Meet Mishka & Leo -> Mishka's Currently on Prescription Diet for Bowel Issues...
Meet Mishka (big sister, almost 2 yrs old) and Leo (baby brother, 5 months old) [pics below]. They have both always been inside-only cats since I'm in an apt, although Mishka is allowed to go on the balcony where she loves to sunbathe. First, a little info on Leo's diet [very short- he's the healthy one], and then Mishka's (who has the problem).
In the past few months, I've become semi educated on the quality of cat foods.
Leo...
Since getting Leo about 4 months ago, he has had a pretty high quality diet [not counting the little bit of Science Diet the shelter sent him home with]. We started him off with Taste of the Wild (dry and wet combo), which he seemed to love, but it made his stool especially bad smelling. After that was gone, we switched to a Solid Gold Katz-N-Flocken (dry) and Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul (wet) combo, since they don't carry a Solid Gold wet at the Pet store near us. While both of these do have grains, they are high quality grains and both products received 5 stars at petfoodratings.net. Leo loves this combo, has great stools, and lots of energy.
Now for Mishka...
When we first got Mishka, we fed her whatever was cheap, usually Friskies or Costco brand. Her stools were always pretty much okay, with the occasional soft stool that would cling to her fur and require cleanup.
At one point however, her stools became consistently "runny", resembling diarrhea. Almost daily, we would come home to find her stools on the carpet, on her cat tree, wherever she had walked to after going to the bathroom. Her stools were extremely runny and would get stuck to her long fur, and then everywhere she stopped to try and bath herself, she would make a mess. It got to the point where we had to cut it out of her, so we ended up giving her a close haircut near her rear end, and while this prevented her stool from sticking to her, she still had diarrhea everyday. We tried different cat food (still cheapo foods at this point), we tried feeding her only chicken and pumpkin, and three visits to the Vet later including numerous tests, they couldn't find ANYTHING wrong with her.
So they gave us a new food to try on her - Prescription Diet Low-Fat Gastrointestinal with Chicken (wet only at first, we've since added in dry as well since it's so expensive). Also, the low-fat formula has 7% more fiber than the not-low-fat formula. This seemed to do the trick! Within the week, Mishka's stools were firm as could be! She had been on this for about 8 months now.
--Recently, however, since we've been so health conscious about the foods Leo gets, I took a deeper look into Prescription Diet, and found that it is made by Hill's- the maker of Science Diet. I then took a look at the ingredient list, and discovered how horrible they were! For the dry food, the first 3 ingredients are Brewer's Rice, Chicken By-Products, and Corn, which seem to be 3 of the worse ingredients you can have. The wet food is a little better including chicken, but still includes Pork By-Products before that, as well as more corn.
After reading these awful ingredients, we are thinking about transitioning Mishka to a high quality food, but are unsure of what to try. One day I gave Mishka some cooked beef, and it upset her stomach and gave her diarrhea. Another day I tried giving her some Taste of the Wild dry food, and it made her stool extra soft (maybe because it was out of the blue and not a gradual transition).
I'm assuming what makes her stools so hard with the Prescription Diet, is that it's Crude Fiber is 9% (protein is something like 37%), for the dry food, and 4% max Fiber for the wet food. I'm not sure I've seen another food with Fiber so high, although I have just begun to search.
I would love for Mishka to be eating high quality ingredients, but am scared to go through her diarrhea phase again.
Should we ween Mishka off of Prescription Diet and onto something with MUCH higher quality ingredients? What does everyone think?
Meet Mishka (big sister, almost 2 yrs old) and Leo (baby brother, 5 months old) [pics below]. They have both always been inside-only cats since I'm in an apt, although Mishka is allowed to go on the balcony where she loves to sunbathe. First, a little info on Leo's diet [very short- he's the healthy one], and then Mishka's (who has the problem).
In the past few months, I've become semi educated on the quality of cat foods.
Leo...
Since getting Leo about 4 months ago, he has had a pretty high quality diet [not counting the little bit of Science Diet the shelter sent him home with]. We started him off with Taste of the Wild (dry and wet combo), which he seemed to love, but it made his stool especially bad smelling. After that was gone, we switched to a Solid Gold Katz-N-Flocken (dry) and Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul (wet) combo, since they don't carry a Solid Gold wet at the Pet store near us. While both of these do have grains, they are high quality grains and both products received 5 stars at petfoodratings.net. Leo loves this combo, has great stools, and lots of energy.
Now for Mishka...
When we first got Mishka, we fed her whatever was cheap, usually Friskies or Costco brand. Her stools were always pretty much okay, with the occasional soft stool that would cling to her fur and require cleanup.
At one point however, her stools became consistently "runny", resembling diarrhea. Almost daily, we would come home to find her stools on the carpet, on her cat tree, wherever she had walked to after going to the bathroom. Her stools were extremely runny and would get stuck to her long fur, and then everywhere she stopped to try and bath herself, she would make a mess. It got to the point where we had to cut it out of her, so we ended up giving her a close haircut near her rear end, and while this prevented her stool from sticking to her, she still had diarrhea everyday. We tried different cat food (still cheapo foods at this point), we tried feeding her only chicken and pumpkin, and three visits to the Vet later including numerous tests, they couldn't find ANYTHING wrong with her.
So they gave us a new food to try on her - Prescription Diet Low-Fat Gastrointestinal with Chicken (wet only at first, we've since added in dry as well since it's so expensive). Also, the low-fat formula has 7% more fiber than the not-low-fat formula. This seemed to do the trick! Within the week, Mishka's stools were firm as could be! She had been on this for about 8 months now.
--Recently, however, since we've been so health conscious about the foods Leo gets, I took a deeper look into Prescription Diet, and found that it is made by Hill's- the maker of Science Diet. I then took a look at the ingredient list, and discovered how horrible they were! For the dry food, the first 3 ingredients are Brewer's Rice, Chicken By-Products, and Corn, which seem to be 3 of the worse ingredients you can have. The wet food is a little better including chicken, but still includes Pork By-Products before that, as well as more corn.
After reading these awful ingredients, we are thinking about transitioning Mishka to a high quality food, but are unsure of what to try. One day I gave Mishka some cooked beef, and it upset her stomach and gave her diarrhea. Another day I tried giving her some Taste of the Wild dry food, and it made her stool extra soft (maybe because it was out of the blue and not a gradual transition).
I'm assuming what makes her stools so hard with the Prescription Diet, is that it's Crude Fiber is 9% (protein is something like 37%), for the dry food, and 4% max Fiber for the wet food. I'm not sure I've seen another food with Fiber so high, although I have just begun to search.
I would love for Mishka to be eating high quality ingredients, but am scared to go through her diarrhea phase again.
Should we ween Mishka off of Prescription Diet and onto something with MUCH higher quality ingredients? What does everyone think?
