Digestive irritation from Vegan food

[Lauren]

I have had my female cat Dinah on a vegan diet, Ami dry and Evolution wet, since Aug of 2007. She was fine until about April 2008. She threw up 1-2x month. Then starting in June she began to throw up more often. I ran out of the Ami - it ships from Italy and had to feed her something in the mean time. I bought a bag of the most ethical dry food (containing meat) I could find. She threw it up and woudlnt eat it. The tried a second non-vegan food and she threw it up again but was eating a bit - she lost a lot of weight. The Ami vegan food finally arrived and Dinah began eating again along with the Evolution wet - although I was not feeding the wet food consistently. She loves the Ami food, however she began to throw up again - about 1-2 week. I I took her to the vet in October and the vet said to nix the wet since it wasnt being fed consistently and only feed the dry so as to get her on a consistent diet and see how it goes.

Since October, it is now May - I have tracked her throw up. It varies from 1-3 or 4 times per week now, avergaging about 2x week. Its almost as if she eats some food and throws it up after only a little while - because it looks only partially digested. I took the calendar that I had been tracking the episodes to my vet again. He said this has now become a chronic issue and we must take action. Because they couldnt take blood (she woudlnt even let the vet techs or anyone get near her) they could not test her for any cancer or tumors. The vet believes that if is was cancer it wouldve manifested into something less consistent and picked up its pace. Her urine was low in oxygen as well. Because he knows she on a vegan diet - he is guessing that it could be a digestive irritation issue due to the high about of fiber and grains in the food. He suggested a trial run with a meat based diet that contained no grains. I can't have my cat throwing up all over my house and I do not want to risk her health, but I also refuse to ruin other animal lives as well. They cant test her because she's incredibly threatening to the staff everytime I take her to the vet (they cant even give her medicine to knock her out.)

Upon this recommendation, I went straight to the PETA website to the list of pet food. This list is based on a survey they sent of the companies pledging they do not animal test. Well this was not enough for me. I had to go through every single link to find out if any of the companies sourced local farms where they could actually see how the animals are living and verify ethical measures. The only one I found was POSHNOSH out of Canada. Its a raw foods diet.... Anyone heard of it?

Suggestions?

[Ari Moore]

it sounds like your poor kitty really does need to get a blood test. we've got one kitty who really doesn't like the vet and who makes scary growly noises and nips when she feels threatened, but our vet just holds her down and does what needs doing. your vet really should be able to get blood from her - and if your vet can't, consider trying a second vet. a second opinion / set of hands never hurts.

i haven't heard of that particular brand of food from canada, but my vote is try it! i totally agree that it's ethically problematic to choose your cat's life over the lives of other animals. however, cats trust us with their lives - we have a commitment to them to keep them healthy. the sad truth is that some cats, for whatever reason, just can't stay healthy on a vegan diet. (imagine if we vegans kept pet sharks! animals have different needs - they can't help it, and we can't help but love them and care for them anyway.) good luck to you - i hope dinah can get her blood tested, and that whatever food you can get her to eat makes her feel better. keep us posted!

do others here know of the POSHNOSH brand? other opinions on this?

[Lauren]

I acutally just posted about my experiences with other vets. Some vet techs were amazing, bringing out the leather gloves, wrapping her in a towel, and that horrible plastic cone that goes other her head (I coudlnt even watch.) This particular instance, I coudlnt go with her and did a drop off instead. They tried to get to her adn the vet said he was concerned for his staffs safety! I understand because she is really angry and mean to me at times, biting down very hard, and scratching her way out of a situation. They wouldnt try again and put her in a cage; they had to put a towel over the cage because she swatted at everyone who walked by. Honestly, I wasnt surprised this happened. So, I may try again and take her when I am able to go whcih is almost never.

The doc said the chances of a blood test telling us much is slim considering her symptoms; of course teh chances of cancer still stand, but a blood test might miss that and then I'd have to go with x-rays, etc - climbing the costs higher and higher. So do I pay the expenses (money I dont have) to make sure its not a major health problem or do I try the food for a while and see what happens?

Torn...

[Chantel Taylor]

My cat Maggie seems to have a sensitive stomach, and throws up occasionally too. When we first received Maggie, we finished off the bag of animal-based kibble that we were given along with her, before starting her on a couple vegan products. She threw up REGULARLY (nearly every other day) on the animal-based kibble, but when I reduced the amount I gave her at one time, and that almost completely fixed the problem. Now she is eating a mix of VegeCat pH kibble and the rest of the Ami kibble that I bought, and still throws up very occasionally, but I have noticed a pattern. If she drinks a lot of water before we feed her, she'll throw up shortly afterward. So if we see her drinking, we put it off feeding her for another half hour or so.

So maybe Dinah just has a sensitive stomach too? How much do you feed her at once? If she really loves the Ami kibble like you say, do you mean that she eats it faster? Maybe try feeding her smaller amounts, spaced out several times throughout the day, if possible. Or if you're not home often, maybe get one of those kibble balls for overweight cats, so she can't eat it all at once.

But either way, I do agree that you should get her blood tested, just in case it's something serious.

[Lauren]

I do think I Will try to feed her less and she eats as much and whenever she wants right now. she is on the verge of being underweght though so Im not sure about this option. My concern is that I have two jobs and may be gone some days from 8am-Midnight or 2am and I cant let her go that long without eating, especially if I feed her in the morning and she throws it up after I leave. I'm not sure what a KibbleBall is but I assume it maybe similar to those vacation feeders for cats that spit out portiosn of foods on a timer.

As for the blood test, I may try to bring her in myself again when I can actually be there jsut to double check. But only one or two vets in her life have been able to draw her blood because she is so aggressive. But like the vet said all problems may not show up on the bloodwork and then I may have to pay more and more and more for extra thigns to keep ruling things out... but on the other hand the meat based food might cost as much as the test as its shipped from Canada. I grew up with another cat HonkyTonk - at 15 she started to go downhill - they did bloodwork and everything came back normal. 4 months later she died of mouth cancer which the bloodwork did not pick up on.

I do think Boogie (Dinah) loves the Ami - she gets very excited even when I fill up her bowl and there is still half left. Perhaps the stuff out of the bag tastes fresher, not sure. I will look into the portioned feeding ball, etc as well as trying the vet again...

sigh...I feel like I have children within one cat.

[Imogen]

Have you had a stool sample checked? Recently one of my cats started throwing up a bit and also had horrible loose stools, I took a sample to the vets and it turned out he had a Giardia infection; something simple to treat, but it had me really worried...and thinking perhaps it's the vegan cat food causing it.

Ami cat or any dried food seems to swell up massively in water, so if she ate fast or a lot, then it is easy to see how this could swell inside her and cause digestive problems. It seems reasonable to give the meaty food a trial run to see how it effects her health, as it is not unheard of for cats to get allergies or digestive irritations from their diet, but that goes for all types of cat foods, not just vegan ones.

I hope she gets better soon, and you get to the root of what is causing it. keep us posted.

[Lauren]

Her stools are not loose - the vet inquired about this as well... in fact I have never noticed this as a problem; once she had blood in her stool but apparently this is common in cats and my holistic vet didnt see the need to address it.

I spoke with one of teh desk ppl at my vet the other day, she used to work at PETA - hich is only 20 mins from here. She said I shoudl call adn leave a message asking about ethical meat based food. Also she suggested trying Wysong - she didnt have experience with the vegan kind though. I had consdered Wysong before - but this product is only meant to supplement a meat based diet as it does not include all the neccessities cats need. As an experiemtn, I bought a 4 lb bag and have begun miixing it with the Ami to see if she throws up less. I am going to try to get her on just the Wysong for maybe a week to see if the throwing up stops. If so, then maybe I can try half Wysong and half POSHNOSH.

[Lauren]

Sorry for all the spelling mistakes... horrible typist as it appears.

[Ari Moore]

Any updates? I hope she's feeling better!

[Lauren]

Yes - I switched Dinah to teh Wysong vegan food for two weeks as a trial and she quit throwing up - unfortunately the Wysong is not designed to be fed alone - it does not have enough protein or a balnaced diet enough... so i have to feed her some chicken. I did find this store in Richmond called Ellwood Thompsons that sells only Certified Humane meat s o I drove over an hour to pick up some for her. She will only eat small amounts of it... so while she is not completely vegan at least 1/2 her diet is still vegan which pleases me more than 75% or 100% non-vegan. And she is no longer vomitting so this is great news. It's just unfortunate that there are hardly any vegan foods that provide a completely balanced diet for cats. I really liked Ami because of the hgih percentage of crude protein and other nutrients provided. Alas, she cannot continue throwing up...its not fair to her.

If anyone comes across another balanced vegan cat food, please do let me nkow. I'd like to try it out.

Lauren

[Imogen]

Hi Lauren,

I'm glad Dinah is better.

My 3 cat's suspected Giardia also turned out to be an intolerance to Ami Cat, I written a blog post about it on the blog page, if you want to find out more.

As for complete vegan cat foods, there is one available in the UK, it is not vegan by definition as it contains one animal product - a tiny quantity of Vitamin D3 from lanolin. It is called Benevo, and they make kibble and tinned food "Duo" which is suitable for cats and dogs. They sell it on www.veggiepets.com.

All the best
Imogen

[Lauren]

Just wanted to update everyone on Dinah's situation. Around early AUgust I noticed Dinah's food bowl was slow to need to be filled. I watched for a few more days and determined that she wasn't eating and started hiding under furniture. She stayed hidden all day even though she is a very social cat. I tried bringing dry and wet food to her, crouching under tables and sofas to push it under her chin so she could smell it... something she'd taste it other times she'd turn her head. I didnt know what was wrong but this was the wrong direction that her health was taking.

I called the vet on Monday and brought her in that day as at that point she prob hadnt eaten anything in 5-7 days - or very very little that i could get her to eat. They did blood work and found that her liver values were way off the charts, her skin was yellow and effeectively she had yellow jaundice and was in liver failure. She likely had fatty liver disease caused when cats stop eating because for some reason when cats stop eating their bodies tend to store the fat in their livers causing this disease. If this was the case then what was the culprit that caused her to stop eating in the first place.

The vet sent me off with instructions to feed her absolutely anything she would eat and to try to get her to drink water. I went to the store and bought all kinds of canned fish and canned wet cat food in an attempt to get her to eat. I tried everything - she liked one particular kind over everything else but still not a sustained caloric intake. I was told if she wasn't eating by Wednesday to call the vet for next steps. Well Wednesday she hadn't improved and she was still not eating or drinking. I called to vet adn he suggested bringing her in for an overnight stay so she could get some fluids in her via an IV. This I was told would cost several hundred dollars. I felt like I had no choice and brought her in. THe doctor gave me a brief talk about her not making it and about hard decisions that may have to be made in the future.... I couldn't understand what was happening and was stressed, worried and devastated. I dropped her off for fluids after work on Wednesday and could barely wait till 7:30am the next morning to be able to call to find out how she was. She was ok and I picked her up that evening. It was decided she needed to see a specialist and my vet made an appt for an Internal Medicine vet in Virginia Beach to get an ultrasound of her liver - another $400...

Friday we went to the specialist who said she looked ok -I figured this was from the fluids which gave her a quick boost. He wasn't sure and couldn't be sure what was wrong without doing the ultrasound. But also said that of the several things he thinks he would find out from the ultrasound that the things he would tell me to do wouldn't be much different than if we didnt do the ultrasound - to get her to eat 240cc per day and drinking water again. And by eating he meant force feed her if she wouldn't eat on her own. He could also put in a peg tube for another $800 - no thanks - I will force feed her for free. I told him I would force feed her and he said he was comfortable taking the weekend to see how she does. Si i skipped out on $1200 with Dinah still sick...

I picked up some 12cc syringes from my vet and some prescription diet -which is thin enough to go through the syringe and contains a higher protein/fat content to anther foods. 240cc a day meant 3 feedings of 72cc each. This was not going to be pretty... I work two jobs and often am not home for 14 hours at a time. I started out feeding her 5 times a day but this just didnt work and i figured out along the way that i coudl get 60-72 cc down her at a time without her throwing up.

In the beginning I fed 72 cc in the morning, 72cc when I come home from work on my lunch break, and 60cc in the evening. Int eh beginning she didn't handle higher amts of cc's late in the evening and would just throw up all the food I would have just shoved down her throat... There was def an adjustment period trying to figure out what she could handle. And since she is extremely feisty I had to basically pick her up and lay her on her side on a towel and bundle her up like a swaddled baby so her paws and feet could not scratch me or wiggle herself lose. I'd fill up the syringe before wrapping her up to limit the time she had to spend in the towel. It was a struggle each time and she hated me shoving a syringe in her mouth but we still got through each time. a week passed and while she didnt seem to be getting better she also didnt seem to be getting worse. I started sleeping in the living room to monitor her at night as she only stayed in this room where she would hide.

After a week of this I called the specialist back and spoke to the nurse - told her the feedings were going well but she was still not drinking and i couldnt get water down... She suggested subcue fluids which i got from my regular vet. He showed me hot to hang the IV bag and tent up her skin by her shoulder blades to insert the needle which allowed fluids under her skin... her body would then absorb the fluids"subcutaneously." After 1 day of this I woke upto a strange noise in the middle of the night... I looked up and Dinah was crunching on dry food... I thought I was going to scream in excitement and laid as still as possible as not to disrupt her focus on eating. This is when she started to turn around. She started to eat on her own and her force feeding became less and less neccessary over teh next few days as her appetite slowly came back... I took her in for more blood work and most of the values had gone down except one - the one that causes the yellow skin - but you coudl tell her skin was not highlighter yellow anymore...

She continued eating and drinking on her own and another three weeks later he blod work cam back normal except for one value that when back up but the vet didnt seem concerned with it since she was eating....

They can't confirm or deny whether the vegan food was the problem but I feel like I cant take the chance anymore and i am feeding her the only food I know she can stomach and will eat - and im sad to say its not vegan and contains menhaden - a largely declining species here in the Chesapeake Bay... I am looking for alternatives but am scared to death for Dinah and my wallet for her to get sick again - altogether that cost me $1000 and i somehow avoided a lot more than that!