Chronic cat diarrhea.

Dr. Marie replied:

Oh dear. I'm sorry to hear that Bandit is having problems again.

Anxiety can cause diarrhea in cats, but it doesn't usually cause long term diarrhea problems.

Unfortunately, at this point, getting a diagnosis is going to be hard. You have had a number of tests done with no obvious answers and this makes things difficult. You mentioned that the vet has not done bloodwork but really, there are not a lot of things that would show up on routine bloodwork that cause chronic diarrhea.

Inflammatory bowel disease is still a possibility. However, most cats with IBD get better with prednisone. You may want to ask them if increasing the prednisone dose is a possibility.

I have had some cats with chronic diarrhea that have responded to a medication called tylosin. This is a type of antibiotic that can help with bacterial causes of diarrhea such as clostridial diarrhea. The problem with tylosin though is that it can be hard to get it into a cat.

There are other tests that can be done but they can be pricy. An intestinal biopsy would tell us a lot. It would tell us if IBD is present or if there is something more serious such as intestinal lymphoma.

I will often run a test called a diarrhea panel. This test is a pile of DNA tests that look for unusual causes of diarrhea such as tritrichomonas, clostridium and other causes. It's controversial though as some of these tests are not completely accurate. I have occasionally had cases though where the answer to a chronic diarrhea problem is found on one of these tests.

I wish I could give you more answers. It's a tough thing to deal with. :(

Dr. Marie.


Do you have a pet website? Interested in learning more about SEO for Wix?

---

Check out our dog age calculator and cat age calculator.