Expert: Jana Connell RVT, CVT - 3/21/2010

Question
Hi Jana,

I'm hoping you can give me some advice about my 1.5 year old pixie bob cat. He has had a chronic problem with bloody stool and the vet doesn't seem to have an idea what's wrong. At first, I thought it was because he had a bout with worms. However, after he was treated the bloody poos continued.

Some more (gross!) details: the bloody poos don't seem to be constant, as there seems to be a significant amount of blood only when the poop is runnier/wet. Other times, he has normal, harder poos with only a little to no amount of blood. He also seems to have some pain while pooping. (Also, the blood is fresh and red, not dark). His butt is normal and dry with no sign of irritation.

Aside from the poop issue, he is very active and energetic (including right after pooping), he drinks well, eats well, is alert (and a troublemaker!) his coat is nice and thick, etc. I've researched the issue on the net and he doesn't have any other symptoms that are common with serious chronic diarrhea problems, such as cancer or intenstinal worms. He has his current shots and has passed his checkups with flying colors.

My best guess which I am wondering about is if this would be caused by wet food (Friskies)? I keep an unlimited supply of dry food out at all times for the cats to munch on, then at night give them half a can of Friskies wet food. He seems to have problems after eating the wet food, could that be causing such a reaction in him? Is that too often to give a cat wet food? (My other cat seems fine and has normal poops). I've gone a few days of dry food only and it seems to help, but doesn't eliminate the problem.

Answer
Most of the time this kind of blood in the stool is from the colon and just inside of the rectum being irritated. That is usually from the kind of food the cat is eating.

While the friskies might not be helping, it sounds like the dry food is really the culprit (and it usually is). You didn't mention what type of dry he eats, but if it's a grocery store brand that could be the cause of the bloody off and on stool.

I have had many people write to me in here about this same condition and once they changed over to Science Diet sensitive stomach food the problem went completely away.

They switched over slowly but in a week the cat was on the new food and the owners wrote me and said no more bloody stool, even after a few weeks.

He probably is in pain while passing stool because the blood comes from small blood vessels that are inflamed and irritated then the stool passing through ruptures them and they bleed. And that can be painful.

So get some Science Diet Sensitive Stomach formula and see how he does on it. Give it a good three weeks to really work but you should see some improvement after a few days.

Please let me know how he does on the food. All your cats can eat it. They also have a 100% money back guarantee if you don't think it helped him after the bag is gone.