Ask Me Help Desk - Cat ddiareha

Cat ddiareha

wwhat is the beat way to stop my kittys diareha. she had 4 kittens about 3 wekks ago and her poop is still real runnie. hoe can I stop this. my cats eat wet food twice a day and non of the others seem to have this problem

Have you tried dry cat food or at least the moist?
A constant diet of wet cat food is not good and can cause diarrhea

If your cat had been running in and out prior to having the kittens she could have contracted some type of parasites and may need de-worming.

You really need to take her to a vet. Having kittens is hard on a cats health and if you have not been feeding her kitten chow during the pregnancy and during the nursing phase she is probably really weak.
You need to start feeding the kittens moist kitten chow or even some moistened with wet kitten food. Most likely the cat is not going to make it if this stress on her body is not stopped.

Also whatever she has she can pass on to her kittens. Please consider getting her spayed our world is over run with cats and kittens in need of loving, responsible homes.

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Originally Posted by N0help4u

Have you tried dry cat food or at least the moist?
A constant diet of wet cat food is not good and can cause diarrhea

Which of course is why all the people I know who feed exclusively canned food don't have cats with diarrhea problems. What do you think is in the animals they're supposed to eat - dry kibble?

It seems to me like a lot of cats must eat dry cat food or they wouldn't sell so much of it.
Any cat I have known of that ate only canned cat food consistently DID have diarrhea problems and it isn't good for their teeth either.

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It seems to me like a lot of cats must eat dry cat food or they wouldn't sell so much of it.

Huh? Lays also sells a lot of potato chips. Is that because we must eat them? There's no logic to that statement.

Sales is all about marketing. And there's a whole heck of a lot of marketing involved in the pet food industry. In fact, more marketing than actual truth. They sell so much dry food cause it's cheap and convenient and people believe commercials, which are geared towards people's ideas of nutrition, instead of a cat's idea of nutrition. It's as simple as that. (Not to mention AAFCO's lack of any kind of really good standards.)

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Any cat I have known of that ate only canned cat food consistently DID have diarrhea problems and it isn't good for their teeth either.

Dry food DOES NOT clean their teeth. There are far, far, far too many cats having major dental problems and losing teeth who have been on dry their whole lives to ever believe this is actually doing anything. Cats on canned don't have any more issues with their teeth than ones on dry. Not that I'm saying canned is good for their teeth cause I really don't know, but dry isn't doing anything to help either. Cats need to actually chew on things and have it make contact with the tooth, and they don't really "chew" dry. They chomp (maybe) and swallow. What's "good" for their teeth is ripping apart meat and chomping on bones. (To quote someone else, there's no dry kibble nor toothbrushes out in the wild.)

I've belonged to three tons of cat groups online -- and I don't mean the "your cat is cute" kind, or the "gee, my cat got pregnant, what do I do" kind. I mean the kind where cats have diseases and serious problems, where people are there to discuss medical issues and get serious. And their other cats without the serious medical issues get discussed too. I also run one of these groups and have done a crapload of research. I suspect I've seen the results of a lot more cats than most people around here.

I suspect I've even seen these results more often that the vet techs hanging around, simply because the vast majority of clients at a vet's aren't the same type of people I'm used to dealing with and don't really treat their cats the same way. So the vets don't see this stuff much either. (I guarantee I'm a very small minority of my vet's clients that actually feeds as much canned as I do. Really, only research vets see any kind of good results from something that is new, abnormal or different.) And a great deal of the people on these groups are feeding all canned, mostly canned, and/or raw. (Some are feeding part or all dry because they simply can't get the cat to switch over. Dry food junkies.) And these cats are not having diarrhea problems. (Unless there is some underlying gastrointestinal problem going on, and many of those can be solved by switching to canned as well. And I haven't seen this with 10 cats. I've seen it with hundreds and hundreds.)

Suddenly switching foods can cause problems. Cats don't like change. Their bodies don't like too much change too fast. There are also the differences in the foods as not all foods are created equal.

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Originally Posted by morgaine300

Huh?? Lays also sells a lot of potato chips. Is that because we must eat them? There's no logic to that statement.

Sorry, after reading what you wrote like 5 times, I just now thought of a different interpretation. I took "must eat dry food" to mean they must nutritionally need the stuff. You know, must. It just occurred to me that you meant "obviously a lot of cats do eat dry."

But... that still doesn't mean anything. Yeah, the vast majority of cats do eat dry food. So what? A lot of cats each dry for the already-mentioned reason: marketing and convenience.

I meant dry cat food must get sold and eaten and they do not get diarrhea or they wouldn't sell it. If they eat ONLY canned cat food and have diarrhea I would switch to dry until it got over the diarrhea.

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I meant dry cat food must get sold and eaten and they do not get diarrhea or they wouldn't sell it.

I see your point on that. Of course, I never said dry food gave most cats diarrhea. It doesn't give "most" cats diarrhea, but many cats do end up with issues like that later down the line. (i.e. long term) And it causes other problems long-term. Like eating too many potato chips may not give you gastrointestinal problems when you're young, but it likely will when you're older. And most people don't know or think about long-term affects of things. It's just still not good food, and should not be a solution to a diarrhea problem. There just needs to be a better solution found, if at all possible.