How to Relieve Cat Constipation

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Marcia Martin and we're here at Safe Harbor Animal Rescue in Jupiter, Florida. Today we're going to talk a little bit about how to relieve constipation in a cat. The easiest way to prevent constipation in your cat is to feed a species appropriate diet. Cats should never be fed kibble, that's the dry crunchy diet that most of us are used to feeding cats, bad idea. Cats need either a high quality grain free canned or a raw food diet that most mimics what they would be eating in the wild and helps their gut act in the way it's supposed to act and move and digest the way it's supposed to digest. Now if your cat for some reason is mildly constipated, generally the easiest thing to do is just add a little fiber to the diet either by using canned pumpkin pie filling and surprisingly a lot of cats actually like that and will eat it. You can also get psyllium which is available at most health food stores and you can just add a tiny amount to each meal until things start to move through. Increasing water consumption will also help things move through the cat's system a little bit better. Stay away from things like mineral oil and other types of oils because they can be inhaled easily and cause an aspiration pneumonia which is a very serious medical condition and it's just not worth taking that risk. If constipation becomes a chronic issue with your cat, you definitely need to seek the help of your veterinary to find out if there's an underlying medical condition that is causing your cat not to pass stool. And that's pretty much how you prevent constipation in your cat."