cat with diarrhea

Question
Hi Karen - I'm back.  Well now that my cats are getting along, I have another issue.  My older cat, 6 mo., is having diarrhea and has had it off and on since I let he and Muffin start playing together around 2-3 weeks ago.  I put a pheromone collar on him at that time which I removed.  He has had blood in the stool a couple of times.  I go to a multi-vet clinic, so I speak with different vets each visit, sometimes with slightly different opinions. One thought diet, the other thought maybe something that didn't show up in the test.

He is on Metranitazole, although they could find nothing wrong with him and he had a negative fecal exam (they only test for things visible to the eye under a microscope).  One vet at the clinic suggested it might be the food.

He gets Harmony Farms (no wheat, corn or soy) dry and Special Kitty wet.  She told me to get Harmony Farms wet which I did and after a few weeks was still having problems so we started the Metranitazole.  It seemed like he was better and I started putting special kitty back in his food to use what I had and then he started with diarrhea again today.  I am unsure if this is a food intolerance as I fed it to him for months no problem.  Plus when I switched him to an expensive brand, he didn't clear up immediately.  I have been putting pumpkin, yogurt and digestive enzymes in his food since this incident.  He was better yesterday, then back again with diarrhea today.  I am wondering if it was the special kitty, the cat food with a chicken base (if he doesn't need chicken), the lack of yogurt/pumpkin or something else that caused him to go back to diarrhea.

He doesn't have a fever and is happy and feels good.  I am going to try different options to see if I can get him back to where he was yesterday, but I am really disturbed.  

Do you have any suggestions?  Have you heard of special kitty doing this even after feeding it to him for months no problem?  Have you heard of cats being intolerant to chicken?

Thank you so much for your help.

Answer
Hi Amy,

Usually the bright red blood in the stools is from what they are eating. I would stop the special kitty dry food. I would go to either a raw diet or a high quality wet food for him. And he could be having a problem with poultry. You can try a rabbit or venison based food for him.  Here's the link about what to feed them. There is a lot of info on this site. You will find a lot of answers here.

http://www.catinfo.org/

Hope this helped. Good luck and take care.

Ciao, Karen