Elderly Cat Constipation

Whereas it used to be that a cat's whole 9 lives got used up in not much longer than a decade, if that, the advances in Veterinary care, combined with owners protecting their cats more from traffic and accidents, means that cats now often live longer than two decades.

And a ripe old age can come with some challenges. Constipation is certainly one of those. It all started for us when our elderly beloved pussycat started throwing up at breakfast. I knew there was something wrong. My spouse thought at first it was hairballs. And quite understandably so, since elderly cats groom less. So we got a special grooming brush. That worked slightly. Then we tried giving our beloved feline butter. That made no difference. Then we tried getting her special cat salmon oil. That made no difference. Throughout this time, however, my spouse suspected that the feline one had been eating plants she should not have been, and after one incident with my aloe vera, threw every plant out of the house. Dare I say, there was no difference?!

After a couple of visits to the vet, I was desperate. There still was no real change.

Then I started to listen. I noticed our cat had a meow that she always uttered when she seemed to have belly pain. Then I noticed her sitting in her litter tray making the “My belly hurts" sound. And there were fewer poops in the litter tray each week. We finally connected the dots and figured she must have been vomiting because her guts were full of poop, or due to the extra straining trying to produce a bowel movement.

So I looked on Amazon for something to help her open her bowels. They had homeopathic constipation drops. They worked. However, a week later, they stopped working. I went back to Amazon and this time got her psyllium husk. That worked and continued working, but still, every third or even second day, our beloved baby would say “My tummy hurts" and then vomit, and remain constipated that day.

So, we both went back to Google and searched. I found the strength to try the vet again, only this time to insist on a solution until we got one. Spouse found another interesting thing though. It seems that as cats move less when they get older, that includes jumping. And their alimentary canal is not designed for the sedentary life of a pampered elderly cat. Spouse wanted to make her literally jump up for her food, by placing it on a very high surface. And then, she would have to jump down. Both actions apparently help to move the bowels.

But the poor thing struggled so much to jump up and down so high. She could not really do it. And I did not want to make her do it.

That is when I put my foot down and insisted we go to the vets again. The previous experience had put us off, but back to the vet's it was. We did try to find another vet, but they were not taking on any new patients and advised us to go back to the original one.

This time, we got a different vet at the clinic. She immediately explained that constipation is normsl in elderly cats and gave us lactulose to put in our baby's food. But, furbaby would not touch it. So we had to learn how to dose her with a syringe into her mouth. She hated it, but it produced the result, every day without fail. But I was unhappy about having to push the sickly sweet stuff into her mouth. Cats don't do sweet - at least this one doesn't. And although the vet assured my spouse that jumping up and down would not make a difference, we still did wonder. So we made a change, we got a coffee table to be the jumping platform and put her food and water on it. With encouragement, she managed it. As the days went by, she became stronger and the jumping became easier. The height seemed to help.

But still, whenever we tried to stop the lactulose or do it on alternate days, our baby still needed it. I really never want to hear that “My belly hurts" meow again. But, the whole syringing it into her mouth business was just very stressful.

So we revised our psyllium husk plan. We decided to hide a half teaspoon in her food at least once a day. But she would not eat it. Then we discovered the cat soup pouches. We now hide the psyllium husk in a cat soup and put a few tasty morsels of other cat food on top. It worked! I think it is the mixture of the raised food and water plus the extra psyllium husk that is working, because we did experiment with one without the other, and both seem to be needed.

We also praise our little furbaby every time she opens her bowels, and she has made the connection between both the psyllium husk and the lactulose with being free from constipation. I think involving her in the process also helps, as it helps with stress reduction.

Things have moved on, shall we say. We now have a rule of doing the psyllium husk and the raised food daily, but not the lactulose. But if she does not produce a stool that day, it would be back to the all too familiar meow of “My belly hurts", and then the straining and vomiting again. And so, another part of the rule is that if there is no bowel movement on any one day, she must be dosed with lactulose that day or the next day at the very latest. Now we probably only have to do that about once or twice a week, when she has been particularly sedentary and not jumping up and down for her food so much, or when she just can't make herself eat the hidden psyllium husk.

This is our own personal experience and of course not meant to be a substitute for veterinary care and advice, but I hope this article can give you some ideas and hope. Our beloved furbaby is now nearly 20 years old as I write this. The vet found nothing serious, only elderly cat constipation, so that was lucky too. We love her very much.

© Suzanne Zacharia 2020. Complementary and alternative health education and empowerment is my passion. A virus caught along with 5 other students at university at the end of 1986, plus medical negligence, meant that I got smokers lung at a relatively young age. In desperation for help with my symptoms and quality of life, I turned to natural ways of health. I write about things that have helped me or those I care for. I like having more health choices.