Indy’s News

In fact, Alistair’s behaviour started to change within a fortnight, pointing to improvements in his digestive system. The gassiness subsided and he became livelier and more outgoing. He started to use his tray only once a day rather than the usual six or more times. In time, one of our concerns was where the food was going, since his excellent appetite seemed to produce very little in the way of results. By March, there was a major triumph. He was producing very tiny, but well-formed stools. We were overjoyed. It was clear that the IBD treatment outlined by Lyn had allowed Alistair’s colon to repair sufficiently to produce solids. Alistair was too busy playing and socialising to pay much attention.

Sounds so much like Indy’s case too.

Taking a deep breath, we decided to start the second stage and transition Alistair to a raw diet. This seemed like a huge step, particularly since raw food is still almost unknown in the UK. The Feline Nutrition site provided the information to help us check credentials, and we were able to find – on the internet, of course – a complete, balanced, well-produced frozen raw cat food. The prospect of transitioning, though, was worrying. How long would it take? Would Alistair be willing to make such a big change? Above all, would it set back the progress so far?

For his first “new” meal, Alistair was given a choice between freshly roasted chicken and raw food. He wolfed down the raw and left the chicken. Transition completed! An even more dramatic and seemingly miraculous development, though, happened within a couple of days. His stools became absolutely normal. No gradual change, no setbacks. After at least a year of continuous diarrhoea and three months of gut-repair diet, Alistair, amazingly, became normal overnight. He loves his new food and continues to eat every flavour enthusiastically.

Dr Lyn Thomas’ method of healing IBD cats: https://feline-nutrition.org/health/feline-inflammatory-bowel-disease-nature-and-treatment

Bone broth and Probiotics
Raw food

Interestingly, Dr Lyn Thomas also started with fillets and progressed to grinded whole raw food. But she used rabbit.Indy is more or less on this track too. Instinctively, I also gave Indy fillets to begin with. And now we are gradually transitioning back to Cubgrub (whole raw food). However, Indy’s “diarrhoea” was never as bad to begin with. He never went 6 times a day. At most, it was 4 times and usually, it was just 2-3 times. His stool consistency fluctuated from “quite well-formed” to pasty, loose, soft and even liquid. We tried various treatments, but it looks like what we actually needed to do was to heal the gut. 

The bone broth!!

I am thankful that at least Indy is very willing to drink the bone broth. In fact, he loves it. The bone broth, I read, contains a lot of nutrients and minerals, including calcium, magnesium and phosphorus (we shall have to do a urinalysis real soon because if Indy has chronic kidney disease, too much phosphorus could be a concern). But since he is drinking bone broth, I can rest assured he is getting calcium and would not have to supplement with bone meal powder in his food.

I’ve resorted to putting the probiotics into capsules as it is much easier to pill Indy than to sprinkle the probiotic powder into his food and take the chance that he might just walk away from it (which he has done before).

“Wrong smell, I’m walking off….”

Indy was discovered to have only one functioning kidney since he was 3 years old. Perhaps he was born with just one functioning kidney? He is 11 years old now so he has been coping with one functioning kidney for at least 8 years now.

Tough guy, our Indy Jones.