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I’ve been having a problem with one of my cats and am at a loss as to what to do with her. Winnie was a stray we adopted about a year ago when she was around 4 months old. She was super friendly so I suspect she had previous owners who threw her out because of the issue we have had with her. You see, she has chronic diarrhea. We assumed once she settled in it would stop, but it never really did. Mostly it hasn’t been a problem and she has always been happy and otherwise healthy. When we took her to the vet they said she had worms, but no other issues were found. Initially we kept the litter box in the main bathroom and Winnie would sometimes poop on the floor even though the litter box was right there, full of clean litter. Several months ago we moved the litter box to the master half-bathroom where it was easier to clean out. We try to keep the main bathroom door shut so she won’t be tempted to relieve herself in there and the poop accidents had stopped for a long time. About two weeks ago Winnie started pooping puddles around the house. Under the sofa, behind the recliner and tv cabinet, in my closet, in the dining room and even in a basket of clean clothes. Last week she even peed in a freshly laundered basket of clothes and two nights ago she peed on our bed with my boyfriend lying right there! When cleaning up the puddles I’ve noticed that it doesn’t really smell like cat poop, but more like cat food. She seems to be drinking a lot of water recently, but has no other obvious symptoms of illness. She has always had a healthy appetite and that hasn’t changed. She isn’t spayed and NEVER goes outside. She was in heat till around a week ago. We Do plan on getting her fixed, but we’ve not been able to afford it yet, not even at the Humane Society clinic.
I’ve considered that she may need a special food that is gentler on her stomach, but we can’t afford any of those expensive brands. Besides that, we have two other cats who I wouldn’t be able to prevent eating it as well. Both the other cats are healthy and have never had toilet issues. I realize that when you have diarrhea it can be hard to get to the potty in time, but she doesn’t seem to even try. Like last night when she jumped into the basket of clothes and pooped in it, right in front of me. She does sometimes still use the litter box, but mostly not.
I have no intention of throwing her outside, but I can’t afford to take her to the vet where I am sure they would want to run blood tests and stuff on her to see if she has a food allergy or something. I am at my wits end, cleaning up puddles of poop multiple times a day. Does anybody have any advice or maybe personal experience with a pet having similar issues? Any help would be so greatly appreciated!
Well unfortunatly I’m no expert on feline digestive systems-but I feel it’s safe to say that ‘you get out what you put in’. If she is not eating the best food (getting the best intake), her out take will not be so good either. She probably does need special food. If there is a food that upsets your stomach, imagine someone feeding you only that food and nothing else-that’s probably how she feels. ANY of the cat foods in the groccery store are all terrible junk food. Like giving your kid candy, pizza and ice cream every meal every day. No good at all. They are all fillers-horns, feet, feathers and corn with little nutrients. Really, I would try a different brand-personally I feed my cats Blue Buffalo mixed with Science Diet indoors (even Science Diet isn’t the best in my opinion but my cats love it and they are not over weight). Small bags of Science Diet are around $8-$10 at PetCo and PetsMart. The good thing about both of those places is that if your cat doesn’t like it, you can take the un used portion back to the store for a full refund. You could try asking the store manager if they have samples of different food and explain to him/her that your cat is having digestive issues. That way you can try 2-3 different kinds. Just be sure that if Winnie likes the food, that you switch her food gradually over a week or two. Switching to a new food cold turkey will make just about any cat sick. If you want to know how to read the label, I’d be glad to talk about that too-but in short, you want the first ingrediant to be another animal (duck,chicken,lamb, beef etc) and in the first few ingrediants, there needs to be vegetables and some fruits-rice is okay, but brown rice only. Cats eat like us and need a balanced diet-mostly meat with some vegetables, a little fruit tossed in is okay (blueberries for antioxidents kind of thing) and a little rice (filler/carbohydrates) is okay.
I know you are in Texas also-I’d be willing to send you some of either brands I buy (or a mixture) for your cat to try out. I buy the giant bags ($75 total but it feeds 3 cats for 3 months so at $8.33/month isn’t bad) so I can spare some.
I had a similar problem with a cat before. He also had projectile vomiting because when he ate, he ate like we were going to take it away. We were told by the vets he was just very high strung basically. What we did was give him boiled white rice, (not sure if there is any problems with white rice vs. brown rice, but my vet had me use just plain white minute rice) boiled hamburger, and a little bit of cottage cheese all mixed together. It was about a half/half mix of the hamburger and rice and about a teaspoon of the cottage cheese. It worked pretty good to be honest, the cat loved it, but he was much later in his years. It was inexpensive to make and you can refrigerate it so you only have to make it every few days. Seems weird for such a young cat to be having these issues. Honestly, there may be an underlying health problem.
The problem is if the other cats are fine and they eat it, they may end up a little constipated. It wont HURT them, but if they aren’t use to it, it will probably bind them up.
Another odd thing, is usually with cats pee or poop out of the box either they are having a health issue or they are being territorial. If it’s health, well then she needs to see a vet to get a diagnosis. If it’s a territory thing, try getting multiple cat boxes and see if that helps. You should have one box per cat in the household. I have one box for every two cats in mine just because the thought of having to clean 6 cat boxes makes me dizzy! LOL! If she has more options, maybe she wont stress and use the bathroom all over the place and won’t be stressed out. Even just stress can cause stomach upset like that. I had one cat that would poop and pee right in front of the box, (almost felt like it was to spite me) but once we got more boxes, she stopped. So you can try that too and it wouldn’t cause any disruption to your other cats.
I have to get Hills C/D for my cats now because I have the same issue with not being able to separate them for feeding. I have 6 cats so it’s a real hassle. I have one that tends to get urinary blockages, so now they are all on Hills C/D. It’s really expensive but they love it and no more emergency vet visits. If you try a diet change though, you have to sort of ease them into it or she will probably not respond well. Starting and stopping cold turkey can really screw up their tummy.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsThank you guys for the advice! I do have an extra litter box I can put out and will do that as soon as I go buy more kitty litter. We live in a small two bedroom apartment and so we’ve only been using one box. Wolfen, I didn’t know those pet stores offered a refund on dis-liked pet food so I will definitely have to look into that! I have looked at different cat foods at Walmart and Target and considered buying a small bag to see if it would improve her diarrhea, but I realized that I would have no way to keep the other two cats from eating it as well and I just couldn’t afford to feed all three of them the “good stuff”. I guess that makes me seem like a bad person, but really, that’s just being honest. If it comes down to feeding my family or buying really expensive cat food…well, what would you do? We love our animals and try to do our best by them. All three of our cats were strays that we took in and they are all happy and certainly living a better life then the one we took them from. The other two cats are both spayed and as soon as we are able we will be getting Winnie spayed as well. They all have their rabies shot and have had a vet check-up as well. Anyway, I will try y’alls suggestions and see if things improve! 🙂
I don’t know if you have it in your area, but we have something called the “Spay Waggin” that comes to our local Petco once a month and they to discount spay and neuters for cats only. It’s only $75 for each cat whether its a male or a female and it includes free rabies and distemper shots.
Ours is run out of Boston, but a lot of Petcos have similar programs.
We didn’t need anything special to qualify, it was just a sign up sheet in the store and you drop your pet off in the morning at their mobile vet clinic and pick them up at the end of the day before the bus leaves for the day.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry DragonsCan you meal feed your cats? That would make matters much less complicated. If you need to separate them that is an option… cat A gets fed in the bedroom, cat B in the kitchen, cat C in the bathroom.. where you can close the door for 5 minutes or so and let them each apart from each other.
We meal feed once right before we go to work, then again once when we get home.I will say that the food I feed is expensive, but she eats LESS of it, and her poo is small, compact, and has no odor (was very surprised by the last one). In the long run I am actually probably saving money in vet bills, but I also completely understand being broke! Feeding three cats is more expensive than one, understandably.
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My art: featherdust.comyou should check around for local deals for spaying/neutering. One of our local vets does alot of feral spays/neuters and offers coupons for a $25 spay for each feral and farm cat brought in. That’s how I got Harriat fixed. And as gross as it sounds, you should look in her dung for any small whitish shapes. She could have tapeworms. Cat’s can get all kinds of sickness from eating a flea, and even if your cat is indoor and not scratching, they can still pick one up and ingest it occasionally. I guess that is how Harriat got her’s and she is an all indoor cat.
Also be careful to watch any chemicals or strange objects that a cat might eat. It doesn’t matter what it is, if harriat doesn’t know what it is, or it smells like food and can fit in her mouth, she’ll eat it. She has eaten sequence, glitter, oatmeal, cereal, and even tried to eat my homemade dishwasher detergent cubes. So keep an eye to make she isn’t getting into things she shouldn’t. Cat’s are smart and mine even loves to explore, sleep and build nests in my cabinets.
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Always open for pyo commissions, repairs and fine artwork! Email me for current prices! awier(@)weaselsoneasels.comOur local Humane Society has a vet clinic and will spay her for $65 I think, but you have to pay up front to get on the waiting list. They only do discount spay/neuter one day a week. With the firs cat we had a two week wait and the second cat was over a month. There is also an additional $10 fee if the cat is in heat on the day of the surgery. I believe it was roundworms that she had last time I took her to the vet. She clawed me all up when I tried to give it to her and spit what little I got into her all over the place. Since then I have learned the best way to medicate her. When we took in another stray and her litter of kittens a few months ago she had the same worms and was prescribed the same medicine, Strongid. I still had some left and I just finished dosing Winnie last night. It hasn’t made a difference so far, but we shall see. She’s had loose stools since her first day here over a year ago so I don’t see how it could be anything she got into. She is a beautiful long haired tortioseshell with a super sweet personality so I think she was previously owned, but they threw her out because of her diarrhea and “accidents”.
What brand do you feed yours Jennifer?
I feed Primal or Stella And Chewy’s freeze dried food for 50% of her diet, raw meat for 30% and the last 20% I use Taste of the Wild when it’s impractical to do wet/raw food (such as when we go out of town). I don’t care for Blue Buffalo– they used to be a great smaller company, but got too big for their britches so to speak and their quality went down. If you want a dry kibble, and for the same price, try Taste of the Wild. I know Tractor Supply Co. has it, but most chains don’t (Walmart/Target don’t).
There are arguably better dry kibbles out there, but they are crazy expensive, which I know is an issue for you!If, at a minimum, you can get a Grain Free feed, you can eliminate the majority of the things that make cats sick in commercial cat foods.
It might take her a few weeks to adjust to it, though! Gradually introduce it. She may get sick from the change at first, do not be discouraged by this.
If a higher quality, grain-free food does not help, I’m afraid that only a vet can assist at that point. 🙁Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comThis could be any number of problems, from a food allergy to IBS. Doing a food switch like what’s been suggested already is probably the cheapest/easiest way to start looking for a solution, as well as getting her treated for worms.
Next time she sees the vet, make sure you mention that she’s been having these problems, and it’s fine to also discuss your financial limitations with testing. The vet may be able to suggest some places to start that don’t cost as much as jumping into diagnostics with both feet.
I have had similar issues at times with my cats. Some of my lessons learned after years of struggling and research are:
**Talk to you vet about the cost concerns and payment options! My vet offers payment plans for one, two, they offer a type of PetCare payment plan that’s a bit like a short-term loan where you charge it to your pre-approved account and then have like 6 months to pay off the big vet bills at no interest, then a small interest applies after that, three, they offer a type of Pet insurance too that helps split up costs especially with multiple animals, and four, they do a certain amount of pro bono or greatly reduced charged services every year for foster cats and people that are taking in strays like you did.**
1. You should try to have litter boxes at a 2:1 ratio – so I know its crazy difficult, but with three cats ideally you’d want 6-7 litter boxes, which clearly isn’t possible in a small place (I’m in the same boat with my two and a small apt. so I understand this one), but having at least 2, or 3 boxes if you can manage it, and then keeping them VERY VERY clean will really help, especially if she is marking outside the box as a territorial thing at having to share 1 box with 2 other cats (and she is the new kitty trying to set her place), or just is REALLY picky about wanting clean litter. Mine tend to rotate between their two boxes; and then I have one that doesn’t care and isn’t a fussy box user, and one that is super picky about having a clean and UNcovered box – if the box was covered, not clean, or just ‘smelled’ in general because I was over due for a complete change of litter and full cleaning she too used to defecate just outside or ‘on the edge’ of the box a lot.
2. Do not use covered litter boxes or scented litter. The best litter is fine textured, unscented, or preferably one that clumps well for quick and easy cleaning – I find they really do like the clay and some of the finer, pine and cedar mix litters by far the best over the silica, pellets, and litters that don’t clump or barely clump. Make sure of course to completely change out all the litter and thoroughly clean the box as frequently as you can manage it too – that encourages them to use the boxes and it helps keep worms, parasites, or other illness from spreading between the cats.
3. Inappropriate urination can be a bladder infection too – I’ve had that trouble a lot with one of mine and its more common it seems in unfixed females and females fixed later in life. The test for that was pretty inexpensive as I recall…but the antibiotics can be a major pain and get spendier…
4. There are lots of websites that can help if its behavioral (peeing on the bed and clothes could just be her trying to mark you as hers as unpleasant as you find it) and your vet should easily be able to recommend a few websites you can look at, books you can check out at a library, and things you can try including simple solutions like feliway that help calm cats and reduce stress, making sure the food and water is located well away from the litterboxes (can be really hard in a small place I know), try to offer them multiple food and water dishes to reduce competition and over-eating which can lead to vomiting, etc.; I’d look at a few of the websites and free books (library) and consider if anything they have to say seems probable – cats can get stressed easily sometimes over very small changes…
5. I know Iams and Purina One are both common and fairly affordable dry foods that my vet and a number of breeders I know recommend for those on a budget. And, they aren’t always easy to find and can be expensive, but cat food (I think it mostly comes as a wet food) with rabbit meat and some of the duck meat foods [I’ve seen Petco carry both] (or even dry kibble designed for sensitive systems) are gentler meats on their tummys and can really help. Some cats are just really senstive to a brand or type of food – mine love most kinds of Royal Canin food, but the one time I tried them on the general adult feed RC carries, they both got awful, messy, smelly diarrhea that they never got with the other RC types I tried. I know folks that do like Blue Buffalo, but it is notorious among the breeders in my state for causing diarrhea so bad they’ve lost kittens to it; so if you try some of the ‘natural’ brand foods or a raw food diet like Jennifer does, they can work really great, you just have to be really careful about the ingredients (cats are true obligate carnivores, not omnivores like us or dogs so you do not want a food with excess grains and vegetables) and nutrition to make sure they get the right proteins and of course, tuarin supplements.
6. If you feed seperately and at set meal times (vs. leaving food out all day for all 3) as Jennifer recommends, you can reserve the spendier or sensitive food for just her too if you need to and that should also allow you to start timing how long it takes after eating to an ‘accident’ (and if it really smells like food, maybe verify it really is diarrhea vs. vomit?); also normally a mix of wet and dry is really good for cats since they are so prone to kidney and bladder infections from dehydration.
The sudden increase in drinking and the increasingly bad bathroom issues really point more towards a medical issue like a kidney or bladder infection or even a nutrition imbalance than behavioral (heart issues can cause it too, but that is an awful awful thing if it is so I certainly pray it isn’t her heart), but making some of the behavioral changes will help all your cats (and will encourage her to proper litter box behavior after the medical issues is treated if it turns out that way – too long not using a box can create a behavioral issue even if it starts out medical, especially if the cat was not a stellar box user to begin with) and it is amazing how bad the wrong food can hurt a cat that is sensitive to it…have you tried maybe locking her in a room by herself for a few days to a week with her own dedicated food, water, and litterbox, and playing with her just one on one without the other cats? If you could try something like that and she still isn’t using the box, then it seems more likely its medical than behavioral, and that setup would allow you to test her on different foods without worries about the other cats (your vet should easily be able to provide you with samples of food too that they can give you to try her on so don’t be afraid to ask!)…
Was she treated for worms? If she still has an intestinal parasite or worms that haven’t been treated, that could do it so de-worming is a good thing. A natural thing that helps kills parasites as well is papaya seeds. If you buy a fresh papaya, just take out all the seeds and grind them or crush them and either mix a little bit into canned food or try and spoon feed it. I have done that with my cat who was getting sick and it helped.
If it is the food, I would also recommend trying a grain free food or something with organic or holistic ingredients and not by products or corn. One dry food from Wal Mart that we get sometimes that is better quality but isn’t too expensive is Actrium and our cats love it. We also buy a dry food at Superstore that has chicken meal as the first ingredient, no by products, and veggies and all kinds of good stuff and it’s called Nutrition First. I am not sure if they have those stores in the U.S. though. Has she eaten anything with dairy or drank milk? Cow’s milk can be really hard on cat’s stomachs so avoid that if you can.
Spaying would definitely help her with hormonal issues which can trigger this behavior but by the sounds of it it could be stress too. Has anything been moved around or changed in your house recently? Sometimes cats can react badly to either new things moved in the house or furniture or holiday decor or things changed around or people visiting or just something out of the ordinary. Also, if they don’t like a noise or smell from someone or something maybe you brought in for Christmas they can react like that too. Our cats have gotten used to us moving and bringing things in and out and people coming and going except our one cat who still runs and hides if she hears anyone come to the door but it can take time.
Another thing is, what kind of cat litter are you using? If you use a scented litter, it can be a very strong smell to a cat which can make them avoid using the litter. We only use unscented litter. Also clay litter can be hard on cats lungs so if you suspect she doesn’t like the litter, either try unscented or a different kind. We have used regular, clumping, corn litter, etc. but there are other kinds too. Clumping tends to be not as dusty which our cats like better. So it could be a variety of things but hopefully some of these suggestions from all these responses help.
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You might try Purina snsitive systems cat food. I know there are better “quality” foods avalable, but I had a cat who had all sorts of stomach issues, and my old vet, who hated Purina products, even recomeded it. Apparently Purina’s senistive formulas are some of the best foods avalable for these types of issues. She did do well on it.
If it was stomach ulcers, I would recommed Felidae, Canidae for dogs. My Shion had stomach ulcers most of his life. I read a testimonial saying the food had cleared up ulcers in another persn’s dog, so I thought what the heck, it can’t hurt. But the hest part was it did work. Shion’s ulcers healed up and he never had any trouble with them again.
The Felidae is a bit expensive, but I recommend the meal feeding Jen recommened. A freind of mine 4 cats, 2 of whom are a different special diets. She locks each kitty in a different room, gives them breakfast and dinner. I think she gives them 10-15 min to eat then picks up the food. It was a hard adjustment at first, but everyone is doing really well now.
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Sun Dragon Koi #3We use Tidy Cat clumping litter. It doesn’t have a strong odor and we’ve been using it for a long time. There hasn’t been anything moved or changed in our home to stress her out. She loves sleeping under our Christmas tree so obviously she isn’t upset by it. It’s a fake tree so she hasn’t ingested any pine needles or anything. I appreciate everyone’s advice and stories. We’ve had Winnie for just over a year and she has ALWAYS had loose stools so I don’t see how stress could be an issue. She’s always been happy and loving and mostly used the litter box. It’s only been in the past couple weeks that she’s been pooping behind and under furniture and in baskets of clothes. I wormed her with Strongid which is 5 days and wait 2 weeks and do it again. She finished the first round two days ago. In the past she has occassionaly had what appeared to be blood in her stool, but when I took her to the vet earlier this year all they found was roundworms. Last night I went to Petco and bought a small bag of Blue Buffalo limited ingredient for sensitive stomachs. The first ingredient is deboned turkey and it has no corn, wheat, soy, dairy or eggs. Hopefully she will respond well to the new food. 🙂
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