Help with cat getting sick with diarrhea

[newbie123]

My original post was here: https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/new-member-question-about-dosage.258679/#post-2909371

Last night and again tonight my cat has gotten diarrhea after giving her 1.5 units of Lantus. The first night I thought maybe it was a bad freeze dried minnow treat, but tonight she has only had Wysong Epigen 90, Fancy Feast Pate, and Fruitables treats. I am going to try to get her into the vet in the morning but I'm really struggling to figure out what's going on. She has been eating this food for a while and been ok until last night.

Update:
I was able to get a sample of the liquid and it is pink, so I am pretty sure there is blood in it. I can't tell if it is urine or diarrhea because it's just a pink liquid. Last night it was definitely diarrhea and tonight she started with loose stool. And she keeps running to the litter so I think it is watery diarrhea and not urine but I'm not sure.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

Do you have access to some plain pumpkin you can boil, drain and mash and give a teaspoon three times a day to see if that helps.
Also SBoulardii is a good probiotic for diarrhoea.
If it is pink it could be blood. I would take her to the vet.
Also you need to be testing before all the insulin shots to see it is safe to give the dose.

 

[Peeps Dad]

What flavor of Fancy Feast? Our cat gets bad diarrhea on any fish flavor. We used S. Bouldardii to treat it and switched to Hound and Gatos Gamebird formula and now normal stools.

 

[newbie123]

I give her Fancy Feast classic pate chicken mostly. I also recently gave her the Tender Liver & Chicken pate too. The odd thing is that both nights in a row she only got sick a couple hours after her 1.5 unit dose of Lantus. She wasn't sick during the day.

But then on the third day even without giving insulin she started getting sick again, straining to go to the bathroom all over the house, so I took her to an emergency vet. She is on Metronidazole and Gabapentin now, also given Maropitant while at the vet last night. They did x-rays, a pancreatitis test, blood tests, but didn't really find anything wrong. The working diagnosis is Gastroenteritis. They said that her intestinal tract was inflamed.

I did buy Florastor. Haven't used it yet. It's in pill form. How much do you usually give? I'll probably wait until her medication is done but I may end up trying that if she is still not doing well.

It seemed like this all came on when her glucose started getting around 200 and I gave her 1.5 units of Lantus. Could it be that if she doesn't eat enough that amount of Lantus could make her sick? She has never been a very big eater, she will really only eat the wet food if I put Fruitables treats in it and even then she probably doesn't finish a whole can in one day. She mostly eats the Wysong Epigen 90 dry food but is probably barely eating a whole bowl daily. She is 10 pounds. At her weight, is there an estimate of how much she should be eating daily to make sure the insulin is safe to give?

 

[Peeps Dad]

Metronidazole will cause loose stools. S Boulardii can be used to help with that. One of our other cats eats the Epigen 90 and he does occasionally vomit on it. Otherwise he is healthy. The amount of food and insulin go hand in hand but also the quality of food. Our diabetic cat was on FF but when I switched him to H&G he is now eating less food and seems a lot more satisfied. He had some tummy bloat as well that seems to have gone down. When switching to H&G he is not eating as much so it looks like I am going to be able to reduce his insulin. Fruitables are not good for a diabetic cat as they will throw his numbers all over. Stick with the S Boulardii (Jarrow brand). FF is a good low cost low carb food but not the greatest ingredients. H&G is better but more $. There is another brand called Meat Mates that is excellent but really expensive.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

I think there's a good chance the treats your using are contributing. They are also likely to be high in carbs given the ingredients.

I would encourage you to take a look at the information on Lantus dosing. We do things a bit differently than what it looks like you've been doing. First and foremost, the drop to a 42 yesterday indicates that the dose is too high. In addition, you need to get at minimum, one test during the PM cycle. You have no idea how low numbers are going at night and as a result, you're missing half of your data.

 

[Gracie85]

I have one cat that cannot eat anything with chicken in it, she gets diarrhea right away.
I have another cat that cannot eat anything with fish in it, he gets diarrhea right away.

It is very hard to find cat food without chicken in it, no matter what "flavor" they claim it is. FF Turkey and Giblets Feast classic pate does not have chicken. (Coincidentally, it also does not have fish, thankfully). Fish is also becoming much more common as a filler meat in cat foods.
It could well be an ingredient in the food that is triggering the diarrhea, so trying a different flavor might help. But you have to read the ingredients very carefully to make sure it does not also contain an ingredient you are trying to avoid.

I had another cat who developed bladder issues (it was "full of crystal sludge" was how the vet put it). We figured this out when I noticed he was constantly going into the litter box all day, then he peed in the bathtub and it was just pink-red liquid, from the blood in his urine from the inflammation in his bladder.

You may have noticed that he has diarrhea at a certain time after giving his insulin, but don't you give the insulin at a certain time related to his eating? Much more likely it's the food than the insulin.

But if you are seeing blood, whether in pee or poop, it's time for a vet visit.