Coccidia in cats anyone?

[allanimals21]

So I took in my uncles cat when he passed a month or so ago. Well unknown to me he had coccidia. Well now him and my other cat both have it. I've been treating almost a month now. Twice now we have done albon. I clean out the litter box everyday and bleach it. Thought everything was going good. They have both been pooping solid log turds this entire time now. Up until last night and today he Simba has the diarrhea again. Samantha has not had any diarrhea this entire time. I feel absolutely horrible. I've raised Samantha since she was less than 24 hours old. Not once has she ever had a parasite or anything wrong with her. But now cuz my dumb butt took in Simba she has coccidia. I swear its a never ending battle. I had a kitten I had to put down a few years back because of damage from coccidia. I really need some advice and some happy ending stories please?! I can't take this anymore. I just got done crying my eyes out. Help

 

[mopargal1972]

I am a vet tech with 18 years experience. I can tell you that coccidia is VERY hard to get rid of in the environment. Albon is the best to treat the animals. The ONLY thing that will kill coccidia in the environment is extreme heat or cold. No chemicals will do it. Put the food dishes in the dishwasher if you have one. If not, use a steam cleaner or boil them. Better yet, replace them. I use a steam cleaner here at my house. Good luck!

 

[Whiskey Bay]

Lots of cats live with coccidia. Birds run rampant with coccidia and spread it everywhere. Cat eats infested bird or cat walks through infested bird poop then licks his paws,all kinds of scenarios. We had a couple of clients whose pups kept coming down with coccidia.One had multiple cats who come to find out carried it back and forth,and pup was raiding the kitty poop. Another lived out in the country and had a neighbor whose chickens and peacocks always flew over into her yard. She swore they never messed her yard till one day She finally witnessed the dog eating the poop after one of the peacocks.The diarreha in the one cat may be from something else.possibly eating something outside. Frogs,lizards,etc can cause the cats stomach to upset or irritate the bowels. Could be some type of gastric issue or something totally different. However even trying disinfecting everythingmay not help as it is so hard to irradicate from the area.

 

[treldib]

Ok...so back in August 2009 we went to the West Valley Animal Shelter (pretty state-of-the-art, no-kill shelter) and on a whim adopted a beautiful little Siamese Kitten. She weighed 2.1lbs at the time. We got her home and soon realized she was having horrible smelling diarrhea in her litter box. We took her to the vet and it was soon determined she had Coccidia. We gave her this nasty pink liquid stuff orally through a syringe twice a day for a few weeks. It seemed to be quite easy to get rid of and after the treatment was over, she was fine. Then, a few weeks after she left quarentine, she had a freak accident. She fell off the top of the stairwell and broke her left hind kneecap (patella). At first, we thought it was just a sprain or something but gradually her limp got worse until she was just dragging that leg around. We took her to our vet who, upon reviewing the xrays, said they could not operate on a wound like that. We ended up going to an orthopedic vet who promptly went into surgery on her. The kneecap was literally shattered to little bits. The whole operation cost over $4,000 and 2 months of slow recovery . She know is full grown and has a titanium pin in her knee. As she grew, so did her fur. We were stunned when we found out that she meets show standards for Traditional Balinese Cats (long-haired Siamese, google it) flawlessly. This is an incredible find in a shelter

. She is by far the most expensive free cat I've ever seen

Good Luck with your cats!

 

[patandchickens]

In my experience with coccidiosis in cats, it is not all that unusual to go through two or even three cycles of "treat the cat, it seems fine for a few weeks, then gets coccidia again and you have to re-treat". After that, as long as the cat has a normal immune system, it will develop immunity to (that strain and species) of coccidia.

So, while it is not realistic to expect to sterilize coccidial cysts from the cat's environment, neither is it NECESSARY. Time and immune systems take care of it. Honestly I've never done any bleaching or any of that with cats/kittens with coccidia, just normal sanitation (e.g. when they get diarrhea dripping all over the edge of the litter pan obviously I wipe it up well

), and never had any lingering problems.

If you are feeling really frustrated, or you have been through a second treatment cycle and recovery and this is the third resumption of coccidiosis-like diarrhea, I would suggest taking a fresh fecal sample to the vet to be run for coccidia and also for worm eggs. If it IS a reinfection of coccidia you would want to know so you can treat appropriately, and if it is NOT then you would want to know THAT too so you can either treat for worms (if that seems to be the problem) or search for the real cause of the new diarrhea.

Good luck,

Pat

 

[allanimals21]

Quote:
Ive been reading that alot...that time will help. I have had them tested twice. What we do it treat for 5 days. Then wait 2 weeks and test. I hope this goes away. I think alot of it might be the stress for Simba switching homes?

 

[AinaWGSD]

Chin up, coccidia is rarely (in my experience anyway) severe enough in cats to cause fatal complications. If both of these cats are adults with a healthy immune system, then you simply need to keep treating the coccidia. I work for a vet, and the first thing we tell people when we find coccidia on fecals is that it can be very difficult to treat. If repeated treatments with albon have not worked, you might ask your vet about treating with fenbendazole (panacur). We will switch to fenbendazole in cases where repeated treatments have not been effective. Coccidia can cause a bacterial overgrowth which may be contributing to the diarrhea, so it may be worth having a gram stain done to be sure that you don't need antibiotics or probiotics for that. For that matter, probiotics may not be a bad move in general with so much going on in the GI on these kitties.

On a side note, coccidia is species specific. Cats, dogs, and birds can all get coccidia. But dogs can not get coccidia from cats, cats can't get it from birds, etc. For a while we were having issues with some odd looking coccidia repeatedly showing up in canine fecal floats even after treatment. We finally sent the fecals to an outside lab, which confirmed that they were not from a coccidia infestation in the dogs but a pass-through coccidia from rabbits. The dogs were eating rabbit poop and the rabbit coccidia was showing up on the dog's fecals.

 

[allanimals21]

Quote:
Yea Simba is 4 almost 5 and Samantha is going to be 2 next month. It will work out. I'm trying to stay positive. The vet said if this albon round doesn't work we will try something else in 2 weeks.

 

[paxicotrader]

Quote:
I'm finding this discussion really late in the game, but I was wondering if you could tell me what symptoms your cats had that tipped you off to coccidia. I rescued a litter of kittens and they are almost 6 weeks old now. Playing and eating and acting normal, but they are also have runny yellow poop and their anus/rectums look a bit swollen and irritated. I'm suspecting bacteria.

And I'm relieved to hear coccidia is species specific because I was SO worried the kittens got it from our huge flock of chickens!

 

[allanimals21]

Quote:
I'm finding this discussion really late in the game, but I was wondering if you could tell me what symptoms your cats had that tipped you off to coccidia. I rescued a litter of kittens and they are almost 6 weeks old now. Playing and eating and acting normal, but they are also have runny yellow poop and their anus/rectums look a bit swollen and irritated. I'm suspecting bacteria.

And I'm relieved to hear coccidia is species specific because I was SO worried the kittens got it from our huge flock of chickens!

Simba really wasnt showing any signs....I noticed worms in his poop so I decided to have a fecal run and it came back positive. We battled diarrhea and nasty at that for months. Knock on wood he's pooping solid and doing alot better. Many dif. meds and B-12 shots weekly...yea long expensive road. As far as my outside cats when they've battled it its usually diarrhea really bad. Sometimes their whole backends look like someone splashed water on them.