Life with medically complex cats is always interesting, and when those cats have Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD) and food allergies, feeding them is extra interesting.
Over the past four years, first Finn, then Pixie, and then Trixie all developed a sensitivity to poultry and fish and were diagnosed with IBD. For a while, everyone did OK eating limited ingredient rabbit meat based foods, but in recent months we’ve had to switch to a prescription hydrolized food and adjust everyone’s medication and supplements. Fortunately we have a wonderful vet clinic with awesome staff to help support us.
Because feeding time is so complicated, I keep most of the supplies in a single dedicated cabinet above the counter where I fix the kitty meals. Most of the space is taken up by the cans of Hills z/d Food Sensitivities canned food, which is the only hydrolized food I’ve found that is fully hydrolized and does not contain non-hydrolized fish oil or poultry substances. Hydrolized food means the proteins are broken down into the tiniest possible particles in order to prevent a reaction to the food. The rest of the cabinet contains many (many!) cat food bowls, Pixie’s spare water bowl, a few extra pouches of Finn’s pumpkin puree, and the basket of supplements and medications.
The supplements and medication basket has all my other tricks for keeping finicky, sensitive IBD kitties eating. Finn is on a once-daily steroid, Budesonide, to keep his IBD under control. Trixie is tapering off her daily dose of Gabapentin because it has been upsetting her system. A few drops of pet-safe CBD oil help keep Finn and Pixie’s anxiety managed, as well as soothes their stomachs. Everyone gets a scoop of digestive enzymes and probiotics mixed into their canned food to help boost their digestion, and Lysine powder is added if anyone has a feline herpes flare-up. The probiotics are especially helpful because they not only aid in digestion, they also apparently smell really, really yummy and that helps encourage everyone to eat. Trixie has a tendency to skip meals, which makes her nauseous, which makes her skip more meals, and too much of that leads to an IBD flare-up and another trip to the vet, so adding that yummy smelling probiotic has really helped improve her health. (Not pictured: Trixie’s asthma inhaler and AeroKat puffer, which she tolerates twice daily.)
On the counter below the cabinet I keep a small food scale, a cup of filtered, boiled water, and a small knife. Because everyone has challenges with food, it’s important to weigh their meals and make sure everyone is eating enough, but not too much. I mix a few spoonfuls of water with the canned food, which helps with hydration and also makes the rubber-like prescription food easier to eat. And the small dull knife pries up the pull tabs on the food cans so I can open them without hurting my hands.
Pasted on the door inside the cabinet, just above the scale, is the meal chart with quantities for each meal:
The last tool in my kitty feeding kit and the biggest sanity-saver are the microchip-reading cat food dishes. Pixie likes to gobble her food down all at once, Trixie likes to nibble slowly through the day, and Finn will happily clean up anything the girls leave behind, so by placing their food in feeders that are programmed to only open for one cat, I can fix everyone’s food at once and let them eat at their own speed. Finn and Pixie have limited ingredient rabbit kibble in their feeders, and get three small meals of canned food each day, because they throw up if they eat too much canned food and like to graze on kibble through the day. Trixie is on a wholly canned food diet, so for her feeder I’ve rigged up a little chiller system that keeps her canned food at a safe temperature for a few hours until she finishes it. I’ve also had to rig up a tray for her feeder, because she’s a complete slob and has a tendency to spill food all over the floor near her dish.
Whenever I reload the kitty food cabinet, I always make sure to toss the food box on the floor for a while so the kitties can play with it. Pixie inspected it first today:
But eventually the girls wrestled over it and Trixie claimed it for her afternoon nap:
