vomiting after dry food but not wet?

[Alex]

But if it's the old kibble that's making him sick ... how can I gradually introduce him to it?

NikkiA, I think you might be right about his stomach needing a break. This morning the poor guy even had a hard time keeping his wet food down (lost it and re-ate it a few times). Disinfecting everything is a great idea ... what ratio do you use for the chicken & rice? You use brown rice, right? How many weeks do you think I should feed it to him (to be safe)? I'd like to eventually have him back on the wet/dry combo, but maybe with a different brand of dry ... but at this point understand it may take a while to reach that point.

Also, Cyro has this strange habit of wanting to chew on a toy, eat some wet food, then chew on a toy again. Maybe he's eating some of the fabric then? NikkiA ... what do you use for chew toys for your sensitive kitty?

Then, one more question ... the vet found a level 1 heart murmur when I brought him in. The first vet that saw him when he was a kitten also heard it, but since then, it had appeared to go away. Anything I should be aware of with that/how can I keep it from developing further?

 

[John Popp]

With the bland diet, I would keep the rice and chicken separate and gradually add in a little rice to see how much he will tolerate. I actually use chicken breast and plain yogurt to their taste, never making any more than what they will consume in 48 hours.

In addition to the behavior with alternating between his food and toys, is he also leaving toys in his food or water dish? This can often be a sign that they have grown tired of their food, or there is something missing in their diet.

On the heart murmur lots of kittens have them and they can tend to go away as the kittens age. My concern would be that because of the age of food, there may also be low efficacy of the vitamins they carry especially taurine. Frozen, taurine loses about 5% of it's effectiveness every 30 days. I am sure that number is higher for taurine in a processed food product stored at room temperature.

If nothing else, I would be adding some Taurine to your cats food, roughly an eighth teaspoon per meal. Also don't sweat Taurine's use at all, as it's water soluble and anything that the body doesn't need is flushed with the urine.

Also, don't I recall a video of your Cyro eating zucchini as a treat for clicker training? If so I was completely in awe of your dedication to him and how bright he was.

 

[Alex]

With the bland diet, I would keep the rice and chicken separate and gradually add in a little rice to see how much he will tolerate. I actually use chicken breast and plain yogurt to their taste, never making any more than what they will consume in 48 hours.

In addition to the behavior with alternating between his food and toys, is he also leaving toys in his food or water dish? This can often be a sign that they have grown tired of their food, or there is something missing in their diet.

On the heart murmur lots of kittens have them and they can tend to go away as the kittens age. My concern would be that because of the age of food, there may also be low efficacy of the vitamins they carry especially taurine. Frozen, taurine loses about 5% of it's effectiveness every 30 days. I am sure that number is higher for taurine in a processed food product stored at room temperature.

If nothing else, I would be adding some Taurine to your cats food, roughly an eighth teaspoon per meal. Also don't sweat Taurine's use at all, as it's water soluble and anything that the body doesn't need is flushed with the urine.

Also, don't I recall a video of your Cyro eating zucchini as a treat for clicker training? If so I was completely in awe of your dedication to him and how bright he was.

Cyro LOVES chicken ... so it's more going to be a problem of getting him to eat it slowly and chew it before swallowing. Maybe chop it up first? He also loves yogurt ... and will eat it straight from his bowl.

Yes, he does leave toys in his food bowls ... I thought that was just another way of him trying to bury it (because he goes through the motions of that when he's done eating, too). He doesn't really drink out of his water bowl unless there's no other option ... instead, he'll drink out of the dripping bathroom faucet. He definitely prefers his water fresh - LOL!

Interesting about the taurine ... where would I find that? In one of the xrays, the vet said it looked like Cyro might have the start of a kidney stone ... would the taurine help his body re-absorb that, too?

I love Cyro a ton, and have had fun training him to do tricks ... he can definitely be a handful at times, though. Esp. since I put away all his fabric toys so he'd stop chewing on them (he would rip them open, end up accidentally eating a few pieces, then would cough them up like a hairball), so now I think he's bored ... which means even more mischief :-0

 

[John Popp]

You can get Taurine at any health food store. Make sure it's the straight up powder and unflavored (cats aren't wild about the orange or tropical fruit punch flavored).

I'm not a medical professional, so anything beyond Taurine promoting good heart health I can't attest to. I do know that early on with commercial pet foods they were having a great deal of heart issues with cats and it was directly attributable to Taurine levels. Things are better now, but most companies are doing the minimum recommended percentage. 0.2% is the minimum, but most of the better quality foods have 0.4-0.6+%.

 

[Alex]

You can get Taurine at any health food store. Make sure it's the straight up powder and unflavored (cats aren't wild about the orange or tropical fruit punch flavored).

I'm not a medical professional, so anything beyond Taurine promoting good heart health I can't attest to. I do know that early on with commercial pet foods they were having a great deal of heart issues with cats and it was directly attributable to Taurine levels. Things are better now, but most companies are doing the minimum recommended percentage. 0.2% is the minimum, but most of the better quality foods have 0.4-0.6+%.

How much should I give him (aprox) per day?

 

[John Popp]

An eighth of a teaspoon would be plenty per feeding.

 

[WitchyWoman]

Kidney stones can be indicative of diet. There is the potential that he has inflammatory bowel disease caused by nothing or something in the food. I would suggest adding a vitamin and mineral supplement such as Mazuri for slab meat and/or Mazuri for whole prey depending on what you feed him and also add probiotics to his food. Mazuri for slab meat contains calcium for diets containing no bone or other calcium source while the one for whole prey does not contain calcium.


Boil the chicken in water and mix that broth with the chicken and cooked rice. Typically this should be fed for a week max at a time because it is not a balanced diet. The purpose is to give the stomach and intestines time to recover from whatever caused the upset. Most folks feed chicken breast and rice but I prefer thighs and legs because the dark meat contains Taurine.

Taurine is readily available at health food stores or in the vitamin section of grocery stores. Buy the powder rather than the capsules.

It could take a month or longer for the intestines/stomach to settle after an upset. So, I would keep him on chicken/rice for a week and if he does fine on that, start mixing in whatever new food you decide to give him. Mix in the new food at a 1/4 tsp at each meal for a week, increase it to 1/2 tsp for another week and when you get the new food up to 1-2 tsps, start decreasing the amount of chicken/rice and keep increasing the amount of new food. Probably a good idea to start adding in chicken hearts and gizzards to the chicken/rice mixture at about week 2-3.

To encourage him to eat slowly, keep the chicken in pieces big enough so that he has to chew them rather than swallow them whole. Feed him small amounts each meal in case he's the type of cat who will always gobble and barf. You can feed him before work, after work, and before bed. Try 1/4 cup of food for each meal for a few days.

Good luck. I hope Cyro feels better soon and doesn't put up much of a fight switching to a new food. If he continues to barf, talk to your vet about inflammatory bowel disease as a culprit and whether treatment may be called for. Having had 2 cats with this disease, I can tell you it's manageable but takes a bit of effort in the beginning to get the cat stabilized on an appropriate diet.

 

[DChap]

If major health issue ruled out, how about trying a little pepcid? I've had to give that to Tojo for quite sometime after he ingested part of a toy ,but it helped him greatly with keeping food down.

 

[WitchyWoman]

If major health issue ruled out, how about trying a little pepcid? I've had to give that to Tojo for quite sometime after he ingested part of a toy ,but it helped him greatly with keeping food down.

Good idea. About a 1/4 pill will do the job.

 

[Alex]

Tonight on the way home from work I stopped at the grocery store and picked up some chicken thighs and taurine. When I was putting the thighs in the pot to boil, cyro went nuts (he thinks he's starving) and grabbed a piece of raw meat and started growling and pulling on it. I kept most of it, but he got one piece down ... then promptly threw it back up ...

I gave him his anti-acid from the vet, then some plain yogurt topped with taurine. Both he kept down fine. Then, since it was he was dying smelling the meat but not getting to eat any, I gave him a little of the broth, and he kept that down fine, too.

I think I'll wait till tomorrow to try giving him any of the meat, and see how he processes the broth, taurine and yogurt first ...