Feline diarrhea. A condition that is nothing short of a nightmare for many of us who pet cats. Cat litter is gross enough as it is; diarrhea complicates things in an even more disgusting manner. The fecal material moves at a pace that beats you every time. Your efforts to make sure that your cat reaches the litter box are rendered futile every time. You are getting frustrated while your cat is getting sicker with each hour passing. What do you do? Folks, it would help if you made every effort that you can to stop turning this diarrhea condition into a chronic one. Treat it before this becomes a long-term issue that can make your and your pet’s life hell. If you don’t have a clue about feline diarrhea, then you seriously need to follow what you tell in this discussion about this abnormal condition and what you can do to treat it.
Don’t ignore diarrhea.
Again, we must reiterate the fact that you shouldn’t take cat diarrhea lightly. This is a condition that can turn very nasty if it takes a chronic course. We understand that if your cat isn’t feeling too unwell, you might not worry as much as you ought to. By this, we mean feline diarrhea in which your cat isn’t vomiting violently or abstaining from food. However, in our opinion, you shouldn’t take things casually, even in this case. This, however, is the milder version of things. In case you feel like things are getting out of your hand, you immediately need to get your act together and start looking for a way to stop chronic diarrhea in cats. Your response should be a swift one if your cat is:
- Either a kitten or an aged species. In the latter case, the animal might already be suffering from a health issue.
- Vomiting violently without being able to eat anything.
- Experiencing a state of diarrhea that is explosive.
- Experiencing diarrhea that leads to bloody fecal material.
Why did your cat get it?
At this point in the discussion, you must be wondering about the probable causes of feline diarrhea and how did your cat get it in the first place. Well, the most frequent cause of feline diarrhea is, of course, a viral infection. But that is not the only cause; rather, there are bacterial and parasitic infections at work. Your cat can get diarrhea also if it is allergic to something. Hence, it is always wise to review the contents of your cat’s meal. We have already mentioned that your cat might be suffering from an underlying health problem. Diarrhea can be a triggered, secondary result of that health problem. And finally, one cannot rule out an imbalanced endocrine system.
Diarrhea treatment options in cats
In the following lines, we will discuss some of the options that you can try to treat feline diarrhea. Please note that these options must be used once you have determined that you can tackle the sickness at home. Once that is ascertained, you can proceed and see if any of these steps help with your cat’s problems. For the sake of convenience, we have discussed all these points separately.
1- Review your cat’s food
There are two approaches that you can consider in this regard. One might be a food item in your cat’s diet that the animal is probably allergic to. If such is the case, you need to identify that item and remove it from your cat’s diet. Often, it is a vegetable or treat of some sort that can mess up your kitten’s digestive system. You can easily track the tricky item and discard it from the feline diet so that your adorable pet doesn’t have to experience diarrhea again.
The other angle to this debate is that your cat is suffering from diarrhea, and you have no idea about the diet that is most suitable in a situation like that. This is more complicated as compared to the approach that we discussed earlier. We can tell you that you will have to try and test a lot of things before your cat finally settles for something appeasing. Be prepared for some extra effort! We can save you some time here. The first thing that you need to do is offer your pet some hypoallergenic food. These are not available at departmental stores; you will have to visit a vet to get some of this stuff. If the diarrhea was because of an allergy, that would be easily solved through such a diet.
2- Make your pet’s diet less fibrous
If your furball is suffering from diarrhea and things are getting a little desperate, here is something that you can try. Go for less fiber in your diet! What you need to understand here is that fiber and digestibility are two terms that are inversely proportional to each other. Minimizing fiber content is a trick that works well for cats suffering from a chronic case of diarrhea. Most of the fiber-less diets are available with the tag for stomach sensitivity. You can easily find this type of cat food at a vet’s. In some cases, fiber supplementation has proven to be effective as well, which is quite weird. However, the general idea is to go for less fiber in the diet than in normal quantities.
3- Don’t let them dehydrate!
We mentioned this earlier, but we feel like reiterating this fact. If your pet is a senior citizen in the feline world, diarrhea will hit the furball even worse. This is because aged cats are unable to withstand the adverse effect of diarrhea, i.e., dehydration. Hence, you must pay special attention to your cat’s water needs. The water bowl must not be empty at any cost for a dehydrating cat. Vets recommend increasing the protein intake, so we dare say adding a shot of chicken broth won’t be a bad idea. However, this is something that you must talk about to your vet before you experiment with it. Needless to say, but we have to say that the water must be fresh and clean. Now your cat might not react kindly to this excessive water intake, so here is what you can do. For the time your pet is ill, shift the diet to the canned stuff. This way, you can supplement the animal with the lost water, make sure that the water you are using is warm enough.
4- Have you thought about probiotics?
Gut flora is one of the most interesting aspects of microbiology, and we would be surprised if you haven’t thought about this aspect of diarrhea yet. Often, and this is true for humans too, the gut flora is disturbed. You must know that bacteria reside inside our gut that are extremely important for our normal digestive functions. The same goes for cats as well. In case something goes wrong down there in the gut, your cat can experience diarrhea, never mind acute or chronic debate here.
So as you can see, a probiotic dose can improve things. The critical thing to consider in this regard is that you shouldn’t pick up probiotics used by humans. Rather, search for feline stuff!
5- Medication
Kaolin-pectin medications are the most famous way of treating cat diarrhea. But this is something that we are not going to talk about a lot here. As we explain in the upcoming section, playing the vet is the last thing that you should be doing when your adorable little pet is suffering from a distressful thing, such as diarrhea. Please keep in mind that you can medicate your cat only when nothing works, and things are getting too hot for you to handle. Otherwise, get the vet!
The wisest thing to do?
We have mentioned a few of the most effective treatments for cat diarrhea, but we still think you should get your vet on board as soon as possible. You might have noticed that most of the treatments that we have mentioned are strategies that you can adopt for the prevention of chronic diarrhea in cats. More importantly, as far as the medication goes, you must not play the vet at once. Don’t self-medicate your cat unless and until you are one hundred percent sure about the consequences of your actions. These, in our opinion, are the wisest things you can do to stop chronic diarrhea in your cat.
Conclusion
Well, that would be all for now. We wish we could go on, but then we would be suggesting stuff that we don’t feel you should try without anyone’s supervision. Animal care is an extremely delicate subject, and we would hate it if you messed up things by doing more harm than good. Nevertheless, we are confident that you have learned enough through this article to tackle feline diarrhea on your own. On this optimistic note, we bid you farewell and wish a speedy recovery for your cat if he or she is suffering from chronic diarrhea.