I hope this helps someone else:

A few weeks ago I posted that my bengal, Coco, had loose stools with a bit of blood. She was otherwise very healthy, energetic, good weight, good coat. My vet wasn't overly concerned but I was worried about possible long term problems and so wanted to figure what the cause was. Long story short, after weeks of experimenting, I found out the problem was eggs. Most dry cat foods contain eggs, as long as I don't feed her any of those, she is fine.

I think she is happier now. I know I am!

Medora

As you probably realize, the foods I rejected and the foods I keep were based on Coco's particulair problem with egg. You cat may have a problem with a different ingredient. My understanding is that cats (and dogs) can develope an intolerance to just about anything.

That said, the course I followed :

After the vet suggested that the problem might be a food allergy I decided to try an elimination diet. That is where you stop feeding the cat all foods you are currently feeding and feed only a "single source" food. That is a food that has a single source of protein and a single source of carbs. In my case I used Natural Balance Venison and Green Pea. When I did this her stools immediately became almost normal and were completely normal after a few days. This confirmed the problem was food related.

At this point I could have just keep feeding her the NB V&GP but I wanted to know what exactly was causing the problem so I could give her a variety of foods that she could tolerate. Also, if the NB V&GP became unavailable for some reason I wouldn't know that other foods I could safely give her.

So, next was to try to figure out exactly what ingredient was the problem by adding ingredients back into her diet, preferably one ingredient at a time, until the problem reappeared. This is not easy. I found canned foods that contained just chicken (Sheba) or fish (Whiskas Purrfectly Fish) with just a couple of other ingredients. I feed her these and she was OK so I knew the problem wasn't chicken or fish.

At this point I hit a bit of a wall cuz it is very difficult to find foods with a limited number of ingredients and that she would eat. Since corn was an ingredient I suspected, I decided to add back the Innova EVO that I had been feeding her previously and which is completely grain free. Much to my suprise, the loose stool reappeared.

I got lucky at this point. I compared the ingredients of the Innova EVO with the ingredients of a food the vet had suggested (Eukanuba low residue) and which she also had loose stools with and fortunately the ingredients were quite different. The only ingredients they had in common were chicken and eggs. I already knew chicken wasn't the problem so that only left eggs.

I looked at the other dry food I had been giving her previously, Natural Balance Ultra Premium, and it too had eggs. I switched her back to the NB V&GP until her stools were normal again and then added back the NB UP, loose stools again.

I then found another dry food that didn't have egg, Organix, feed her that and no loose stool. I thought this made it pretty clear that the problem was egg. She has been on an egg free diet for about a week now and has had a normal stool the whole time. I don't remember her having a normal stool the entire time I've had her (8 mos).

A few notes:

This whole investigation, from beginning to end, took 8 weeks. Be prepared to be patient.

They say when introducing a new food to a cats diet that it should be added gradually, over 3-5 days, to avoid digestive upset. I didn't find this to be true with my cats (I have 3 and gave them all the same foods throughout this). But I did make sure I gave them the "new food" for several days before I drew any conclusions from the results.

All the foods I used are availble from Petco except the Eukanuba which is a prescription food I got from my vet.

I assumed, hoped really, that the problem ingredient but be one of the main protein or carb ingredients. My understanding is that this is the case most of the time but that it could be one of the minor ingredients, supplements or preservatives.

Many people, including vets, use "food allergy" when they really mean "food intolerance". A food allergy has symptoms like ichy, red skin. An intolerance has symptoms of the digestive type like Cocos.

I hope this isn't more information than you wanted. When I was tryiing to figure out what to do I was frustrated by the lack of concrete information I could find.

If you have any other questions I will be happy to try to answer them.

Good luck!

Medora

Thanks for posting, Oska (our bengal ) also had this problem, which cleared up about a week ago, which is when I changed the dry food.
So after reading your post I compared the ingredients and the old one had eggs in it and the new one doesn't.

So if you hadn't posted your findings I wouldn't know to avoid eggs!

Naomi

I'm glad my posting helped Naomi.

I kept reading that bengals have a reputation for having loose stools with no clinical cause but no one ever posted if they found a definitive resolution so I made sure to post what I learned. I wonder how often it is an intolerance for eggs?

I hope others post if they have had a similair findings.

Medora

Hillo hillo!

Both my bengals had loose stool with a drop of blood on top of it until recently (Salem is 11 months and Cybile is almost 8 months).

My breeder explained to me it was normal until one year old approx., that bengal kittens have a fragile digestive tract, and eat a lot during the time they grow up and it can upset their digestion. My vet confirmed that it is a real possibility, as long as they act normal (drinking/eating, playing, no blood in the stool etc). It is true that my babies eat and drink a lot, but I didn't see any blood or loose stool for over a month now.

But I had to go through all the process described by cocomom because my youngest had a food allergy (pinkish dry skin on her thigh). We now think that she was allergic to chicken protein. We began with the green pea stuff too, and now we give her duck and oatmeal dry food. Everything is ok for over two weeks, so I keep my finger crossed!

Hope it helps a little!!
Bye bye
Sysh

That's very interesing. I have never heard that the loose stool thing is something they might just grow out of.

For the record, Coco is 18 mos old.

Medora

Cocomom: Thanks for your very detailed response.

We've started a multi-month trial and error of food with our 7 month bengal kitten. She has loose stools. She has been tested for everything. And I mean everything. (include PCR test for Trich). She is absolutely clean of any buggies. The vet thinks, she may have a sensitive tummy or simply that she is just young and will grow out of it. She has been on a vet prescribed Hills I/D diet. She will eat it, but under formal protest -- as in she investigates every other possible food source in the house first -- namely my dinner plate.

Earlier this week, I changed her diet to a 50/50 mix of a hairball food and high quality kitten food. Within 24 hours, two things happened: 1) Her stools firmed up quite a bit. 2) She ate a lot and stopped begging for food.

In the past, feeding her 100% high quality kitten food promptly led to loose stools. As I mentioned earlier, this time, I added 50% hairball food. As much as I hate feeding my cat the hairball diet, it helped immediately.

Experiment #1: Over the course of 4 weeks, reduce the amount of hairball food in her diet to 10% and increase high quality kitten food to 90% while carefully observing appetite and stool quality.

Experiment #2: After the 4 weeks are up, if her appetite or stool quality deteriorates dramatically, I'm going to go down your suggested path for testing for food allergies. The kitten food she is on now does not contain eggs. Perhaps I'll get lucky?!

I'll post results here.

Thanks again for inspiring me to take on this experiment. I really want to find a high quality food that our kitten will eat and thrive on.

I have 2 bengals, half sister and brother, who are 6 and 7 months old. They eat Evo dry and Natural Balance Ultra Premium dry plus CANZ chicken and turkey raw (lightly pasteurized) food twice a day. The female's stools are fine but GEEZ SHE HAS GAS in a bad way. The male, eating the same foods, has horribly loose stools and he seems hungry all the time.

Thanks to your posts, I am hoping the problem is the eggs and I am going to pick up the Natural Balance allergy foods tomorrow - the dry pea & duck and the canned venison & pea formula and I will let you know how it goes.

I hope I have as good of luck as you have.



~ Lynn