Cat with large stools (kinda long, but need advice)

[Real_Rush]

A few weeks ago someone dumped a momma cat and 3 kittens nearby and I suspect they found their way to my house because of the dry cat food I leave out for my barn kitties. Long story short, all 4 are now in the house so she won’t get knocked up again before I can get her spayed (kittens are still nursing, but have just gotten old enough to be weaned). This poor momma cat has some really large sized stools. I mean, if I knew for a fact I didn’t own a dog, I would almost think it was dog poop.

She was skin and bones when they showed up, and in addition to giving her free-choice Kitten Chow, I started giving her some canned food every evening. Since my other indoor kittehs get the Chicken Soup dry cat food, last week I bought a bag of Chicken Soup kitten food and switched the newcomers over. She’s still practically emaciated, poor thing, and I still just can’t believe the size of these poops she’s producing.

I know I need to get the kittens off of her so they’ll quit sucking her dry, but I’m wondering if there’s something else going on with her. Maybe her body for whatever reason just can’t absorb all the nutrients and it’s literally going in one end and out the other? I’m at my limit of mouths to feed, so all of these guys need new homes, and I just can’t afford (and, to be honest, justify) the cost of taking her to the vet to try and find out what is going on with her. Whenever I have a new stray show up, I take them to a mobile vet that comes once a month to my feed store and get them TNR’d since it is MUCH cheaper than my regular vet, but they won’t be back until almost the end of this month. Anything I can do in the meantime (if I still have her by then) to help her put on some weight? She’s a very sweet cat and was obviously well handled previously, and my bleeding heart wants to help, within reason.

And if you know anyone in the northwest Atlanta suburbs area that might want some new barn kittehs/lap kittehs, please pass the word!

[mvp]

A cat with mongo turds: No one is having a good time.

Does she seem dehydrated to you, OP? That is to say, if you grab a scruff of skin does the tent kinda stay there? On a thin cat, her skin might give you the impression of being a dried leaf, or like the crepe-y, thin skin on your grandmother’s arm.

Cats can get megacolon. Think chronic constipation that has a neurological component to it. It is progressive. That’s often a cause of those huge turds. Megacolon ranges from “a bad time was had by all” to lethal. And what a horrible way to die.

So you want to try to get the monster turds corrected. I’ll suggest a range of options from cheap and mild and easy to expensive and a PITA (literally).

OTC human stool softeners can help. So can other things. I’d start with canned pumpkin. Many cats will readily eat it. The fiber tends to fix various cat sh!t problems. After that, you can try mixing some MiraLax into her wet food. Again, cats don’t mind. You feed human laxative to effect.

On the cat-specific end of the spectrum are Lactulose (an indigestible sugar that draws water into the colon), and the salve-like cat laxative. Laxatone?

So kitteh is eating well and seems bright? If so, you might not need to do more than try some pumkin or MiraLax to get things going. If she’s lethargic and seems dehydrated, I’d see if I could mooch some Lactated Ringer’s Solution somewhere and give her some some cutaneous fluids. You can also make her wet food into a slurry and thus coerced extra water consumption that way. If she’s lethargic, puking or trying to poop and can’t, you have a big, life-and-death problem.

That life-and-death level of constipation is fixed by a vet putting the cat under and physically going up in her, roto-rooter style. A really bad time is had by all, including your wallet.

Just prior to that, and for a cat who seems to teeter on the brink of that kind of emergency is a cat enema. You can get those from Amazon. They do work, they aren’t hard to learn to administer. But as you can imagine, you and kitteh won’t come out unscathed, especially the first time.

If you do a search for constipation in cats here or megacolon, you’ll find all of this discussed.

Good luck with your cat. IME, good day-to-day management goes a long way in resolving the problem. And with your cat, perhaps with poor nutrition and worming, plus being pregnant, I’d assume that I could start at the “basic” end of the care spectrum and that that would yield some improvement in comparison to what her body has had.

[Real_Rush]

Thank you, mvp, your advice is much appreciated. She hasn’t seemed constipated, and her stool doesn’t seem especially dry (she just had to try out the first freshly cleaned box as soon as I moved on to the next one last night, so I got a good look), it’s just… BIG.

However, now that I think about it, she has been a bit more lethargic than I would expect her to be. Until now, I’ve simply attributed it to the low weight and the kittens still periodically nursing. I’m not sure on the drinking enough, though. I’ll do a pinch test first thing when I get home later. We’re into week 3 of her being here, with virtually no improvement, despite bumping her up to a better quality food. Otherwise, her appetite is good and there has been no puking.

I still have an open script for some Ringers I used to give my old kidney failure kitteh, and just ordered a bag. However, it’s through the mobile vet’s online pharmacy and will take a few days to get here. I know my regular vet won’t give me one since they’re the ones who PTS and know he’s gone.

What dosage of MiraLax should I start with? I’ll grab a can of pumpkin and give that a try, too. Do you think the stress of completely weaning the kittens would upset anything? Thanks again for everything!

[horsenut_8700]

I have a cat that has this issue if she eats any amount of dry food. Wet only diet has corrected the issue.

[Marshfield]

Could you possibly just be seeing the effects of eating a large amount of food in order to be able to feed the kittens?

[pony_powered]

Usually if the poops are large, like was mentioned above, the food isn’t being broken down and digested.

I think megacolon poops are big and hard, if that helps any.

Parasites can effect a cat who isn’t in the best of health, and might be an issue with this poor skinny mama. One called Tritrichomonas foetus can cause large soft and very stinky poop. It can be treated with an anti-protozol drug called ronidazole.

As far as it being a problem of not digesting food - can you try her on some grain free wet stuff to see of that helps the problem, and maybe a probiotic?

Just a suggestion, hope she gets better soon and all of those kitteh’s get adopted!