right now I'm trying 1.5 ml twice a day, I only use if for 4 days when she hasn't gone for extended periods of time and has been squeezing.

My other question is whether you and others here are using the unflavored or flavored version. My pharmacy gave me the flavored version which has an orange color.