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How to treat stray cats with diarrhea if I can't touch them?

Updated on September 23rd, 2025

Pet's info: Cat | Mixed Breed | Female | 3 lbs

Hello. I am feeding 16 stray cats at my house, various in size and age, and weight is ranging from 3-8 lbs (estimate). I noticed that almost all of them are having really bad diarrhea, yellow liquidy with slime, sometimes with a little blood, dripping everywhere on my property. I can see many of then have very swollen and red butt holes. I can only feed them food and water but can't touch them. Is there anything I can put in food and water for all of them to eat to cure them?

1 Answer

Most Helpful Answer

Jeffrey Milner

Answered By Jeffrey Milner

Veterinarian

Published on March 31st, 2018

Sounds like the first thing I would do is try and deworm all these kitties, as this could very well be the reason for their diarrhea / general GI issues. There are many different oral dewormer products, some of which are pills while others are liquids. If you can't touch them but you are confident that you can feed each one individually (without another cat snagging food), you can sneak Drontal tablets into each of the cat's daily feeding in some wet food. The dose may be slightly different depending on weight - the product is over the counter with the doses written on the back of the bottle. Unfortunately, if this is the not the case and you can't be sure who is getting what, there really is no safe / fool proof way to treat this sort of thing. There are liquid products but you won't be sure if they got it all, or if they will take it at all because of the taste of the product. My suggestion would be to put out humane traps, catch them one by one, and deworm them this way. This would also give you the opportunity to get them to a low - cost spay / neuter facility to be fixed if that is an option. Hope this makes sense.
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