Cat Loose Stools & Blood please help !!

Hello there Please please help me out, I need a second opinion for Jasper.   Adopted a stray who turned up last May 2020 aged around 6 months old. Had him neutered. He was very skinny with eye infection. Since adoption eye is better & he's now 5kg at 20 months old. Over the past year he has had bouts of loose stools/ diarrhoea. Light brown foul smelling. Occasionally blood and mucus. At its worst alot of blood. Vet has tried stormygl & metronidazole. Canigest & medivet probiotoc clay paste. We've treated him for any parasites etc. He's had two negative stool tests. Had his vaccinations earlier this year. Two weeks ago it started again - it's never really totally got better. He doesn't have firm or formed stools just splodge sometimes formed. Tried normal cat food with Hypoallergenic biscuits. I don't think he's eating wild mice or birds etc as now fur or bones in stools. He doesn't like using the litter tray but does if pushed to! He usually holds on until he can get out. He's started weeing in the laundry basket not the tray which he usually does or he goes out. He has bouts of sleepiness and being down. Other times before or after needing a poo he bolts around the house like a mad cat. He has bad wind occasionally and doesn't like his tummy being touched. 2 weeks ago he bought a rat back. Think he killed it- left it on the back door mat. I'm concerned the rat may have had poison or viruses in it. Had Jasper's blood tested and all came back OK except for low platelets & msv low mono & low lym. Vet said these results were all ok but how can that be possible ?? Desperate for help and a second opinion. What's going on ?? Can anybody help ? why isn't it clearing up?? He weighs 5kg at the moment. Is a DSH cat tabby buy may have bengal in him too. Thank you in advance 😻 V XX

Hello!  So this is a young Tom with chronic diarrhoea. It is not unusual to get odd white blood cell readings on some machines.  Often the machines were made for the human medical market, so certain perimeters may not be relevant or reliable in cats.  Vets tend to know their own blood machines and can back up some reading by other methods if necessary.  It is rare that I'd be worried about platelets when investigating a normal case of diarrhoea, and these are often best tested by a commercial lab in any case.

Vets normally know their blood machine.  Usually when we do blood tests, we see a 'general profile' of parameters but it is possible for all of these to be normal and for a cat to still have diarrhoea - it just means that the diarrhoea is not affecting the contents of the blood.  Diarrhoea can lead to severe dehydration, for instance, which would show on many blood profiles.   If the diarrhoea were caused by liver or kidney diseases, a lot of these would show on the bloods.  It's very good that these things have been ruled out.

However, this doesn't help you to know what is causing your cats' diarrhoea.  I'm afraid that some problems are not so easy to diagnose.  Diarrhoea in cats can be caused by pancreatitis, by ingesting something that doesn't agree with them, by inflamed guts, dietary indiscretions,  even by cancer or hyperthyroidism (perhaps less likely in young cats).  We would advise asking your vets what they have ruled out so far, and what the most likely possibilities are now.  You then have a decision to make, in light of this information, regarding treating the symptoms, or running further tests to find out more about what causes them.

I hope that some of these ramblings help!  In a younger cat, please note that cancer and hyperthyroidism may be much less likely than dietary causes etc!

We would love to hear how you get on.

Rereading your post, I realised that I hadn't mention allergies.  Eg  A food allergy is an inflammatory reaction to a particular -usually protein - in food and these can also cause diarrhoea.  Hypoallergenic food contains fewer of certain specific allergens than regular food; however, if they are being fed alongside the allergens in another form (eg low allergy food that doesn't contain beef protein is fed alongside a commercial food that contains beef), there isn't much point. It sounds to me as though it's time to ask your vet what they recommend you do next and to take it from there.