Kitty likely has IBD -- diet recommendations?

[sookiesue]

I made food for my cat for years. She had been in and out of the vet's office/hospital almost monthly for a couple of years starting she was about 7 years old...suspected cancer, gallstones, liver problems (fatty liver disease)...you name it. Finally went to a holistic vet who suggested a raw food diet and I started making the food for her. She was very healthy for more than 8 years, before an actual cancer struck and after a battle it eventually took her at a ripe old age of 18.

It was a challenge for me to make it, because I am a vegetarian and it involved chicken livers and raw meat (along with other ingredients to create a balanced diet), which grossed me out, but she was my baby so I did it. It took her and my other cat a while to get used to it but eventually both the cats loved it.

I still have the recipe and would be happy to PM it to you if you think you'd like to try making it. Our local natural food stores now carry a raw food (in the freezer section) and if I'd been able to find it back then I would have paid the price to avoid grinding up all those chicken livers...

Good luck to you and your sweet kitty!

[indysteel]

Mimi also has a recipe for raw (I think), homemade food that perhaps she'll share. PM her is she does. There are several brands of high quality canned food where meat is the primary ingredient. One of my cats can't stand those premium brands, so he eats certain higher protein varieties of canned Friskies. Canned food, in general, is better than dry. Cats need the moisture. As for dry, my cats like EVO. It's a high protein food. Be careful of how much you give them. The regular (versus weight management) is pretty caloric compared to a lot of other dry food.

[Becky]

No IBD here, but we've been feeding Prowl, which is considered a raw diet. I like it because it's high-quality, grain-free, and dehydrated. That means no heavy cases of cans, and I can vary the water content when I rehydrate it (if, for example, our male's urine output seems low). I also like that our female can't pick chunks of it out of the bowl and fling it on the floor to eat, as she does with canned food

http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/products/prowl/

[zoom-zoom]

Prowl is intriguing--what a smart way to do that!

I will definitely be contacting you ladies for "recipes" once I've talked to the vet about our options. He'll still likely end up on steroids at least for a while, to help stop the inflammation and allow his digestive tract to heal. After that I suspect we'll be really avoiding a lot of high-grain foods and feeding him more fresh foods. He has been ALL OVER the bit of canned tuna I've given him mixed with lactose-free cat milk. We had rotisserie chicken a few nights ago, so I'm boiling up the carcass from that to give him bits of chicken and broth. Might boil up a scrambled egg in some broth, too.

[indysteel]

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of reading on a good diet for IBD in cats. Some of the reading indicates that because allegens can contribute to IBD in cats, feeding a diet of animal proteins that the cat has never had before (like venison or rabbit) may be helpful. It also indicated that some cats with IBD respond well to a higher fiber diet, plus lots of additional moisture. If you haven't already, I'd do some reading on it yourself so that you can have a thorough discussion with your vet about it. And keep in mind that a lot of vets (not all, but some) do not really understand cat nutrition. Many just assume that premium brand = good nutrition and ignore the fact that many of the brands that many people think of as premium (Hills, Iams and Science Diet come to mind) are high in grain and low in protein. And they don't stress the need for wet over dry food.

[Owlie]

Isis P. Kitty can be a bit of a piggy if she's stressed. I have tried to get her to eat canned food, but she doesn't like it. (I'm not sure she's aware that it's food. She'll eat it if I mix it up with her dry food and feed it to her in chunks like a treat. I think she believes that real food is dry and crunchy.) She also doesn't care for meat, unless it's steak. So she gets Blue Buffalo dry food and lots of water.

[zoom-zoom]

Isis P. Kitty can be a bit of a piggy if she's stressed. I have tried to get her to eat canned food, but she doesn't like it. (I'm not sure she's aware that it's food. She'll eat it if I mix it up with her dry food and feed it to her in chunks like a treat. I think she believes that real food is dry and crunchy.) She also doesn't care for meat, unless it's steak. So she gets Blue Buffalo dry food and lots of water.

Ha, we had cats growing up who wouldn't touch canned. Now we're having a hard time getting our boys to eat dry at all. They've all decided that they much prefer "mooshy food." It's interesting to see how much less water they are drinking now, too.

[zoom-zoom]

Out of curiosity, I did a bit of reading on a good diet for IBD in cats. Some of the reading indicates that because allegens can contribute to IBD in cats, feeding a diet of animal proteins that the cat has never had before (like venison or rabbit) may be helpful. It also indicated that some cats with IBD respond well to a higher fiber diet, plus lots of additional moisture. If you haven't already, I'd do some reading on it yourself so that you can have a thorough discussion with your vet about it. And keep in mind that a lot of vets (not all, but some) do not really understand cat nutrition. Many just assume that premium brand = good nutrition and ignore the fact that many of the brands that many people think of as premium (Hills, Iams and Science Diet come to mind) are high in grain and low in protein. And they don't stress the need for wet over dry food.

Our vet is pretty cool. He was happy a while back when we said we were feeding our boys corn-free food. He actually has an informational pamphlet in the office about the dangers of feeding corn to cats.

I had read that last night that trying a new protein source can help with allergy/digestive issues. I saw that Wellness makes a grain-free turkey & duck formula which would be high on our list of things to try. The Chicken Soup for the Pet Lovers' Soul foods look interesting, too. That's what my folks feed their cats. I think they buy it from their vet.