3-4 month old kitten diarrhea and vomiting

[Deleted]

Got a kitten on Jan 13, she was three months old at the time, about to be four. Started her off with RMB (raw meaty bones "diet") and she took to it ravenously. She ate pork, beef, chicken, chicken bones, pork bones, chicken liver all fine with no problem the first week. That first week we noticed she had come home with ringworm so we started treating her for that. Hair has all grown back in that spot now so she's almost if not fully cured of ringworm. Second week I noticed she had diarrhea. (I'm not sure if she had it been there the first week as well or not because we kept her isolated in our bathroom most of the time and didn't smell it when she went.) Right after eating pork during the 2nd week, she threw up beef from the previous night. I figured maybe it was beef that I served to her too cold because she goes crazy and doesn't want to wait till the 10 minutes of "thawing" has passed where I put her partitioned baggies in lukewarm water to bring it to temp. Then a couple days after that she threw up chicken while eating pork bones or while eating chicken I can't remember what she was eating but she threw up chicken almost while eating/shortly after. I read on several sites that diarrhea in kittens almost always means worms so I checked her behind, her vomit and her feces but couldn't see anything. I could have missed it, I didn't look super close but close enough to tell in my opinion lol. Anyways I read to give her baby food to calm her stomach down. So this entire last week we've been giving her baby food and she still has the diarrhea. No vomiting this last week with that change to baby food though. My friend who has 6 cats told me to try dry food. We have a couple of big bags for emergency if raw meat runs out, she doesn't eat etc. So I put down some dry fancy feast but she wouldn't eat much of it. She's always been a ravenous kitty eating up the raw food and even baby food (not as much as she ate raw but still a good amount) but not eating much of the dry. Just now I was in the kitchen prepping dinner and she was going around my feet meowing for the chicken I was cutting and she has never meowed like that as in begged for food before. I'm not sure what to do. We have her raw portioned out and ready to feed but I want to get her gut right before going back to that. She is currently 15 weeks old and weighs a little over 5.2 pounds. A Maine Coon mix if that helps. She's been active, playing almost constantly, super cuddly when she takes breaks from pouncing, no painful howling/meowing except a couple of short yowls right before the two times she vomited. I did read water intake was an issue with diarrhea so we've put three dishes of water out all over our tiny apartment that we change twice to thrice a day. She's been drinking most of her water from the water fountain, but a good half amount of it is gone per day. So she's being normal other than the diarrhea and vomiting she did twice the 2nd week only.

I'm sure the first thought for most would be "why didn't you take her to a vet?" Long story short, the last time we took our cat of 15 years to the vet it cost $200 just to find out what was wrong with the cat and then we had to spend even more to euthanize and cremate him, a month ago. I'm unsure about going that route and also don't have $200 just to find out IF something is wrong with her. 

[spacecase0]

I have seen lots of cats come and go,
was 15 years old before I knew that vets were a thing,
not like I had money to repair animals that would just get eaten by some wildlife anyway,
seen many of my friends with blood pouring out of them because they thought I was kidding about not being able to pet them

cat's can eat anything from meat to squash and still end up with diarrhea,
not convinced it has anything do do with what they eat
some get better, some do not
ask me in 10 years and I will likely know more about the small fluffy death machines that patrol my area

[Skandi]

Is she a longhair? Could simply be hairball. But if not i would pick one meat, and give her a teaspoon, give her another teaspoon in 30 mins repeat untill a full portion has been eaten. Do that for a couple of days. stick to one meat for a week, then introduce meat two etc etc it could be that she doesn't tolerate something, or more likely that it will just take a while to get used to it. You could always go the (cooked) rice and (mainly) chicken route to clear the diarrhea up. By baby food do you mean human baby food? Remember cats cannot digest starch or vegetables, they are not dogs, so that may actually be causing the diarrhea now. We have two kittens about 3-4 months old here, both get ad lib dried food, and then either tinned or some of the dogs raw morning and afternoon. one of them had a similar issue, and we swiched dried foods and it cleared up, however.. they are now finishing the bag with no issues, so I suspect he had eaten something else from the floor, maybe a dried bean or something!

I would be a bit concerned that she is not digesting the previous days food, perhapse it's possible she's eating too much in one sitting?

[Maura]

Agree with a single meat. Stick with chicken (skin, fat, meat, ligaments). No organ meat. If you have kefir, give her a bit of that every day. When you give liver, give a tiny bit.

[Deleted]

Thank you ladies for your various helpful suggestions!

Skandi, She is only the second cat we've had. The last one we had was long hair, this was classified as medium hair but her hair is short on the back and top of her (looking at her standing above her is short) but from her neck to her belly the hair is super soft and much much longer. I don't know if this is normal or what this is classified as. The hair on her under area that's long is almost as long as our long hair's that passed away. I MIGHT be feeding her too much. So my thought was with raw you do 3% of the body weight. When we did that she was ravenous so we gave her more and she ate that up too and was ravenous still. So then after looking at several raw food websites some of them said 3%-8% so we started giving her 8% of her body weight and she was sated with that. She still attacked the raw food with vigor during feeding time and we fed her four to five times a day with raw. So her weight was 5 pounds which is 80 oz. We did 8% of that which is 6.4 oz a day. We partitioned this into baggies and fed this 6.4 oz accurately throughout the day. We figured she's a growing kitten so we gave her as much as she wanted or if she looked hungry. But now that I think about it I fear in our indulgence we might have harmed her? The first week when we fed her 3% I didn't notice the diarrhea and she definitely did not vomit ANY of the raw and she had everything, chicken, pork, beef, chicken bones, pork bones and chicken liver all that first week but in the 3% amount. Increasing that by almost triple might have been what did her in the second week then? Oh dear!

The excerpt on expertbeacon.com/what-do-and-not-do-when-your-cat-or-kitten-has-diarrhea/#.VrVXMlgrKCh under "Do keep your cat on monthly heartworm and intestinal worm preventative" suggests we keep our felines on worm medication constantly? I also read on www.cat-world.com.au/Cat-Health-Collection/kitten-diarrhea.html under the third paw print where it says "Parasitic worms" that she should be wormed every 3-6 months, is that true? I have always been remiss about treating things that I don't see even for us humans, so I don't want to just buy/give her random worm medication just to cover my bases. Do any of you regularly give your cats worm meds even when no visual worms are present in vomit/rear end/feces?

When we did feed her baby food Skandi, we didn't give her starch or veggies. We got the chicken, turkey, beef, ham ones and those said in the ingredients just meat and water. So those were the only baby food jars we fed her. She still had diarrhea on it.

Maura, @redfish, Skandi, okay I will restart the raw meat with just chicken and chicken bones and hold off on the liver. We do have access to yogurt and kefir I will try small amount of that as well. We used the 80%-85% meat, 10% edible bone, 5-10% organ ratio from -http://www.rawfedcats.org/nature.htm The first week when she came to us she was only 4 pounds so according to that ratio we gave her 1 ounce of liver for that first week, no heart or supplements. We never gave her liver after that because the 2nd week she vomited before it was time to do organs.

[kawaiitimes]

Switching up the cats food can cause diahrrea so I would also pick one meat and stick with it. When you are ready to branch out again, add the other meats as a blend to the main meat (i.e. 75% chicken, 25% beef).

Think of it like... When you are used to eating mainly salads for weeks and then you eat a hamburger, often you get a bit of tummy upset afterwards. Your body seems to say, "what is this?" and has to figure it out. Animals are the same way and are often more sensitive than we are.

Good luck and I hope calming down the diet helps.

[wildhorseluvr]

We had a young cat dumped on us 2-3 months ago. To the best of our knowledge, she probably had to mostly fend for herself, possibly supplemented with an inadequate amount of cheap cat food. She was starving when we got her and would eat like there was no tomorrow. I didn't want to immediately put her on the high quality cat food we feed, so began feeding her a mid- range quality cat food free choice along with approx a teaspoonful of canned food 2x a day. Bad choice. She ate everything put in front of her every chance she got, ate the other cats food whenever she could get to it, and even ate the dogs food. Just non-stop eating, 24/7. And ended up with terrible diarrhea. Vet had me immediately cut off all canned food/meat (with her issues, vet said even a 1/2 teaspoon could cause further problems). So dry food only, and fed in small amounts every couple of hours. It took the better part of a week to see improvement, and maybe 3 weeks total before the diarrhea stopped entirely. Although initially she was not happy with us for restricting her food intake, once the diarrhea stopped she was not so ravenous and quickly began slowing down on her food consumption. 

Since then we have slowly switched her over to what our other cats eat, and are back to giving her a small amount of canned food/meat twice a day. She eats a normal amount of food now even when she has food in front of her all day, and has had no more digestive upsets. Not sure if it was due to temporarily putting her on just dry food, restricting the quantity she was eating, or both, but it worked. 

[Maura]

I like chicken because it is a small animal and your kitten gets bones she can devour, muscle, ligaments, as well as skin. If giving leg quarters or backs, they get the sweet meats in the pelvis. The reason for holding off on the organ meat is because it can be too rich. You are trying to find out if the beast has allergies, so keep it simple. Once you've ascertained that chicken is not a problem, figure out how much to give to a beast of this size and how often. If the cat reacts to chicken, I would move to another source that has as much as you can give, like small fish. Try mackerel as it is a deep water fish. A can of mackerel will be cooked, but will have fat and chewable bone. Might consider getting some feeder goldfish, keep for a few days in water with a little salt, don't feed, then try out a nice fish. If goldfish cause a reaction, try salmon.

In spite of vomiting, she is getting some nutrition or she would be wasting away.

[Deleted]

@redfish, I did not realize heart was where the Taurine was! I was going off of www.rawfedcats.org/nature.htm which says at least half the organs should be liver so I thought I was good feeling all liver for the organ portion of the diet. Well now I know!

Maura, That was great advice thank you now I know what to do if the chicken doesn't work.

wildhorseluvr, so you fed her dry while she was having diarrhea and then slowly introduced raw again once the diarrhea corrected itself? Problem is with ours she is not touching the dry food

[aoconnor]

@rachelmcmurtrie, I would definitely check for parasite issue. I know it is an added expense for you right now, but to go without recommending it would be wrong. I have had animals my whole life long, and have always, always made sure they were parasite free and fed good quality feed. I use Purina Kitten Chow for youngsters, no canned food or raw diet...the dry just gives them a good base and helps them get the correct nutrients as a baby. Many will argue about that, but I have a long time of experience behind me with good results overall.

I love Maine Coons, I currently have a girl that is 10 years old and she is so sweet...what a great breed:-)

[Deleted]

Okay if it could be a parasite then I will take her to the vet to at least find out what parasite it could be. aoconnor , I completely respect your decision to feed Purina chow and am glad it has worked out well in all your years. Usually that's not the case so that's awesome for your kitties But at our home similar to @redfish , we have seen all the wondrous changes feeding raw (even for a little time as our other old cat who passed away would only eat it for a week or so and then stop eating it so we would have to go back to chow or canned, then the next month he would raw again but again only for a week lol) has brought about in our two cats that we've had. We have seen everything she listed, great coat, smaller almost odorless stools (well except with Purrsia this Maine Coone mixed kitty), and good teeth health. I have also seen a spring in their step and more playfulness, cuddlyness, which speaks increase in cat happiness to me. As such it is almost painful for us to put dry food down now for them, but for this kitty I was willing to in order to get her back on track before reintroducing raw. I don't think we'll ever not feed raw to this kitten as she simply loves it and we love that she loves it. It's just a matter of getting her well first.

They were feeding her kibble at the rescue where we got her. I do have papers that she was checked and vaccinated for a host of things but then again she came home with ringworm which we've successfully almost fully treated now, so I do not if I should trust their word even if I call and ask them and they say they treated her for parasites and she should be parasite free now.

[Maura]

A shelter or even a vet office is not going to check for ringworm if there are no symptoms. The ringworm symptoms could have appeared after the vet check. You should be able to bring in a fecal sample to a vet. They can run it while you wait.

I would probably toss in a little kibble with her raw, just so she sees it as real food. She might have to be on kibble at some point in time. Or, you could give her a teensy bit of canned food for the same reason. This way, if you can’t give her raw for some reason or she ends up lost, she won’t starve. Cats are incredibly more finicky than dogs. My cat would not touch a piece of chicken and I ended up feeding him TOTW as the best alternative.

[Deleted]

We've set up a vet visit. We started feeding her raw chicken again. Twice a day around 3 oz total (for the day) which is 4% her body weight. The good news is so far no vomiting and waiting for a few more days to see if her stools harden up. I think I read that it takes a week or so to see the impact of food in the stools for kittens. Have some chicken heart coming tomorrow (I couldn't find any locally, not even at the asian and mexican ethnic shops we tried) so that should help her meet her taurine requirement. I'll go slow with the heart and give a tiny bit and wait to see if she vomits it before continuing. So far I have been extremely conscientious of the amount of raw she is being fed, as well as the temperature. When she acted super hungry back when we had initially gotten her there was once or twice I gave her food to her cold and can't remember now if that might have caused her vomiting or now. So now the food is always kept in the lukewarm baggy for at least 10-15 minutes and then served to her.

So the bad news is she is still acting hungry in between. She doesn't beg at all or meow but will do this thing where she'll walk into the kitchen and put her paws up towards the spot where I have the cutting board when I cut her raw. She only does that when she's hungry I feel or about to be fed. I've also been monitoring her weight. The first couple of weeks when she came to us, she came home on Jan 13 at which time she weighed 4.3 pounds. Then two weeks after that after feeding her raw she weighed 5 pounds on Jan 25. Now it's been three weeks since Jan 25 and she's only weighing 5.2 pounds. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with my scale or I'm in essence starving her, which makes me sad. Everything I read before said if a kitten wants more food you give it. But when we did that the second week with her raw she threw up and had diarrhea, so I'm not sure. Furthermore, none of the vets here advocate raw feeding so I'm bracing myself for the visit when I'm almost certain they're going to blindly blame raw food for her upset stomach.

[Deleted]

She has also had a huge spike in her energy and playfulness as soon as swapping her back to raw, she is almost nonstop hyper kitty now especially right after eating. I've left some good kibble out for her in case she gets hungry but she's not touching it. I also did put down a tablespoon of yogurt, of which she only licked up about a teaspoon so I have not given her more since.

[Deleted]

@redfish, you're right in that she really doesn't "seem" like she's doing too badly. Tonight is day 4 of her back on raw and her upper hair is growing longer and is softer I swear! Maybe it's all in my head lol. She is very active and playful and eating with gusto, which to me seems like she's doing well. Only the vet visit will tell me for sure. I did not realize dogs could be allergic to beef. Seriously had never heard of that ever. It gives me hope! The first time she threw up she threw up beef I am 100% sure, the second time she threw up something else but it was the same week she was fed beef so it might be that? So far after four days of raw this time no throw up. We cleaned her litter before transitioning her to raw and now her litter box cleanings are yielding solid like stool but that could be the litter solidifying diarrhea. I will have to sneak on her while she's doing the deed to make sure of the consistency. Have not had a chance to do that yet. We've gradually increased her food from 1.5 oz a meal, fed twice a day to 1.5 oz a meal fed thrice a day. So increased her food by a third for last night and tonight. No vomiting yet so glad I can rule out increase in food. We are trying to be careful in how we change her feedings but doing only one thing that's different, so that way we can narrow it down to that. For instance yesterday my husband considered feeding her some pork before it "warmed up", but to me that would have been three things different: going from chicken to pork, increasing how much she ate, giving her colder temp food. So if she had thrown up while eating that or shortly after like before then we wouldn't have known what caused it. So we've tried increasing the food for two days now and it's going good. If we introduce pork we'll make sure that's the only change and it's still the same amount (in ounces) she's eating, at the same time and at the same temps so we'll know if it's pork in and of itself or something else.

I'm very hesitant about feeding her veggies or eggs or milk or kibble, basically anything not raw I'm hoping I don't have to feed. If it turns out she's a special kitty that can only thrive on something non-raw then that's that, but I hope it doesn't come down to it. It makes me happy that she's taken to raw and when I see her energized and with a nicer coat it makes me think it's the raw and I am not wanting to stray from that. I would love to just figure out how to make it work since it seems so good for her.

I will try more yogurt and keep watching her. Thank you for all of the information given here, putting her back on raw and just on chicken seems to be working for now. I am hopeful and grateful, thanks again!

[Maura]

You are doing great! A young kitten should be fed three time a day, so that was a good decision.

You have had her on chicken for over a week, so I think trying another food is in order. I think I’d go with an egg because you can probably always get egg and can easily transport them. Whisk it up. If she won’t it the egg raw, fry up the scrambled egg leaving about half cooked and half uncooked. Sometimes putting a little salt on will encourage eating. They like salt. If you can get her to eat eggs, even half cooked, then I would give her this a couple of times a week (maybe half an egg) in the morning and if she is still hungry, later give her part of a chicken wing. This now gives you two options that she won’t turn her nose up to. Introduce another meat the same way, doing what you can so she sees the new food as food. If you again give her mackerel for breakfast you can watch her reactions, then give her chicken for lunch and mackerel again for dinner. If she will eat the wet food, stick kibble into it for the same reason, so she will see it as food. Although, most people will try canned cat food if their new found cat won’t eat kibble. But, she has to see canned cat food as food as well. They become very set in what they consider to be food.

[Deleted]

Just wanted to post an update. Thanks spacecase0,Skandi,@redfish,Maura,kawaiitimes,wildhorseluvr,aoconnor, for all the advice and insight. What we did was put her back on raw starting with just chicken. It's been a month and a half now since that time. We have also added pork and heart and bone slowly and zero vomiting or diarrhea. Her stools have bulked up, so it wasn't that she couldn't eat raw, I think too much variety too soon for a kitten that had been kibble fed was making her stomach go "whoa". So this city kitty is now sitting pretty and healthy eating the RMB diet and thriving on it. Thanks again!

[Maura]

Great news! Thanks for posting.

[kawaiitimes]

Glad to hear it!