Are your cat’s feces consistently runny and watery? Does there appear to be mucus in its stool? Is it drinking more water than usual? If so, it’s possible that you cat haschronic cat diarrhea.
Other Symptoms Of Chronic Cat Diarrhea
There are other common symptoms of chronic cat diarrhea. For example, has kitty lost weight recently, does she seem tired and lethargic, is she constantly cleaning her bottom? Does the cat have trouble walking? Is it vomiting? If you see some or all of these signs, it is likely that your cat has chronic cat diarrhea.
Chronic Cat Diarrhea May Not Be Serious
Is this your cat’s first attack of diarrhea? In this case, it’s probably not a serious problem. All our pets typically experience diarrhea at some point, usually because they’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with them or because they’ve overeaten.
However, if the diarrhea is chronic or severe (explosive), the problem may be serious. This is because chronic cat diarrhea is a symptom and not a disease. It’s is the same thing with us humans – diarrhea is a secondary problem that is actually caused by something else – called the primary problem.
Get Your Cat To A Veterinarian
If your cat seems to be suffering from chronic diarrhea, there are two important reasons to get kitty to a vet. First, constant diarrhea will leave the cat dehydrated and can cause it to lose important nutrients called electrolytes. If the dehydration becomes severe, the cat can have trouble maintaining body temperature and might lapse into a coma. Secondly, only your vet can determine the underlying problem that’s causing the diarrhea and also determine the appropriate treatment.
Before you take the cat to your vet, clean up its diarrhea with a tissue or paper towel so you can see if contains blood.
If it does, let your vet know before you bring it in for an exam. Red blood in the cat’s feces is usually not viewed as terribly bad but black blood can signal a serious problem higher up in its digestive tract.
Chronic Cat Diarrhea Can Be A Complicated Issue
It’s tough to figure out the underlying cause of your cat’s chronic diarrhea because it can be the symptom of many different diseases or even a problem with one of the cat’s organs. Common causes of chronic cat diarrhea are:
- Infectious diseases
- Intestinal parasites such as tapeworms, roundworms, whipworms or hookworms.
- Bacteria – for example, Salmonella, Clostridium or Campylobacter
- Viral infections, including feline infectious peritonitis virus, feline leukemia virus or feline immunodeficiency virus
- Fungal agents
- Inflammatory Bowel Disease
- Hyperthyroidism
- Stress
- Loss of pancreatic function
- Bartonnella
- Eosinophilic Enteritis
Treatments For Chronic Cat Diarrhea
How your vet treats your cat will depend on what he or she determines is the primary problem that’s causing the diarrhea.
Your vet will give kitty a physical exam and a blood test. It is more than likely that he or she will also ask you to bring in a sample of the cat’s feces for testing. If the cat is seriously dehydrated, the vet may hospitalize it and start an intravenous drip to hydrate it. Or your vet may want to keep the cat for further testing, for example, to examine more stool samples.
If your vet finds that the underlying problem is an infection, he or she will most likely treat the cat with antibiotics. Deworming would be the answer to an intestinal parasite. If the underlying problem is a fungus, the vet will most likely prescribe an antifungal drug such as ketoconazole or itraconzole. If the root cause of the diarrhea is a chronic intestinal blockage, surgery may be required. And so on.
As you can see, chronic cat diarrhea can be difficult to diagnose.
Chronic Cat Diarrhea Home Treatment
After the vet has diagnosed your cat’s primary problem, you may be able to take it home and treat it yourself. This could consist of deworming the cat yourself, treating it with and over-the-counter drug, or injecting it with antibiotics. If you and the cat are lucky, its treatment might be as simple as a change in diet or what’s known as a “quiet diet,” where you eliminate rich foods and give the cat only foods that are easy on its stomach. For example, one such food is to combine boiled hamburger meat with cooked white rice, forming a meal that is bland and easy to digest. If your cat refuses to eat the mixture, you might try substituting potato or pasta for the white rice. You would, if course; cook these, too, before adding it to the hamburger.
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