What to Give a Cat as a Laxative

Video Transcript

"If people have a need to give cats laxatives you really need to know what you are doing. One is for simple constipation is what usually you use a laxative for. Cats majority of times don't get constipated routinely. They might have a change in diet, and other things might be going on. But more than likely with those sorts of problems will cause stool to actually be very soft or have diarrhea more than being constipated. But if you do have a cat that is constipated, and you actually know that it is constipated then without, I mean you really do need to know that it is constipated. I mean there are lots of things that look like cats are constipated they could be straining, and they are going to the litter box a lot. With male cats could be actually trying to urinate or female cats could be trying to urinate, and they might have a urinary tract infection, and they might not be constipated. So if they actually are constipated there's a few things you can do sometimes just as a one time usage, and at other times as something more on a management level. One of the things I like to use as sometimes just as using it once or twice a product called Laxatone. It's a mineral oil based product, and this one is tuna flavored. And I have not found one that has mice flavored ones yet, but tuna seems to be pretty popular with cats. So this is a good product to use once a day for a couple of days that might help. You don't want to use regular mineral oil. It use to be before these products came out that some people might just get mineral oil and use that for a cat. But it's really, can be a really bad problem, because sometimes a cat actually aspirate the oil, and then you have got other problems in their lungs. So stay away from that. If you have a regular problem with cats being constipated for whatever reason sometimes just adding more fiber to the diet. One of the things they found by adding more fiber a product that people can take is called Metamucil. It's just a little high fiber product, and I have a bottle of Metamucil, well it's not Metamucil it is called Vetasyl. It's another veterinary product. These are just little capsules that can be used, but basically they are just full of a powder of Metamucil non-flavored you don't have to get the orange flavor whatever. And basically that much would just be a pinch or two, and you would start that with a cat. Now this takes a couple of days to take effect, so it would be more for long term management. More than just doing it as a one time use. The other thing is as far as fiber in a diet some people recently have been using canned pumpkin. The type of pumpkin you use for pumpkin mix as long as it doesn't have a lot of sugar in it. And using that to mix it in. Some cats seem to like the pumpkin, and that also adds a lot of fiber. So on a basic dietary management thing you can add the fiber. If it's one or two times or if you want to get rid of hairballs Laxatone is good. But be very, very careful that you absolutely know that your cat is constipated first before you do anything."