Our question this week was:

I have a multi-cat household and one of my cats has diarrhea. Can you give me any tips on how to figure out which one it is?

DP

Answer

Hi – thanks for your email. This is a great question and one that veterinarians and multi-cat owners have to deal with periodically. There is no prefect way to tell which cat is the problem cat. I'll give you a few tips.

First, you can try separating the cats into different rooms with their own litter boxes. This is very effective and can clearly allow you to access each cat's urine and feces. However, I recognize, that may not be possible in some situations.

Another method that can be used is determine which cat has diarrhea in a multi-cat household is ...to use crayon shards. What can be done is to add a few colorful crayon shards to the food of one of the cats. Crayons are nontoxic and will be eliminated in the feces. Look at the feces for that color to link a cat with a particular bowel movement.

An article that might be helpful to you is on our Petplace.com is "Diarrhea in Cats".


Best of luck!



Dr. Jon





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