Following the loss of our beloved 19 year old cat a while back we have adopted a pair of young rescue cats from a local Animal Sanctuary (an aunt & niece); they’re absolute darlings.

After initially arriving at the sanctuary they were adopted, but returned in about a week as the elder of the cats developed diarrhoea and, as a long hair, got rather messy and spread it about the adopters home.

We were warned of this and advised that it was almost certainly stress related; her stools returned to normal after returning to the sanctuary and they had no further problems. We’ve been advised to only to feed them on cat food in jelly & cat biscuits, which we’ve done; they’re just given water to drink. The niece is fine but after a few normal bowel movements the older cat has started getting rather frequent, runny motions of fairly small quantity, which has been going on for about 5 days and seems to be continuing.

I spoke to the sanctuary this morning and they’re still convinced that it’s stressed related and have advised that we feed plain chicken or chicken only cat food for a few days until things settle; at present the result of this has simply been paler diarrhoea.

The cat (Luna, a semi-long haired tortoiseshell) seems fine in herself with a good appetite and lots of playful energy (they both barrel around the house and play fight); they both seem to have settled in surprisingly well (we’ve had them just a week) considering that they’ve been shoved from pillar to post and apart from her motions, she seems in rude health. The sanctuary suggest that if things don’t settle a vet could do a blood test for food intolerances. We haven’t rushed her to the vet as she seems well and we don’t want to spook her further if it can be helped.

I did wonder whether there might be an issue with the food and have tried to match what we feed with what she was having at the sanctuary, but they don’t feed a particular brand – they have a variety of donated food (and we’ve stuck with the recommended jelly based rather that sauce/gravy etc).

Any thoughts? It could simply be stress/readjustment (they won’t be going out for another week or two either) and it might sort itself out in time. I’m a little worried about the effects it might have on her health though and also that it’s probably not great that she’s grooming poo of herself (we wipe off anything obvious but neither of them are too keen on being handled much at present – we’re waiting for them to come to us).

Hopefully things will settle down in time but we are getting a bit worried.

— Edit —

She’s spayed and up to date with vaccinations and worming/flea treatments.

Koalin does a good job for settling squiffy bottoms

A bit of chalk in the food helps bung them up. We had a dog that got projectile diarrhea . It worked wonders for her.

Nothing to add from a cat poo perspective. Just wanted to give a thumbs up for rehoming two of the furry terrors!

Is it Lard’s Animal Sanctuary?

Have you been using Feliway to reduce stress ?

It might be a good idea to keep the 2 cats in a single room for a period of time to allow them to feel settled in a territory, before giving them the run ( ahem ) of the house.

Ideally a room with a tiled floor. :- )

When our dog has the runs it gets boiled chicken. Seems to be the internet treatment of choice and works. Then back on dry biscuit food. In fact tinned/jelly food is always a runny disaster and only given in extremis. I’d probably get off the jelly food for a bit, go biscuit only then consider re- introducing.

YMMMV (or cat)