Mucus and blood in stool?

[sunnythecat]

Hi,
My cat is 1 year and 5 months, male and neutered. His diet about two months ago was (and still is) Wellness canned food, Solid Gold bisques and pates, Stella and Chewy's kibble, raw chicken and raw beef. I introduced a new food to his diet at the time, from a company called Smalls as I got a free trial from them. They advertise as raw food but their food is slightly cooked I believe. They sent chicken and beef pates which smelled like fried chicken and beef patties! At the introduction of the food, Sunny was eating a little at a time, very little at a time, so it shouldn't have caused a significant change, right? Since it was a gradual introduction?

Well, after just about one or two weeks of this introduction, I started to notice some blood (they were like smudges of red) on his poo and it looked slimy. I was confused by this but eventually decided to take the Smalls food out of his diet completely as I suspected it was what caused this illness. However, it continued for another week or two before I took him to ASPCA vet. They asked about his diet and I told them he sometimes eats raw food as well, which they told me to stop feeding because maybe he's not used to it, and we never know where it came from, etc. I know there's difference of opinion on whether or not raw food should be fed to cats, but at the end of the day, Sunny has been eating the same raw food for a while now, it's not new to him, never caused an issue before, plus we know where we get our meat from and thoroughly clean it to ensure it's clean. I told them it started after feeding Smalls. The vet sent him home with a GI infection diagnosis, and gave 10 doses of metronidazole to be taken 2 times per day for five days.

The thing with his poop is that the blood is not consistent. It's usually a small amount of blood and it occurs like once a week or two weeks, doesn't occur for every poop. So after the medicine was done, his poop seemed normal but then it came back. I ran out of kibble at some point so he was only eating wet food, during which the blood and mucus seemed to stop. When I started feeding kibble again it seemed to have returned again, so I thought maybe it's the kibble. I stopped giving the kibble but once again, no improvement. Usually his poop size and shape is okay, it's usually formed but sometimes the last piece will be a little bit more wet/small/unformed and sometimes it'll be a bit of diarrhea at the end for some reason, even if in the beginning it was normal.

All this started once I started feeding him Smalls, which was only fed to him for 1-2 weeks. And although it's probably been over a month since I stopped feeding him that, his issue is still continuing. He's playing, eating, and using the litter fine, everything else is normal. What can I do to treat this? The vet's medicine did not work, and although I did try to stop feeding him raw for a bit to listen to the vet's advice, I couldn't do it for long because he's so picky. I feed him occasional raw food to ensure he's eating at least something when he's being picky. Any advice, please? Whether on the raw food, his diet, his picky eating, and how to fix his poop issues? His mucus and blood should not be going on this long, and I'm confused what I may be doing wrong. Is there any at-home treatment for this?

Thank you.

 

[Maurey]

Has your kitty had a fecal analysis (for parasites) or ultrasound done (rule out/confirm inflammation, IBD) ? Both are important diagnostic tools, given the symptoms. To be honest, if your current vet hasn’t done this bare minimum before diagnosing an infection, I’d be looking for a second opinion, ideally from a different clinic to avoid colleague bias. Some vets just like to pin everything on raw food, and so don’t bother with diagnostic, because they’re convinced it has to be the raw, which is extremely poor practice.

Have you kept a food diary? Would be helpful to know if he has more or less issues depending on what he ate on any given day. Personally, unless you really need it for keeping costs down, I’d remove the kibble from his diet, as it provides no real benefit over wet or raw food.

As a side note — when you say raw chicken and beef, do you just feed the muscle meat, or is it somehow balanced? If it’s just raw meat, it shouldn’t be more than 10% of his caloric intake. Would be careful with “lightly cooked” raw food, if you want to go with balanced raw feeding as a primary diet in the long term. It’s generally more of a breeding ground for bacteria than completely raw food. The feline digestive tract can generally handle it, but it’s not safer compared to raw food, and I wouldn’t keep it in the fridge after defrosting for nearly as long as I do raw food.

 

[sunnythecat]

Nope, not that I know of, they never said anything about any tests done. I haven't kept a food diary, but thank you so much for the idea! I'd love to remove the kibble completely and am working on it, he's been eating so poorly since I've removed the kibble because he seems to love it and gets so picky. It's the one food that he won't refuse to eat.

When I say raw meat, it's just the muscle meat and is not balanced. It's given in small portions here and there. I need to balance it of course, so I'm doing research to learn about recipes and supplements. At the moment though I give the unbalanced raw food when he's being picky and doesn't want to eat the canned foods.

I didn't know that about the lightly cooked food! That could be why this issue happened. I've read other reviews from Smalls where people complained about their cats having an upset stomach, and it's really strange to me that their meat smelled like fried chicken and beef patties. Cat food should not smell like fast food. I just went through a bunch of raw cat food recipes and hope to try one soon and see how it goes. I've also read up on how it could be a fish allergy since a lot of pet food contains fish, and lots of cat owners apparently experience the mucus and blood with no other symptoms and no answers from the vet. All of my cat's canned food and kibble is all fish-based! So perhaps it could be a fish allergy, it's something I need to work on immediately since most of his food, other than the raw, is fish based. Thank you so much for the response!

 

[Maurey]

Would be a great idea to cut fish intake — fish is a poor choice of primary protein, even if a cat doesn’t have an intolerance or allergy. Here’s more info about it

Why Fish is Dangerous for Cats | Little Big Cat - Dr. Jean Hofve

The fish used in pet food may contain all kinds of toxins and drug residues, including persistent organic pollutants that actually stop the body from eliminating it and other toxins. Another common toxin, domoic acid, may be an unrecognized factor in chronic kidney disease.

littlebigcat.com

https://www.cathealth.com/cat-care/nutrition/2246-ethoxyquin-mercury-and-pcbs-is-feeding-fish-safe-for-cats

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Since you are just feeding muscle meat without organs or bones, you could try adding something like Alnutrin or EZ Complete to make the meat 100% nutritionally complete. That's what I did because I was worried I would miss something if I didn't do something like that. Here is EZ complete's website, just so you can see what I'm talking about: Food Fur Life - EZ Homemade raw food for pets!

Also, when you say you "clean" the meats you give him, what do you mean?

As far as giving him something natural to help with this, have you tried giving probiotics? (assuming it really isn't a health issue). Many people use S. Boulardi for diarrhea or soft stools, so that might help.