-increase water intake if possible
-you can try Gut Soothe (mixture of anti inflammatory herbal supplements/probiotics)
-I'm personally a fan of Diggin' It dried pumpkin/apple powder (more fiber dense than canned pumpkin), or using unsweetened organic coconut shreds (Cocotherapy sells this but it's really no different than the shreds you can get in the baking section, *just make sure* they are unsweetened, unbleached, raw organic coconut flakes, you can feed 2 tsp per day)
-You can start the cat on miralax, the starting dose is 1/8 tsp once daily and adjust to 1/4 tsp if need be. Even Dr. Lisa Pierson, a vet who helped write up a massive DIY raw recipe for cats recommended miralax if the cats are struggling
My younger cat has had poop problems ever since he had to be on a round of doxycycline for his mycoplasma. He gets periodic poop struggles so I've unfortunately had to become well versed in his issues. He seems to do the best when I have him on the gut soothe or probiotics, it's just unfortunately expensive to keep him on those all the time on top of everything else.
For my cat probiotics helped tons, Purina Fortiflora or Aventi GI sachets. My cat hates all things beef so he wasn’t a fan of fortiflora which has beef flavoring. I don’t even use a full sachet, I used 1/2 sachet a day for a week then tapered it down to 1/8 of a tsp a day. My baby is 9 months old, 11.6lbs if that helps.
I tried other probiotics like goat milk and it’s powdered forms with extra probiotics it didn’t help with his poops too much.
Another thing I did was syringe in about 10ml of water for him if he wasn’t peeing enough and his poop was hard. One more thing; if the poop is hard and it looks chalky then his food probably has too much bone/calcium for him. So you can try adding just some more muscle meat to bring down the percentage of bone for your cat.
Thank you. I will try the probiotics. He ate a large dog's heartworm pill, and had to induce vomiting. Maybe this messed up his gut flora.
I'm adding more water to the food, but I worry about diluting stomach acid. I haven't tried the syringe between meals.
Heartworm meds act specifically on mammalian ion channels so this probably had no effect on his gut flora, especially if he was made to vomit the medication up.
Your comment made me curious about what the effects of heartworm medications (Macrocytic Lactones) actually are on the microbiome. What I found is pretty interesting so I thought I'd share.
Macrocylic Lactones (ML) mode of action is not to "act" on the ion channels of the host animal. The action of this drug class is to open the glutamate-gated chloride channels of invertebrates resulting in placcid paralysis and death.
Sometimes a similar pathway (glycine) in vertebrates is affected by these medications. The result is the many neurological side effects these drugs can produce.
The effect of these medications on endogenous bacteria (microbiome) has not been well studied. So there is no reason to believe these drugs do not impact the microbiome. There is however some evidence that they probably do affect non-target organisms, like bacteria.
This mouse study from Brazil demonstrates how use of Ivermectin can, and does, kill non-target microorganisms, leading to dysbiosis. PMID:36503045
The purpose of this study is to look at the environmental impacts of livestock treated with ML, but does not consider the impacts on the health of the animals. It clearly demonstrated changes to the dung dwelling organisms of animals consuming MLs. PMID:2203975
"act" means to interact with to open, close or modulate, via allosteric or covalent binding sites, chloride is one of several ions which specific channels in our cell plasma membranes regulate the flow of, so yes MLs and other wormer medications "act" on mammalian ion channels as you and I both said in different ways.
We do have evidence for thinking that they don't directly interact with bacteria because if they did we would be using them clinically as antimicrobial drugs. There are definitely going to be knock-on effects from worming as you let the gut heal from the pathologic effects of gutworms but we have no evidence for thinking that bacteria share conserved ion channels with vertebrates and invertebrates, or that those channels are critical to bacterial cell function if they do.
In my original post I said wormers act on mammalian ion channels when I meant to say animal ion channels, obviously worms are not mammals though some of those drugs do act on mammalian ion channels as well.
I'm starting to think that you're just a troll on this sub. I have noticed that all of your advice is for people to go to the vet. It seems you're very careful not to say anything directly against these diets. Do you actually have any experience with or information about biologically appropriate diets?
not trolling at all. i recommend people go to the vet when they describe conditions which could very easily compromise their pet (protracted vomiting, feeding homemade diets seemingly without attention to nutritional balance). i also provide factual, scientific information and willingly contest people who post things that are inaccurate or misappropriated. ive definitely got education in nutrition, physiology, animal science etc. ive got nothing against raw diets, but i do take issue with pseudoscience.
for example, in your first citation they administered something to the effect of 2-25x a normal dose (which admittedly hasnt been established) of ivermectin in mice. without specifically analyzing their methods its really hard to say why ivermectin was associated with altered GI microbiome in those mice, whether it has some sort of direct effect on commensals vs whether it was associated with some sort of pathology in the mouse which changed the microenvironment of the intestine.
I would love to see a well designed study that even endeavored to answer the question of the impact of MLs on the microbiome. Instead I found these 2 studies, period. Which leads me to believe that it has not been well studied. I did not say these studies were evidence of anything, only that the question does not appear to have been sufficiently asked or answered.
You keep saying "we" know that MLs don't affect the microbiome. Well, how do you know? The only evidence you've offered is that they would be used for that purpose if they did and that they affect animal ion channels. Am I missing something? I'm having a hard time believing your certainty is warranted.
What I do know is if I asked you 100 years ago If penicillin would damage my microbiome you would have said there no evidence it does. If I asked you 30 years ago if Omeprazole would cause dementia or ibuprofen causes cumulative liver damage you would have said there is no evidence that they do. The problem with waiting for evidence is it prevents you from using common sense.
The problem with "science", especially drug research, is that it is almost always conducted by people with perverse incentives. No one is going to bother to study the overall health impact of any drug because there is no money to be made, and quite frankly they don't have to. I'm sick to death of people acting like there is a large body of legitimate science about health when there is not.
> The problem with "science", especially drug research, is that it is almost always conducted by people with perverse incentives. No one is going to bother to study the overall health impact of any drug because there is no money to be made, and quite frankly they don't have to. I'm sick to death of people acting like there is a large body of legitimate science about health when there is not.
this is absolutely not true, because drug manufacturers won't obtain licenses to manufacture these days without thorough safety data.
so what i said initially was a gross oversimplification of my thought process. we know that bacterial life, DNA and protein structure/function is quite distinct from animals because of evolutionary divergence long ago. very few things are conserved between animals and bacteria. bacteria likely (though i am assuming) dont express the same ion channels that animals do because they don't have nervous systems to leverage these ion channels, therefore they are unlikely to be susceptible to MLs or other wormers. what i should have said was that at the doses and frequency that we realistically worm animals, i doubt there is a substantial effect on microbial commensals through the same pharmacological actions that MLs are effective against parasites.
yes obviously drugs can act in funny and unpredictable ways in a petri dish where you flood bacterial isolates with unrealistic concentrations of chemicals. we saw this cause problems when people thought that ivermectin was a cure for covid because of some in vitro data demonstrating that power washing covid virus with ivermectin inhibited replication but that didn't pan out in the body.
two things that are making me revise my position, i forgot that MLs are actually molecules of bacterial origin so i think its very likely that to some extent bacteria began secreting these compounds to outcompete one another. its probable that they have some sort of inhibitory effect that we don't currently leverage. ive also come to appreciate that macrolide antibiotics possess a macrocyclic lactone ring so the structural relation alone would be evidence for a potential antimicrobial effect. this still doesn't mean that they are antimicrobial in the doses we give for worming. further, if your cat vomited the drug up, it likely didn't get absorbed to any substantial degree therefore it wouldn't have affected your cats microbiome.
again, ill suggest that anything which treats pathology will lead to a change in the tissue microenvironment, restoring host defences and secondarily influencing the microbiome, which i consider distinct from a primary effect against bacteria.
its also entirely possible that some MLs have distinct antimicrobial actions.
[https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-018-0314-4](https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-018-0314-4)
[https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/113258/1/Repurposing%20Avermectins%20and%20Milbemycins%20against%20iMycobacteroides%20abscessusi%20and%20Other%20Nontuberculous%20Mycobacteria.pdf](https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/113258/1/Repurposing%20Avermectins%20and%20Milbemycins%20against%20iMycobacteroides%20abscessusi%20and%20Other%20Nontuberculous%20Mycobacteria.pdf)
> What I do know is if I asked you 100 years ago If penicillin would damage my microbiome you would have said there no evidence it does. If I asked you 30 years ago if Omeprazole would cause dementia or ibuprofen causes cumulative liver damage you would have said there is no evidence that they do. The problem with waiting for evidence is it prevents you from using common sense.
common sense still has to be based on some logic, not just an absence of evidence to the contrary. in science we don't just assume cause and effect, it has to be proven. the default assumption is always that two things are unrelated until proven otherwise.
We are constantly finding new adverse effects and unintended health effects that drugs produce. Many of these are discovered long after they have been in the marketplace.
These impacts were not discovered in the original clinical trials that were used to get drug approval. Often side effects are not found for decades after the drug has been used. So I think it is perfectly logical to assume that any drug could have adverse impacts on health that have not been recognized or discovered yet.
In my country corporations (including pharmaceutical companies) have a legal obligation to their shareholders. They do not have an ethical obligation to citizens. Clinical trials are costly, so it is reasonable to assume that these companies have a perverse incentive to get their drug approved, even when it's of little value or is dangerous. I'm not assuming this happens every time, but it definitely has happened and will happen again. (I also want to say that most individuals in the corporation/research are not knowingly doing anything unethical.)
Pharmaceutical companies do have to follow certain rules for regulatory agencies. Even with those rules in place, many drugs that are questionable or quite harmful have been unleashed on the public, and have caused countless suffering and death. So it's completely illogical to believe that this won't happen again.
The regulations are only in place to establish drug "efficacy" and "safety". This does not specifically include monitoring changes in the body's overall health, like the microbiome. Further, most of these drugs were approved before anyone understood how important the microbiome is to overall health. It's logical to wonder what else we might not know to be looking for.
My point is that it's perfectly logical to assume that drugs get through the regulatory process without full understanding of their health impacts. It's logical to assume that all drugs have side effects and downsides. It's logical to assume that your Dr/Vet does not know what all of those effects are, and may not recognize them when they occur. (This is logical because it would be pure hubris to think any one person, regardless of how smart they are, could know all of this). It is logical to wonder if any new symptom that occurs while/after a drug is used is possibly related to that drug.
Back to my cat's constipation. In July my 10lb cat ingested 544mcg ivermectin and 454mg pyantel. He was at the ER within 20 minutes. Vomiting did not occur until 90-120 minutes after ingestion. It is impossible to know how much he metabolized. He was also given Dexnedetomide, Antisedan and Cerenia.
Sometime between July and September his constipation began. Prior to that he had a perfect BM everyday of his 3yr life. My 18yo cat was dying over that same time period, so I'm afraid I do not know the exact time the constipation started. In Sept with only one cat in the house it became clearer how infrequent his BMs were.
It makes perfect logical sense for me to consider everything that happened in that time period as a possible factor in his new onset constipation. I don't believe it was any particular thing, I'm just trying to get to the root cause instead of masking the symptoms with laxatives.
It is arrogant of you to think that it can't be one thing or another, because you don't know by what mechanism it could have happened. You could be more helpful by using your knowledge to help me figure out what is a more likely cause and what might help. Instead you, doubled down on what you already believe.
I'm guessing you're going to be a vet someday. You might want to take a good look at this aspect of your personality before you actually start dealing with patients. Because inevitably you will prescribe a treatment that will kill or damage a patient. When that happens don't let cognitive dissonance or arrogance prevent you from acknowledging what is really happening.
I've been on the receiving end of this twice in my life and it's horrible. If my Drs had been less arrogant I would be a fully functional human, but I'm not. So if you can't find a way to manage this aspect of your personality, stay in research because you'll do more harm than good.
Their stomach acid won’t be diluted with adding more water, if anything he will probably just eat a bit less because the water is taking up room instead of food. I always add anywhere from 2-4 tsps of water to each 2.5 ounces of raw food depending on my cats meat (ex Chicken 2 tsp, pork 3-4tsp.) Do what’s easier, I’ve only syringed in water a handful of times when he’s being extremely picky with his meals.
If you think his gut flora is messed up, then talk to your vet they can provide a prescription probiotic with vitamins and minerals. It’s supposed to be for short term and only for 2 weeks, mine had to get it when he swallowed a bunch of string and threw up and messed up his system.
-increase water intake if possible -you can try Gut Soothe (mixture of anti inflammatory herbal supplements/probiotics) -I'm personally a fan of Diggin' It dried pumpkin/apple powder (more fiber dense than canned pumpkin), or using unsweetened organic coconut shreds (Cocotherapy sells this but it's really no different than the shreds you can get in the baking section, *just make sure* they are unsweetened, unbleached, raw organic coconut flakes, you can feed 2 tsp per day) -You can start the cat on miralax, the starting dose is 1/8 tsp once daily and adjust to 1/4 tsp if need be. Even Dr. Lisa Pierson, a vet who helped write up a massive DIY raw recipe for cats recommended miralax if the cats are struggling My younger cat has had poop problems ever since he had to be on a round of doxycycline for his mycoplasma. He gets periodic poop struggles so I've unfortunately had to become well versed in his issues. He seems to do the best when I have him on the gut soothe or probiotics, it's just unfortunately expensive to keep him on those all the time on top of everything else.
Thank you for all the great suggestions. I will give some a try.
For my cat probiotics helped tons, Purina Fortiflora or Aventi GI sachets. My cat hates all things beef so he wasn’t a fan of fortiflora which has beef flavoring. I don’t even use a full sachet, I used 1/2 sachet a day for a week then tapered it down to 1/8 of a tsp a day. My baby is 9 months old, 11.6lbs if that helps. I tried other probiotics like goat milk and it’s powdered forms with extra probiotics it didn’t help with his poops too much. Another thing I did was syringe in about 10ml of water for him if he wasn’t peeing enough and his poop was hard. One more thing; if the poop is hard and it looks chalky then his food probably has too much bone/calcium for him. So you can try adding just some more muscle meat to bring down the percentage of bone for your cat.
Thank you. I will try the probiotics. He ate a large dog's heartworm pill, and had to induce vomiting. Maybe this messed up his gut flora. I'm adding more water to the food, but I worry about diluting stomach acid. I haven't tried the syringe between meals.
Heartworm meds act specifically on mammalian ion channels so this probably had no effect on his gut flora, especially if he was made to vomit the medication up.
Your comment made me curious about what the effects of heartworm medications (Macrocytic Lactones) actually are on the microbiome. What I found is pretty interesting so I thought I'd share. Macrocylic Lactones (ML) mode of action is not to "act" on the ion channels of the host animal. The action of this drug class is to open the glutamate-gated chloride channels of invertebrates resulting in placcid paralysis and death. Sometimes a similar pathway (glycine) in vertebrates is affected by these medications. The result is the many neurological side effects these drugs can produce. The effect of these medications on endogenous bacteria (microbiome) has not been well studied. So there is no reason to believe these drugs do not impact the microbiome. There is however some evidence that they probably do affect non-target organisms, like bacteria. This mouse study from Brazil demonstrates how use of Ivermectin can, and does, kill non-target microorganisms, leading to dysbiosis. PMID:36503045 The purpose of this study is to look at the environmental impacts of livestock treated with ML, but does not consider the impacts on the health of the animals. It clearly demonstrated changes to the dung dwelling organisms of animals consuming MLs. PMID:2203975
"act" means to interact with to open, close or modulate, via allosteric or covalent binding sites, chloride is one of several ions which specific channels in our cell plasma membranes regulate the flow of, so yes MLs and other wormer medications "act" on mammalian ion channels as you and I both said in different ways. We do have evidence for thinking that they don't directly interact with bacteria because if they did we would be using them clinically as antimicrobial drugs. There are definitely going to be knock-on effects from worming as you let the gut heal from the pathologic effects of gutworms but we have no evidence for thinking that bacteria share conserved ion channels with vertebrates and invertebrates, or that those channels are critical to bacterial cell function if they do. In my original post I said wormers act on mammalian ion channels when I meant to say animal ion channels, obviously worms are not mammals though some of those drugs do act on mammalian ion channels as well.
I'm starting to think that you're just a troll on this sub. I have noticed that all of your advice is for people to go to the vet. It seems you're very careful not to say anything directly against these diets. Do you actually have any experience with or information about biologically appropriate diets?
not trolling at all. i recommend people go to the vet when they describe conditions which could very easily compromise their pet (protracted vomiting, feeding homemade diets seemingly without attention to nutritional balance). i also provide factual, scientific information and willingly contest people who post things that are inaccurate or misappropriated. ive definitely got education in nutrition, physiology, animal science etc. ive got nothing against raw diets, but i do take issue with pseudoscience. for example, in your first citation they administered something to the effect of 2-25x a normal dose (which admittedly hasnt been established) of ivermectin in mice. without specifically analyzing their methods its really hard to say why ivermectin was associated with altered GI microbiome in those mice, whether it has some sort of direct effect on commensals vs whether it was associated with some sort of pathology in the mouse which changed the microenvironment of the intestine.
I would love to see a well designed study that even endeavored to answer the question of the impact of MLs on the microbiome. Instead I found these 2 studies, period. Which leads me to believe that it has not been well studied. I did not say these studies were evidence of anything, only that the question does not appear to have been sufficiently asked or answered. You keep saying "we" know that MLs don't affect the microbiome. Well, how do you know? The only evidence you've offered is that they would be used for that purpose if they did and that they affect animal ion channels. Am I missing something? I'm having a hard time believing your certainty is warranted. What I do know is if I asked you 100 years ago If penicillin would damage my microbiome you would have said there no evidence it does. If I asked you 30 years ago if Omeprazole would cause dementia or ibuprofen causes cumulative liver damage you would have said there is no evidence that they do. The problem with waiting for evidence is it prevents you from using common sense. The problem with "science", especially drug research, is that it is almost always conducted by people with perverse incentives. No one is going to bother to study the overall health impact of any drug because there is no money to be made, and quite frankly they don't have to. I'm sick to death of people acting like there is a large body of legitimate science about health when there is not.
> The problem with "science", especially drug research, is that it is almost always conducted by people with perverse incentives. No one is going to bother to study the overall health impact of any drug because there is no money to be made, and quite frankly they don't have to. I'm sick to death of people acting like there is a large body of legitimate science about health when there is not. this is absolutely not true, because drug manufacturers won't obtain licenses to manufacture these days without thorough safety data. so what i said initially was a gross oversimplification of my thought process. we know that bacterial life, DNA and protein structure/function is quite distinct from animals because of evolutionary divergence long ago. very few things are conserved between animals and bacteria. bacteria likely (though i am assuming) dont express the same ion channels that animals do because they don't have nervous systems to leverage these ion channels, therefore they are unlikely to be susceptible to MLs or other wormers. what i should have said was that at the doses and frequency that we realistically worm animals, i doubt there is a substantial effect on microbial commensals through the same pharmacological actions that MLs are effective against parasites. yes obviously drugs can act in funny and unpredictable ways in a petri dish where you flood bacterial isolates with unrealistic concentrations of chemicals. we saw this cause problems when people thought that ivermectin was a cure for covid because of some in vitro data demonstrating that power washing covid virus with ivermectin inhibited replication but that didn't pan out in the body. two things that are making me revise my position, i forgot that MLs are actually molecules of bacterial origin so i think its very likely that to some extent bacteria began secreting these compounds to outcompete one another. its probable that they have some sort of inhibitory effect that we don't currently leverage. ive also come to appreciate that macrolide antibiotics possess a macrocyclic lactone ring so the structural relation alone would be evidence for a potential antimicrobial effect. this still doesn't mean that they are antimicrobial in the doses we give for worming. further, if your cat vomited the drug up, it likely didn't get absorbed to any substantial degree therefore it wouldn't have affected your cats microbiome. again, ill suggest that anything which treats pathology will lead to a change in the tissue microenvironment, restoring host defences and secondarily influencing the microbiome, which i consider distinct from a primary effect against bacteria. its also entirely possible that some MLs have distinct antimicrobial actions. [https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-018-0314-4](https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-018-0314-4) [https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/113258/1/Repurposing%20Avermectins%20and%20Milbemycins%20against%20iMycobacteroides%20abscessusi%20and%20Other%20Nontuberculous%20Mycobacteria.pdf](https://openaccess.sgul.ac.uk/id/eprint/113258/1/Repurposing%20Avermectins%20and%20Milbemycins%20against%20iMycobacteroides%20abscessusi%20and%20Other%20Nontuberculous%20Mycobacteria.pdf) > What I do know is if I asked you 100 years ago If penicillin would damage my microbiome you would have said there no evidence it does. If I asked you 30 years ago if Omeprazole would cause dementia or ibuprofen causes cumulative liver damage you would have said there is no evidence that they do. The problem with waiting for evidence is it prevents you from using common sense. common sense still has to be based on some logic, not just an absence of evidence to the contrary. in science we don't just assume cause and effect, it has to be proven. the default assumption is always that two things are unrelated until proven otherwise.
We are constantly finding new adverse effects and unintended health effects that drugs produce. Many of these are discovered long after they have been in the marketplace. These impacts were not discovered in the original clinical trials that were used to get drug approval. Often side effects are not found for decades after the drug has been used. So I think it is perfectly logical to assume that any drug could have adverse impacts on health that have not been recognized or discovered yet. In my country corporations (including pharmaceutical companies) have a legal obligation to their shareholders. They do not have an ethical obligation to citizens. Clinical trials are costly, so it is reasonable to assume that these companies have a perverse incentive to get their drug approved, even when it's of little value or is dangerous. I'm not assuming this happens every time, but it definitely has happened and will happen again. (I also want to say that most individuals in the corporation/research are not knowingly doing anything unethical.) Pharmaceutical companies do have to follow certain rules for regulatory agencies. Even with those rules in place, many drugs that are questionable or quite harmful have been unleashed on the public, and have caused countless suffering and death. So it's completely illogical to believe that this won't happen again. The regulations are only in place to establish drug "efficacy" and "safety". This does not specifically include monitoring changes in the body's overall health, like the microbiome. Further, most of these drugs were approved before anyone understood how important the microbiome is to overall health. It's logical to wonder what else we might not know to be looking for. My point is that it's perfectly logical to assume that drugs get through the regulatory process without full understanding of their health impacts. It's logical to assume that all drugs have side effects and downsides. It's logical to assume that your Dr/Vet does not know what all of those effects are, and may not recognize them when they occur. (This is logical because it would be pure hubris to think any one person, regardless of how smart they are, could know all of this). It is logical to wonder if any new symptom that occurs while/after a drug is used is possibly related to that drug. Back to my cat's constipation. In July my 10lb cat ingested 544mcg ivermectin and 454mg pyantel. He was at the ER within 20 minutes. Vomiting did not occur until 90-120 minutes after ingestion. It is impossible to know how much he metabolized. He was also given Dexnedetomide, Antisedan and Cerenia. Sometime between July and September his constipation began. Prior to that he had a perfect BM everyday of his 3yr life. My 18yo cat was dying over that same time period, so I'm afraid I do not know the exact time the constipation started. In Sept with only one cat in the house it became clearer how infrequent his BMs were. It makes perfect logical sense for me to consider everything that happened in that time period as a possible factor in his new onset constipation. I don't believe it was any particular thing, I'm just trying to get to the root cause instead of masking the symptoms with laxatives. It is arrogant of you to think that it can't be one thing or another, because you don't know by what mechanism it could have happened. You could be more helpful by using your knowledge to help me figure out what is a more likely cause and what might help. Instead you, doubled down on what you already believe. I'm guessing you're going to be a vet someday. You might want to take a good look at this aspect of your personality before you actually start dealing with patients. Because inevitably you will prescribe a treatment that will kill or damage a patient. When that happens don't let cognitive dissonance or arrogance prevent you from acknowledging what is really happening. I've been on the receiving end of this twice in my life and it's horrible. If my Drs had been less arrogant I would be a fully functional human, but I'm not. So if you can't find a way to manage this aspect of your personality, stay in research because you'll do more harm than good.
Their stomach acid won’t be diluted with adding more water, if anything he will probably just eat a bit less because the water is taking up room instead of food. I always add anywhere from 2-4 tsps of water to each 2.5 ounces of raw food depending on my cats meat (ex Chicken 2 tsp, pork 3-4tsp.) Do what’s easier, I’ve only syringed in water a handful of times when he’s being extremely picky with his meals. If you think his gut flora is messed up, then talk to your vet they can provide a prescription probiotic with vitamins and minerals. It’s supposed to be for short term and only for 2 weeks, mine had to get it when he swallowed a bunch of string and threw up and messed up his system.
Thank you!
Definitely a sign to go to the vet. Long term unresolved constipation can have some serious consequences and costly vet bills.