Sallyanne, which test did you have done? I am wondering if there is a chance you got a false negative?

For chronic diarrhea, following advice for IBD cats seems to work for a lot of people, that was how I achieved control with my cat Indigo before I knew it was TF.

There is a great IBD forum on Yahoo http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/FelineIBD/ They will have lots of suggestions for you try before you are forced into taking the steroid route.

Also, what prescription diet are you using?

http://www.catinfo.org/commercialcannedfoods.htm has a great list of commercially available grainless canned cat foods, these work for a lot of IBD cats and certainly helped in our case.

I am interested to know which dry food the vet has your cat on, I know a friend of mine was paying a fortune for a prescription diet (I think it was a venison and pea or duck and pea formula), and we then found out that Natural Balance Venison and Pea http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/cat...as/VenCat.html worked just as well and was far cheaper and available without prescription. It gets great reviews on Petco's site. http://www.petco.com/Shop/Product.aspx?familyid=13792

Of course it would depend on which type of formula your vet has your cat on, if it is an allergy formula then the Natural Balance might at least work in it's place.