Thanks for the info. I'm going to look into the eosinophlic cells to learn more about it. Jimmy was brought into the SPCA after he was found wandering the streets skin and bones and the worst case of diarrhea they'd ever seen. The vet hospital that he was taken to put him in isolation for a month and they treated him with metronidazole and then put him onto prednisone. He got better and then he turned into the 'clinic cat' at the hospital and lived there for almost a year. They needed to find a home for him so I took him and that was about 5 years ago.
I have his records and a real diagnosis was never made. It was assumed that he had IBD and that if pred. helped then he should stay on it. As well, his breathing problems, a soft wheezy sound was assumed to be asthma and they told me that the pred. should help that too. Then they switched him to prednisilone because it was better for his system than prednisone. Anyway, I'll try and cut this short.... I ended up taking him to my vet a few months ago (a different vet) because he was losing weight and just didn't look good. They did some xrays and didn't find anything. I told the vet that he had asthma and she said that it was strange because the xrays didn't show asthma symptoms like narrowing of the airways. The thing is though that he does wheeze and has done so since they found him on the streets and the pred does seem to help and the asthma pump that I use on occasion does seem to help too but I think it's time that I took Jimmy to a holistic vet as you suggested. He stopped losing weight and looks healthy now but he still has wheezy sounds and still has very soft stools. His dosage of pred is 2.5mg every other day so it's not that high but if he doesn't need to be on it than I'd like to get him off it. I'm wondering if his condition of IBD and asthma are connected and are actually something else entirely.
I did switch him to the Innova Evo a few months ago and it really seemed to upset his stomach. He was racing to his box so many times a day and very urgently and his stools were like water so I switched him back to Medi-cal Preventive.