Hello,
We reciently purchased a 2 year old Bengal from a breeder. We have had him for over a month now and he has had diarrhea since he moved in with us. The was given a clean bill of health before we got him. We have 2 other cats whom he joined. We changed his food to Blue Buffalo Wilderness because it's grain free and has great ingredients. His stools seemed to be firming up and then now all of a sudden his diarrhea has gotten worse. breeder has recommended going to a raw diet. what do we do???? please help!!

First of all, welcome to our great forum. Second of all, calm down! There could be a couple of issues going on here. One, being the move to a new home. It is extremely stressful on a cat -- an adult cat more so than a kitten. You have other cats in the mix which could be compounding the issue. Stress can be a huge factor in a cat's digestive system. You should have also kept him on the same food he was being fed previously. Switching foods can cause diarrhea. You say you've had him checked out by a vet -- I'm guessing they tested a stool sample to make sure there are no parasites or TF.

I would forget about the raw diet for the time being until you get the diarrhea under control. I would put him back on the food he was fed previously and SLOWLY transition him to any other type of food, including raw, if that's the way you want to go.

You can also add fiber to his diet (a small amount of pumpkin can be added to the food). There are also probiotics that you can add to the food to help. Having diarrhea for over a month is a serious issue! If he's getting along with your kitties and has settled in, then I'm thinking it could be something more serious. Know that a standard test on a stool is not going to test for TF -- and TF is not something you want your kitty to have as your other cats will contract it as well and it is extremely difficult to get rid of. You may want to read the post on Tritrichomonas foetus in this section of the forum.

My bengal will have bouts with loose stools at times, even though I give him a probiotic sprinkled over his food. Currently, he is okay, but we usually head to the vet once a year due to a parasite. We take outdoor walks and he is constantly sniffing mounds where other cats have gone.

Probably the two most common causes for diarrhea are diet and parasites, and very often when someone gets a new cat that has been living in an environment where there are a lot of other cats, that's when you suspect parasites. And of course the danger is that your other cats could pick them up from him as well.

Parasites can be difficult to detect. The standard "fecal floatation" test that a vet will do has a high rate of false negatives. Sometimes a vet will simply ignore the test and choose to treat for the most common parasites proactively.

For some reason, where it comes to bengals, like Sherry said, they often have TF, which requires a special exam that vets typically are not equipped to do (many of them have never even heard of TF). Specimens need to be sent off to a special lab etc.

Many users of this forum have had bengals with TF, and what many of them had to do was to read up and print out info on TF, and bring it to their vet.

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You'd probably want to (attempt to) rule out the more common parasites first though.

If it really is a food allergy, then that requires taking a close look at the ingredient lists on the current food, and then getting some special prescription food from your vet that has none of those ingredients (typically the hyper-allergenic food has a single, oddball protein, like rabbit or venison and then very few other ingredients).. Your cat would have to stay on the prescription food for several months, and if the symptoms go away, then it can be assumed that it was a food allergy. Some people have reported that their vet was able to run tests specifically to find what the allergies are (impressive, my vet can't do that).

Good luck

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The little monsters 3

Great advice, as always, Brian!