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The litter tray

Our Boycat is not so well.

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Threetoedsloth · 25/11/2015 10:41

In the twelve months plus I've been on Mumsnet I've been struck by the wealth of knowledge, the depth of support and the huge level compassion offered by the frequenters of the Litter Tray and so I am posting for some help.
We have a 12 year old Boycat who was diagnosed with CRF at 9 but who has thrived on his kidney diet and after a year was having readings which were only raised in creatinine and not desperately so at that. His initial readings were horrible. He does not take Fortikor yet.
However he's always had a tricky bowel and the treatment for that conflicts with his kidneys because the steroids put more strain on them. Hence steroids have only been used sparingly; He's a consummate hunter and loves the outdoors (we live in the far north, in the back of beyond surrounded by fields)
We lost our little Birman girl to CRF - diagnosed in the Oct and gone by the Feb so we have some knowledge of CRF (and my sister lost her boy Birman to it too-sigh)
So that's a bit of background. Wind forward to the here and now and Boycat has terrible diarrhoea. He saw the vet just over a week ago and we have an appointment this afternoon. The vet found no thickening in his bowel on examination which was reassuring, and he had blood tests which were said to be unremarkable (we'll be asking for more detail when we see the vet today, she was dealing with an emergency when we went back for the blood test results and so we were just given a syringe of binder by reception to give him.)The binder gave him a couple of slightly more normal bowel movements but no lasting relief.
The diarrhoea is maybe twice a day so that's not so very bad . However he's not always making it to his tray (TG for hard floors) We have Booda covered trays with steps which have been marvellous but I suspect once he gets to the steps he can't hold it any longer and splurts there, so they are not so marvellous at the mo. Sometimes he goes beside them and again I think he gets as far as he can and is then overwhelmed.Interestingly his bowels are more normal if he's had a mouse. The vet mentioned changing his diet temporarily before she had the blood test results, but when they proved unremarkable she clearly decided to give him a go with the three day binder. Is the renal diet known for causing diarrhoea perhaps? We'll ask this afternoon.
So we have decided to tackle the litter problem by increasing the trays to 4 (we have two at the moment , for two cats and this has worked well to date) We are going to get large shallow open trays so he can access them very quickly. We use crystal litter -Ultimate Innovation-which they have always been happy with(both were trained to it from birth)
So, any thoughts? Boycat is a pedigree British shorthair. Petite with a huge face which belies his real size ( 3.4kg) he has the heart of a lion in the body of a kitten. As to our hearts- well he holds them in his paws.

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Threetoedsloth · 25/11/2015 10:51

Ah now, I should add that he's cheerful and eating well (he really likes his Hills science K/D dry food and will lick the jelly off the wet sachets. He's somewhat fussy about the wet food but does love the dry so that's a relief. Keeping his weight up is a bit of a struggle) They have a water fountain which we've been filling a little more frequently so maybe a slight increase in thirst but no sitting by it, so we're not concerned. He's going out as usual , admittedly not for that long but it's pretty nasty weather so that's not surprising. He's as chatty as ever.

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