Chica and Cookie want your help

[Barbara]

A colleague of mine has 2 senior cat ladies, Chica and Cookie. They are about 15-16 years old, a little overweight and do not move too much. So they are frequently constipated.

My colleague went to see the vet and she told her to give them olive oil and milk sugar. This does not seem to help.

Does anyone have experiences with that? I remember K&L's Porch had this surgery but something like that would be the last solution.

[Russian Blue]

My vet always recommends some canned pumpkin (1/4 tsp) mixed into the cat food when they become constipated. But I don't think this would be good as a long term solution.

Your friend can't make the cats play? Or if she feeds them food, try putting the food on top of higher objects so the cats will have to climb to reach their food. If she has a staircase, she can start feeding them upstairs so the cats will have to climb the stairs to get to the food.

I would really try to make an effort to excercise the cats daily.

[slick]

I also have a 16-yr old female that sleeps all the time and since I work 12-hrs a day I don't get much time to play with her so I try to make it up on the weekends. She used to get "plugged up" all the time until I changed her diet to Medi-Cal High Fibre. She was on that for about 4 years with no constipation problems. I've recently had to change her again to a low-protein diet because of kidney problems but her BM's still remain good.

I agree with Russian Blue that more exercise will help. Good luck.

[krazyaboutkatz]

My RB Pepper had constipation problems too. He was on lactulose and this really seemed to help him. The vet has to prescribe this though. Good luck.