Bloated belly - cause?!?
 

Okay so Oscar was a stray that my clinic took in 4 weeks ago, and now he has
been at our new house for a week.

During his stay at the vet, he has had THREE fecal flotations done, all of
which came up negative.

I have always noticed that his belly is bloated and distended. It is also
very hard to the touch. The vet has classified it as "M1 distention"....
which I think means mild.... but his belly is still like this and it hasn't
gone away with time. He has been treated with Revolution a month ago and
also with a general dewormer (Drontal).

As I said earlier, he has had a series of 3 fecal flotations done. One when
he first got to the vets, one two weeks later, and one less than a week ago.
They all came up negative. I'm considering sending a fecal sample off to
the lab to have an ova and parasite run on it in a couple weeks. I'm
suspicious he may have coccidia which I know can be notorious for false
negatives in the flotations.

The vet doesn't seem to have any suggestions except to continue to run more
tests on his poo. Visually, his stool appears completely normal (in colour
and consistency). Although there was a couple times when it was lighter in
colour, foul bitter smelling, and appeared to have pinhead white dots in it.
I took a sample of this stool for a fecal flotation = negative.

FIV/FeLV testing = negative
pre anesthetic blood panal = all values within normal range.
He urinates completely normally.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing his hard, bloated
belly???

in article , Kelly at
wrote on 3/19/05 8:51 PM:

Okay so Oscar was a stray that my clinic took in 4 weeks ago, and now he has
been at our new house for a week.

During his stay at the vet, he has had THREE fecal flotations done, all of
which came up negative.

I have always noticed that his belly is bloated and distended. It is also
very hard to the touch. The vet has classified it as "M1 distention"....
which I think means mild.... but his belly is still like this and it hasn't
gone away with time. He has been treated with Revolution a month ago and
also with a general dewormer (Drontal).

As I said earlier, he has had a series of 3 fecal flotations done. One when
he first got to the vets, one two weeks later, and one less than a week ago.
They all came up negative. I'm considering sending a fecal sample off to
the lab to have an ova and parasite run on it in a couple weeks. I'm
suspicious he may have coccidia which I know can be notorious for false
negatives in the flotations.

The vet doesn't seem to have any suggestions except to continue to run more
tests on his poo. Visually, his stool appears completely normal (in colour
and consistency). Although there was a couple times when it was lighter in
colour, foul bitter smelling, and appeared to have pinhead white dots in it.
I took a sample of this stool for a fecal flotation = negative.

FIV/FeLV testing = negative
pre anesthetic blood panal = all values within normal range.
He urinates completely normally.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing his hard, bloated
belly???



I would think there are several very serious things that could cause it. I
would want some other tests done. At least an xray or ultrasound.

"Kelly" wrote in message
. ..
Okay so Oscar was a stray that my clinic took in 4 weeks ago, and now he
has been at our new house for a week.

During his stay at the vet, he has had THREE fecal flotations done, all of
which came up negative.

snip

The vet doesn't seem to have any suggestions except to continue to run
more tests on his poo. Visually, his stool appears completely normal (in
colour and consistency). Although there was a couple times when it was
lighter in colour, foul bitter smelling, and appeared to have pinhead
white dots in it. I took a sample of this stool for a fecal flotation =
negative.

I've had kittens that I *knew* by smell/color of their poop that they had
coccidia, but their fecal tests came back negative. I went ahead and
treated with Albon and within a couple weeks, the poop was normal.
Have you seen any worms in the poop? Did the white dots look like grains of
rice?

Off the top of my head, the only other thing I can think of that bloating
would indicate would be FIP. Does he seem fine otherwise? I wouldn't
really think FIP since his bloodwork was normal.

--
-Kelly
kelly at farringtons dot net
"Wake up, and smell the cat food" -TMBG

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 21:51:05 -0500, "Kelly" wrote:


Does anyone have any ideas as to what could be causing his hard, bloated
belly???


There's a couple of things that you haven't mentioned. The
biggest and scariest is of course, FIP. There's no good test for FIP,
unfortunately.
The other thing (and this is what it was for my cat) is a food
allergy. He developed one (we still don't know to what) and got very
bloated and hard and then tried to scratch his face off. The face
scratching was the final clue to the food allergy possilbility. We
put him on IVD rabbit and green pea and within a week he'd stopped
scratching and his tummy had gone down to totally normal. Food
allergies can cause belly distension because they're not digesting the
allergen properly, thereby overfilling their intestines.




Orchid
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