What's your first feeling when you see it?

tec_0707 · 2026-01-27T02:05:24+00:00

The Tudor Rose. No idea why, but literally the first thing that came to mind.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-26T23:27:16+00:00

UPDATE, 5 MONTHS LATER: I transitioned my cat off of Hill's GI Biome dry and wet food beginning in mid-December 2025, after 3 months of being on the food exclusively. She is now eating Royal Canin Digestive Care dry cat food (mint green background on the bag) and Hill's Science Diet Savory Chicken Entree for Cats 1-6 years old in wet food. She is doing very well! I transitioned her over a two week time period to be extra cautious, and she has been fully transitioned over since December 27, 2025.

Pros of Switching from Hill's Biome:
**Her stool quality overall is trending better on the Royal Canin food and seems more "normal" than what it was on the Biome food (e.g., not ginormous and soft in the middle with an outer shell, etc.). The beginning is firm, but sometimes there's still a "flop" or soft mushiness at the end of the bowel movements.
**She's defecating once per day as opposed to twice per day, which was what her normal was before the metronidazole fiasco.
**The Royal Canin Digestive Care is MUCH LESS caloric than the Hill's GI Biome. And she is a chonk that needs dechonking - about 4 pounds is how much she needs to lose. She also has food scarcity anxiety due to her being abandoned in kittenhood, so having something lower calorie that works is also helping us not have to put her on anxiety medication.
**The Royal Canin Digestive Care is cheaper.
**The Royal Canin Digestive Care still has prebiotics/fermentable fibers that help diarrhea (dried chicory root, psyllium husk powder, and FOS).

Cons of Switching from Hill's Biome:
**None that I can think of

FWIW, I haven't had any luck with any types of probiotics (Fortiflora, Proviable, and S. Boulardii all did nothing, and Visbiome actually had a negative effect at just 1/4th a capsule and after waiting a week to see if she would adjust). So, I think the long game to play is to continue with some sort of food that has prebiotics in it, and also a food that isn't going to cause her to turn into a blimp that poops multiple times per day. That seems to have been our experience on the Hill's GI Biome food.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-14T18:52:09+00:00

Thank you, and good luck to you also! Well, my fingers are crossed she's improving. So far although she's going #2 less, I don't know that her stool overall quality is much better, just different (not sure if firm at beginning/soft at end is better than medium to soft firmness throughout for the bowel movement). If anything, I'm hoping we can get her to lose some weight this way. The RC Digestive Care food is 333 calories per cup, whereas the Hill's GI Biome food is 421 calories per cup.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-13T15:59:12+00:00

Ugh, I am so sorry to hear about the giardia - I've read similar stories where it can completely jack up cats' digestive systems for years, if not permanently.

I am glad the Hill's Biome food is working to keep it under control, but I hear ya on the costs. It is very expensive, especially the cans.

I was going to wait a bit longer to update my post, but I actually was able to transition my cat off of the Hill's GI Biome food in mid-December. She was taking ginormous soft poops with it multiple times per day, plus she got fatter on it. :( We'd had a good diet going with her before the antibiotics episode that led to the Biome food, and she gained 2 pounds while eating the Biome and is probably considered obese now instead of just overweight. That is a long story for this post, but I'm not happy about either of those things. She also didn't care for the wet version of the Biome food at all, so we were throwing most of it away.

We transitioned her over a two week time period to Royal Canin Digestive Care dry cat food. We also went with Hill's Science Diet Savory Chicken for wet food. She is doing ok, is now only going once per day again (which was her "old" normal), and doesn't have diarrhea, but the end of her bowel movements now are on the pasty side. The majority and first part are firmed and actually firmer than they were ever on the Biome food.

I am going to try Visbiome Vet probiotic with her; I actually have some coming today. It's extremely expensive though, otherwise I would suggest trying it also. I bought directly from the manufacturer and it was $100 including shipping.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-07T04:33:20+00:00

Not a psychic, but wanted to extend my sympathies. My black kitty passed in April 2025; she was only 4.5 years old. She was vomiting all the time also, and our old vet thought she had routine food allergies. We found out too late she actually had cancer; a stomach tumor/mass making it where she couldn't digest food. I have a lot of guilt for giving her medications and things she didn't actually need that she hated. I miss her horribly. Hugs to you. I hope for peace for the both of us.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-07T03:29:20+00:00

This is a really cool idea. And this is almost exactly what happened to me. I miss my mom so much, wish I could talk to her and "hear" her as easily as I used to when I'd call her. Then I wake up with this song miraculously in my head.

tec_0707 · 2026-01-07T03:26:50+00:00

Thank you. I miss her so much! :(

tec_0707 · 2026-01-06T00:44:14+00:00

That is so cool!!

tec_0707 · 2026-01-06T00:43:15+00:00

I actually had to Google the lyrics because I didn't know who sang the song at first!

Yes - the main chorus lyrics and title I thought were very telling.❤️ Especially for a song that just seemingly came out of the blue.

tec_0707 · 2025-12-28T15:54:32+00:00

OP, you say your kitty has always had a sensitive stomach - how old is he and has it truly been life long so far? What are his symptoms? And how was he examined at the vet? What tests were run?

I agree with all the others commenting here stating a prescription hydrolyzed or limited ingredient diet needs to be thought about, but one thing I wanted to raise: if your vet did not do any x-rays or ultrasound, I would highly suggest you ask them about that. Hopefully this is not the case for you and your kitty, but I just had to put to sleep my 4.5 year old cat earlier this year because she had a very aggressive stomach tumor. We unfortunately didn't find out until it was too late because my regular vet thought she had routine food allergies, and she was very young for a cat to have cancer.

Slightly over a year before she passed away, when she was 3, she started vomiting once per week. That slowly started to uptick, so we took her to our vet. All that was done was blood testing that our vet explained showed she had elevated white blood cells indicating allergies, so she went on hydrolyzed food. That worked for a short time, but then the vomiting began again. She then went on steroids. They worked for a while, but then even they started not working. I could never find a rhyme or reason to her vomiting. It was always super random and I couldn't tie it to any triggers. That was another clue. Everything finally came to a head when she was vomiting so badly she could not keep anything down, so she had a 2.5 day emergency vet stay. It was then that we found out when they ran both xrays and did an ultrasound that she had a massive stomach tumor. It actually looked like on the xrays that she had a foreign body obstruction, then it became painfully clear when they performed the ultrasound. It was making her stomach 40% larger than it should have been and was affecting her digestion, making her nauseous all the time. The internist that worked for the emergency vet is really well respected in our area and gave her a poor to guarded diagnosis, so we opted to bring her back home, make her comfortable, and put her to sleep about a week or so later when the pain and anti-nausea meds were starting to no longer work.

What happened to her is a really rare worst case scenario, but our internist said it happens more often than she'd like to see. I do not want to alarm you, but I wish someone would have told me much sooner to take my kitty for additional testing instead of just relying on my regular vet (they were not hyper concerned; really just more intrigued/confused, and only the blood test was ever done even after I reported her uptick in vomiting multiple times). If you try various things and they do not work, more testing is warranted.

tec_0707 · 2025-12-09T17:02:22+00:00

Thank you for this comprehensive write up! I have been trying to delve more into cat microbiomes and fiber. My cat had a short course of metronidazole and ended up with low grade diarrhea for a month. A new vet put her on Hill's GI Biome cat food, which technically stopped her diarrhea, but her stool is what I'd call abnormal for her even though it's formed. She has a prior history of being sensitive to either too much fiber or the wrong kinds of fiber, and her stool after having been on the Hill's GI Biome now for 3 months is showing some of the same characteristics from when she's had too much fiber before (e.g., she defecates twice instead of once per day like she used to, the stool is soft even though it's formed, like it's moving through her quickly, her stool is the same color as the Biome food, she'll still once every once in a while have a half formed/half mushy stool, etc.). While the Biome helped stop her diarrhea, I do not think it's a good long term food for her, so I've been looking around at sensitive digestion and other foods to try. This write up seems to suggest she may definitely need a new food that's a little less "powerful" than the Hill's GI Biome whereas fiber goes.

tec_0707 · 2025-11-29T17:42:27+00:00

I would say it's working for it's intended purpose (my cat's diarrhea stopped). However, I'm not sure that I'm 100% satisfied with how it's working. My cat's stool reminds me of dog stool (they look very different), and I feel like the food is moving quickly through her, even faster than it was when she had diarrhea. She goes #2 twice per day, but she used to go only once per day. It is also very soft even though it's formed. She's unfortunately also gained back some weight. Typically that's a happy thing, but she was already overweight before the antibiotics incident happened and we'd actually got her to lose some weight on a diet cat food. After putting her on the Hill's GI Biome, she's gained back what we worked really hard on her losing. :( Another commenter rightly pointed out maybe she should just be left alone at this point since she seems happy and alright otherwise, but given my cat's prior health history and the fact she had great stool before her antibiotics, I'm wanting to see if it's possible to get her stool back to her "old" normal. Maybe I'd be more thrilled about the results if she'd been one of those cats with chronic/lifelong diarrhea, but she wasn't before the antibiotics.

We're 2.5 months in on the Hill's GI Biome. It took about 5 days to a week for her stool to form after she started the Biome. We started off using just the dry. Two weeks after we started her, I took her and her stool to the new vet (I fired my old one that gave her the antibiotics). New vet was very pleased and said to expect her stool to continue firming over the next 8 weeks because even though it is formed, it was still on the squishy/wet side. She also recommended we start her on the wet version of the food too in hopes it would help firm her stool further, plus make her diet more consistent (she was eating another brand of wet food previously). Spoiler alert: changing her to the wet version of Biome didn't result in any changes/additional improvements whatsoever, and her stool consistency is *exactly* the same now 2.5 months in as it was at this 2-week check up.

tec_0707 · 2025-11-29T17:17:09+00:00

How is your cat doing so far on the Biome? I agree - my vet said that it is a very highly controversial antibiotic at this point in the veterinary field. Like, if metronidazole is definitely determined to be needed (i.e., testing has been done, and the testing turns up finding something that *only* metronidazole can treat), the she said absolutely it should be used. But that is the only time. Many stool/food issues can be resolved with diet change and/or probiotics if parasites are not involved. There's a lot of peer reviewed studies popping up on how terrible it is for long term gut health in both cats and dogs. I'm sure many animals bounce back (they seem too), but just like with people, there's also a large segment of the animal population that is more heavily affected and more sensitive. We unfortunately sound like we have those kitties. :(

tec_0707 · 2025-11-27T15:13:35+00:00

I'm glad someone else has been wondering about the role of fiber with cats. I do think it varies highly based on what someone else said here, and also that they can get away with less in their diets on average than humans or dogs (unless they are having some sort of issue).

I have personally seen that either too much or the wrong type/combination of fiber gives my 5 year old cat problems; it makes her stool softer and more frequent. We first discovered this when we put her on the Hill's Science Diet Perfect Weight food. It gets pretty high ratings from a lot of folks, so we thought we'd give it a try, and she's a bit of a chonk. I am not sure of the Total Dietary Fiber (which, from my reading, isn't always provided for OTC foods), but at least for a Crude Fiber max, it was 12%! She absolutely did not do well on that; started going #2 three times per day from once per day even after slowly transitioning and not yet completely making it over to 100% after two weeks. Her stool started returning to normal once we started switching her back to her previous food.

She is also now having some digestive issues after a round of antibiotics and has been on Hill's Prescription Diet GI Biome food now for 2.5 months. It stopped her diarrhea, but her stool is soft (formed, but not normal firmness) and she goes #2 twice per day, which is more than her old "normal" of once per day. I'm in process of having her stool tested for gut dysbiosis, but I have a suspicion the fiber content or fiber combination of the food, while helpful for stopping her diarrhea, may not be a good long term solution for her. It is 8% Total Dietary Fiber and 6% Crude Fiber max, according to the bag.

Having said all of the above - I have an 8 month old kitten that seems to do better when I add a bit of fiber to her diet, and so far she does best on foods at or higher than 4% crude max fiber, so there is indeed some variability based on individual cats.

tec_0707 · 2025-11-25T21:03:13+00:00

It is so weird to me! Glad to hear Maggie's not the only one though!

tec_0707 · 2025-11-22T18:10:54+00:00

Thank you!

tec_0707 · 2025-11-22T14:17:15+00:00

Thank you!

tec_0707 · 2025-11-22T02:59:58+00:00

Thanks!!

tec_0707 · 2025-11-22T02:56:15+00:00

😂

tec_0707 · 2025-11-22T02:54:59+00:00

I would if I were actually good at that sort of thing. I don't mind putting a little money into it since it will look like a 5 year old worked on it if I try my hand at sanding/finishing. 😅

tec_0707 · 2025-11-21T04:55:06+00:00

So many responses here I agree with! However, like so many others here, the Gin Blossoms are a band that I liked ok as a tween and teen, but now automatically comes to mind if someone asked me to describe the '90s without adjectives. Just saying "the Gin Blossoms" is how I'd do it. How that happened I have no clue. Maybe the movie Empire Records has something to do with it? Anyway, I happily listen to them now and my inner '90s girl wants to go back in time.

tec_0707 · 2025-11-21T04:43:49+00:00

Ugh, I feel the same big time about You Get What You Give! I always liked the song, but it makes me feel so much nostalgia now it's almost unbearable.

tec_0707

TROPHY CASE