How to improve your cat’s gut health

Yuki is the British Longhair that we adopted last February. He’s got quite a sensitive tummy. He’s very intolerant to carbs (aka rice or potatoes). Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, he suddenly had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and, in cats, IBS is typically an acute onset episode of gastrointestinal distress.

So this got me thinking, how do we help improve our cat’s gut health?

It was so thoughtful of Sara, Yuki’s foster mom, to send him over with a bag of this Royal Canin Gastrointestinal food. When I heard about his situation, I was worried that we might not have this specific cat food here in the Philippines as I’ve never come across this variant before.

Luckily, I spotted the exact same Royal Canin bag in one of our local veterinary clinics. As expected, it didn’t come with a friendly price tag–that’s Php1,450 per 2kg bag.

So we tried to look for alternatives in managing Yuki’s tummy troubles. He’s been on strict RC Gastro since he joined the clowder but I suspect that his IBS was caused by eating too much leftover rice or any starchy food.

Yuki LOVES scavenging. While everyone is asleep, he’d rummage through things and eventually clean up whatever leftover food he can get his paws on. I was thinking perhaps he got the stomach flu from eating all the leftover food on our table (as we’d sometimes enjoy midnight snacks) while we were sleeping.

I did a little research and found out that feeding your cats an occasional dose of pet grass helps improve their gut health because of all the antioxidants and minerals ingested while they chew on the grass. Aside from that, the chlorophyll in these fresh grass keeps their breath fresh.

Sadly, not all cats enjoy pet grass. Yuki is one of them. So I had to find an alternative… and with that, I tried adding probiotics in his meal. This worked so well with Yuki as it instantly helped his stool form again.

So now, what I do is, whenever he gets too much junk food (this cat loves eating chips and popcorn with us!), I make sure to feed him twice the amount of probiotics in a day. This seemed to work so well with Yuki in keeping his gut flora chillin’ and all good.

We also found an alternative brand of food that goes well with his sensitive tummy. This kibble bag from Taiwan company Real Power, is specifically formulated for your cat’s digestive health. I was told by Sara that Yuki’s diet should be high in fiber and low in carbs. Unfortunately, most cheap cat food are all formulated with non-nutritional fillers like grains and crude animal by-products.

I specifically chose this brand as it has a good amount of protein and fiber, plus it has probiotics in it. I was worried that Yuki might not like this brand, but luckily, he chomped it all down within minutes after serving it to him today.

I got this bag of Real Nature Recipe Forest Chicken 4kg cat food for only Php2,015 from Lazada. They also have the bigger 10kg but I decided to go for the smaller pack for now just in case Yuki might not like his new transitional food.

Have you encountered your cat having sensitive tummies? How did you manage it?

Let me know through comments!

 

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