This week a new couple came in with their first pet – a beautiful white female kitten named Snowy.
This is until they found out that Snowy was actually a male. Thankfully, they had given their little cat a genderless name in recognition of its colour, so Snowy it was.
Snowy is just over three months old and because he had been passed on to the couple through a friend of a friend, not much information was available as to his origins. What was certain was that Snowy was very playful, had a great appetite and looked very well, except that he often suffered bouts of diarrhoea.
By definition, the word diarrhoea derives from the ancient Greek for dia, which means through and rheo, which means flow. Translated literally, it reads as throughflow.
Diarrhoea is basically a softening of the faecal material accompanied by an increase in frequency of defecation. The severity of the condition increases according to how loose or watery the faeces become, as well as the volume produced.
Faecal material may change in colour, it may be accompanied by mucus and it may also contain fresh blood. If your dog or cat passes loose stools, you need to be alert to how your pet progresses from there on.
If it’s a one-off incident without urgency, it could just be a temporary reaction to what your pet recently ate. In such cases, a reduction in food intake would be your first step. However, if stools continue to be passed more than twice a day with loose consistency, it is best to visit your veterinarian to try and understand the root cause of the problem and get advice on the way forward.
But if diarrhoea happens suddenly, once or twice, and the quantity voided is unusually voluminous for your pet, you need to immediately speak to your vet.
Similarly, any form of lethargy, vomiting or decrease in appetite warrants an urgent visit to your veterinarian. Your vet will then carry out the necessary examination or tests to discover the underlying cause of the problem.
Be it dog or cat, young or old, diarrhoea can be a symptom of several circumstances. At least with diarrhoea, the adage ‘common things are common’ very often holds true, and one of the most common reasons for diarrhoea is the type of food or quantity of it.
All too often I hear that the pet’s food bowl is left continuously heaped up with dry food just in case the dog or cat feels peckish. Apart from the reality of creeping obesity, two good reasons to avoid this practice with dogs is the fact that omitting specific meal times disrupts any possibility of good toilet training.
It also leaves a lot to be desired with regard to disciplining and training in general. With kittens, anyone who has had the experience of raising a young cat will find that, left to their own devices, they will happily eat constantly and continuously. This alone can cause loose stools purely from overeating.
One fallacy I often come across is that dry food is better for cats and kittens as wet food causes diarrhoea. If anything, wet food is a more natural form of diet than pelleted feed and certainly softer on the system.
A sudden change in diet is another common reason for bouts of diarrhoea, but to understand the reason why this happens, we need to understand how digestion happens in your pet’s gut.
Being carnivores, dogs and cats need to ingest all the protein they require. This is opposed to herbivores, who obtain part of their protein requirement from internal fermentation such as in the rumen in the case of cattle. The protein carnivores consume needs to be broken down into its simplest form so that it can be absorbed by the body for its nutrient value.
Digestion starts in the mouth as the food is chewed, helped along by the saliva. Inside the stomach the acid then continues to break down the protein, which is then passed on to the small intestine where enzymes further aid digestion. These arrive from the liver and pancreas and break down protein into its simplest form – amino acids which are then absorbed through finger-shaped formations called villi in the walls of the small intestine.
A sudden change in diet is another common reason for bouts of diarrhoea
The enzymes produced by the liver and pancreas are not precisely fixed but will vary and adapt according to the usual diet of your pet. A classic example is the enzyme lactase that digests dairy products. This enzyme is not a permanent feature in the body.
Therefore, if you have never before given your dog or cat milk, or it has been a while since its last regular milk drink, you would need to gradually introduce it to give its body time to start producing the lactase it needs to digest it.
Overwhelming your pet with a sudden large amount of milk will almost certainly result in diarrhoea. But absent enzymes are not the only reason why a change in diet can cause diarrhoea. In carnivores, gut flora is mostly restricted to the next part of the intestine, which is called the large intestine.
The main job of the large intestine is to reabsorb and economise on the amount of water that the body loses. Any huge change in diet could catch your pet’s gut flora unawares. This could bring about undesirable fermentation leading to gas and diarrhoea.
However, not all common diarrhoea is food-related.
Puppies and kittens often suffer from intestinal parasites like roundworm, coccidiosis and giarda – all of which cause diarrhoea. Diagnosis and treatment for these is necessary, as is a prevention programme for the rest of your pet’s life.
Puppies also suffer from a highly infectious viral enteritis called parvo virus, which causes a haemorrhagic diarrhoea that could even be fatal. Early vaccination for this virus should be discussed with your veterinarian.
When it comes to uncommon causes of diarrhoea, the list is endless. These include, but are not restricted to, food allergies and intolerances, bacterial and other viral infections, toxic substances and certain medications, kidney and liver disease, certain tumours and cancers and hormonal problems. Depending on the nature of these diseases, they may be more difficult to diagnose.
Either way, in all cases, your veterinarian will try to establish the cause of the problem, so all the information you can provide will certainly be helpful.
If your pet suddenly develops diarrhoea, observe well the type of motion, frequency, consistency, colour, and even odour if it is particular to the case. In certain cases, your veterinarian might ask you to take a sample and even such information as to whether it is related or not to feeding times may come in useful.
Your observations will go a long way towards assisting your vet to get to the cause of the problem in the shortest possible time – both for your benefit and for the well-being of your dog or cat.
Common things are indeed common and once the heaps of dry food had been replaced by regular and moderate amounts of the appropriate wet food for his age, thankfully for all concerned, Snowy’s stools soon became regular and well-formed.
thisweekwiththevet@gmail.com
Dr Martin Debattista is a veterinary surgeon.