Help - at the end of my tether with poo-infested kitten

[BaitandSwitch]

Our lovely kitten was very out of sorts last week - anyway, after a visit to the vet, she diagnosed loose stools and gave him an injection to settle his stomach and also pro-kolin.

Fast forward a week later, he's eating properly again, but seems to have a permanently runny bottom and is leaving faeces traces all over the house. We are cleaning up as we go but it's getting us all down, including our kitten as we try to forcibly clean his tail up. I'm going to phone the vet for advice and I have looked online for any solutions.

Have any of you had experience of this and can you offer some advice, please?

Try feeding just lightly poached chicken for a few days, I've found that settles kitten digestion nicely.

PS have just booked him in to go to see the vet this afternoon.

Thanks Chemenger, I will ask the vet about this. He's six months old ie not a fully grown cat so I'm concerned he still has food specially formulated for kittens.

We recently had the same issue with our kitten its hard work!
So we changed her food to Royal Canin kitten, wet and dry, started giving her wet food little and often so half a pouch at a time instead a full one. A few days on and the diarrhoea has completely stopped

I'm currently going through this with my poorly cat and it's disgusting and smelly.
She went for her booster vaccination and came back from the vets with something nasty. It's so far cost me £500 and a poo covered cat.
We had already bought a large pet pen from aldi and we've had to pen her in. We've had no luck cleaning her up and with a 9mth old baby in the house, we can't have any more poo traces getting everywhere.
Unfortunately the first couple of bouts were unexpected so it got on the carpets etc.

We have been given probiotics by the vet which will hopefully help it to clear up.

Thanks Pilot, that's really good to hear. We will try that as well as the poached chicken.

How's your cat regarding cleaning their tail? Ours seems reluctant to clean around his bottom (understandably he may not want to lick poo!) but seeing as cats generally are clean animals this must be gross for them too.

My Cat is on royal canine gastrointestinal food. Expensive at £50 a time for 48 sachets but it's stopped him throwing up daily and his poo is nicely formed and solid now to the point I can grab some tissue paper and put it straight down the toilet to stop it smelling. Made the mistake the other day of giving him some whiskers dried food. Poor thing was as sick as anything and he had diarrhoea too. Took off the biscuits and his tummy was back to normal that night

I think a vet trip is a good idea. Kittens still have developing guts and of my most recent, one of them definitely had a more delicate constitution than the other.
Seems to have grown out of it, but I don't vary their food much. They have one kind of dry food and two varieties of wet food.

Oh Catfeets, my sympathies. I will let everyone know how things go - he's off to the vets shortly. Chicken has been purchased and will be boiled up for later today.

Be very glad he's not long haired. That is far worse!

My now 1yos had dreadfully runny tummies. We ended up going grain free, and tried LOADS of foods. We settled on Sainsbury's own pouches-first kitten then adult cat. They had kitten biscuits too but we've now switched to Iams. They've been fone ever since, though that could of course be coincidental! Might be worth a try once you've been to vets.

We also were told that it's ok to use baby wipes to clean them up -we use sensitive ones. And if your cat if fluffy, you could try to give his bum fur a bit of a trim if you can do it safely!

Best of luck at the vets.

Oh we also used to wipe paws as they got shitty where they'd tried to bury...

We're back from seeing the vet. She was on side with the idea of feeding him chicken, saying that any change to his food would cause him diarrhoea. Though she did say the Royal Canin was good, but if we move him onto that, don't deviate at all from it.

He's been given a course of antibiotics and she asked us to take a photo of his poo (difficult as he poos outside). She asked us to explain what the poo is like (gravy!) but otherwise not very conclusive.

Will keep you all posted with progress. Yes we have baby wipes too for him. It may be once he's fully grown, his digestion will get better and maybe he'll be less prone to the runs (I really hope so).

I mean she was not on side with the idea of feeding him chicken.

The most common cause of diarrhoea in cats is a viral infection. Adult cats will usually get over it in a couple of days but sometimes when a kitten gets a tummy bug it can upset their system and it can take a while for them to get back to normal. The probiotic the vet prescribed helps repopulate the gut with good bacteria to get it working properly again. Hopefully it's just taking a little while to work or, if the original infection was bacterial rather than viral, the antibiotics will help. I hope he's feeling better soon.

Thanks Prestel. We tried to get him to eat breakfast with the antibiotic tablet ground into it, no luck!

My husband will go back to the vet so that the nurse can get the tablet in there.

Bottom seems a bit better today and he's not quite as whiffy as yesterday. Also started him on the Royal Canin. Despite all, he seems happy enough!