3 month old kitten with chronic diarrhea

Question
Hello Dr. Jana,

My 3 month old male Scottish Fold kitten has had chronic diarrhea since the day I got him 1 and a half months ago, and also had it when I got him from the breeder. He is a very active, playful, and happy kitten with a loud meow and purr. He eats, sleeps, drinks, pees, and plays normally. He eats Royal Canin baby cat 34 kitten food, which is the same kitten food the breeder fed him and his litter mates. I fill up a bowl and let him and the other kitten, a 3 month old British Short hair, eat at their own pace. They eat about five heaping handfuls of kitten food per day, and they share the food equally. He was very young when I got him, and has had no shots. My cats are indoor cats.
He has chronic yellowish diarrhea. I live in China, and veterinary medicine is somewhat limited. Blood and stool tests are not available, and the vets only take his temperature, feel his tummy, ask me about his mood and history, and give me antibiotics and anti-diarrhea medicine. Antibiotics have had no effect, and anti-diarrhea medicine has had some success but probably cannot be given long-term. The kitten probably has some kind of congenital inflammatory bowel syndrome because the breeder later mentioned that the kitten's mother had the same issue as a kitten.
I have three cats: an adult female Australian Mist, a 3 month old female British Short hair, and the 3 month old Scottish Fold male. The females are healthy with normal stool. I don't think the Scottish Fold kitten has any parasites or worms because the adult Australian Mist cat often cleans the kitten's bottom, and she isn't experiencing any symptoms.
The latest vet told me that the Royal Canin kitten food might be too rich and advised me to feed the Scottish Fold kitten a mixture of rice and kitten food. While this might be a good idea for acute diarrhea, I am skeptical as to whether this is a good long term solution because rice would provide him no nutrients and would just 'bulk up' his stool. Do you think this rice and kitten food diet is an okay long term solution, and do you have any other advice for the kitten's diarrhea problem?
Thank you

Answer
Hi Dacia,
Let say right off that these kittens are eating too much food for starters. You should only be feeding each kitten 1/2 cup of food a day. At 4 months that amount should increase to 3/8 cup depending on the kittens weight. A 3 month old kittens should weigh 3 lbs. At one year they should be on Adult food regardless of their weight. At that point you decide whether or not to put them on adult light or regular adult food.

Royal Canin is way too high in protein for any animal. I have done dry-weight analysis on their food and it's protein levels are much too high, as are their levels of potassium and calcium for a healthy cat.

Kittens with chronic diarrhea can have any number of issues, the most common one being parasites followed by too much or too rich of food, which is probably the case here. As they grow they become more immune to worms but if they are not wormed properly to start with they will become unthrifty and have bad immune systems, bad hair coats and poor utilization of food.

Any time a breeder says a cat had a similar condition that is a huge red flag to the health of this kitten. Are these kittens leukemia free? Have they been tested? Has the mom been tested? If the kitten was tested once it needs to be tested again.  Does the mother cat still have this issue? If it is congenital it won't go away most likely. Does the cat have bloody diarrhea or just runny diarrhea?

Has the mother or the cattery been tested for T Foetus? This is very bad parasite that is spread throughout catteries and is very hard to kill.
You can read about it here:
http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu/docs/personnel/gookin_jody.html

Other causes of diarrhea in kittens: Milk or milk based foods such as Purina kitten chow, cottage cheese, coccidia, round worms, hookworms, giardia, tapeworms, and whipworms. I am sure your vet can do a fecal exam on a kitten, no matter how primitive his practice seems. All he needs is a microscope to see the sample with. This is pretty imperative to do since you don't know what kind of parasites you are dealing with.

So get the kittens onto some better food, such as Science Diet Kitten Growth formula. Cut down the amount of food and get some anti-parasitics for him. You should also get him some probiotics since taking antibiotics also kills off the good bacteria in their gut and they need this replaced.

Then you might also want to try some Lomatil as well. This page is from a vet and it discusses various causes and treatments for diarrhea in kittens.
http://www.vetinfo.com/cdiarrhea.html

Let me know if this helps at all. I hope that you can find some relief for the little one soon. Please keep me posted on how he does.