Cat health mystery

[HelenaWaiting]

Hi.
Three months ago, my son's cat came to stay. DS is in hospital and likely to be so for a long time, followed by months of rehabilitation (he has an abcess on his brain). He is an absolute slave to this cat, who is 10 years old, and I am very invested on keeping him healthy.

The issue is, for the first few weeks after he came to us, when he used the litter tray, there was a bit of watery blood in his poo. It has since stopped, the vet can find nothing wrong with him, and he seems to be as fit as a fiddle - but it's niggling at the back of my mind. Can anyone shed any light. For context, he is an indoor cat.

Cat tax to follow.

His name is Zachary.

Our cat had this back in the beginning of the year - the vet said it was colitis, that it is very common, and wasn’t at all concerned. We got a probiotic for him (a paste that needed to be squirted into his mouth but ideally he would have licked up in his food, but wasn’t keen). If it hadn’t resolved the next step would have been an antibiotic.

Louie says hello to his orange brother Zachary.

It can often be stress related in cats. They are no longer stressed 😻

I agree it was probably stress related, and now he's settled in.

My vet prescribed ProPlan Flortiflora for Tobias's dodgy gut. It is a brown powder in little sachets, and even Mr. Suspicious himself will eat it stirred well into his wet food.

Zachary and Louis are brothers from another mother! Such expressive little faces 😍

We had runny poo before the bloody bit (sorry) and the vet said he’d most likely been eating something he shouldn’t have outside that had irritated his gut.

The stuff we were prescribed was Pro-Kolin paste but I did actually get the Fortiflora on Amazon as well per @Allergictoironing

@Puppylucky wee twin orange pests 🐈🐈

Gods that pro-kolin paste - never heard of a cat who would eat that muck!

Yes my cat had this and vet also said stress (newly adopted). It went once she settled and I also used Fortiflora which seemed to help

Thank you all. I'm going to get some Fortiflora, although, as I said, it has cleared up now. I agree that Zachary and Louie look like brothers. @Judystilldreamsofhorses funnily enough, DS calls him "Orange".

The vet nurse told me her dog loves it (probably a lab) but I had to syringe it into Louie’s mouth. He’s a wee champ with medication usually but this was clearly not to his taste!

What a stunning cat. The late Cheddar had this once. Although it was pure blood. I’d changed her food to a different variety of Iams and it didn’t agree with her. Changer it straight back and she was fine. Penelope occasionally had blood if she was consipated and had a big poo.

Yep. That’s what Cheddar thought!

@HelenaWaiting the pro-kolin stuff also comes as “sprinkles” like Fortiflora - but Louie wouldn’t touch food it was sprinkled on so that was a waste of money! He liked the Fortiflora but I thought it was very messy.

We have my MiL’s cat here with us since July while she does renovations, and frequently one of us will say along the lines of “Orange is out, Black is on the spare bed” or vice versa.

Wishing a return to health for Zachary and especially your DS 💐

Your MIL's cat does renovations? I always knew they were cleverer than us.

😁

Sadly his one great talent is silently sneaking to eat our cat’s food 🐈🐈‍⬛

We have a dog like that. Labrador-Cross, if it needed saying.

For those of you whose cats hate paste and sprinkles try royal canin digestive formula my cats occasionally suffer with soft poo for no reason this fixes them up a treat and they love it unfortunately it constipated the one cat so I can't use it all the time