Does your cat suffer from recurring diarrhoea? Giardia could be the culprit. These single-celled intestinal parasites can be particularly dangerous for young and weakened pets. Here’s what you need to know about giardia in cats.
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Even seemingly healthy cats can carry giardia.
Giardia in cats is no laughing matter. Recurrent diarrhoea, especially in young cats, can cause significant fluid loss, which can be life-threatening. Additionally, giardia can be contagious for humans too.
Not every giardia infection (giardiasis) leads to severe intestinal inflammation in cats. The severity of symptoms depends on the immune status, age of the cat and the amount of ingested giardia.
Giardiasis often presents with the following symptoms, especially in young cats:
Older cats often show no symptoms of giardiasis but can still shed the pathogens, potentially infecting other pets or their owners.
If your cat suffers from recurrent diarrhoea or has it for more than 2-3 days, you should always consult a vet. Non-specific symptoms like weight loss or reduced appetite in your feline friend should also be checked.
To obtain a quick diagnosis, bring a collection of stool samples from three consecutive days to your vet visit. Cats do not shed giardia continuously, so multiple samples need to be tested.
Nowadays, rapid tests for vet clinics are available for identifying giardia in cats. The result can be read within 10 to 15 minutes.
If the examination confirms a giardia infection in your cat, the vet has various medications at their disposal. Commonly, the active ingredients Fenbendazole or Metronidazole are used and must be administered orally for several days.
Given giardia’s stubborn nature, treatment should be conducted in two cycles with a 3 to 5 day break in between. A further stool examination is necessary afterward. Once the parasites are eliminated, the treatment is complete.
Successful giardiasis treatment always includes thoroughly cleaning the entire environment of the cat. Common disinfectants do not work against the giardia cysts in the environment. They die off through dryness or temperatures above 60°C.
With proper treatment of both the pet and its environment, giardia in your cat can be well controlled. If other pets live in the household, you should prophylactically treat all other pets as well. Otherwise, your feline friends might re-infect each other.
Giardia intestinalis is a globally widespread intestinal parasite that also affects cats. The single-celled organisms inhabit your cat’s small intestine, thus triggering the typical symptoms.
In the cat’s small intestine, the division of the so-called trophozoites produces giardia cysts. The cat excretes these cysts in its stool, infecting other pets. The cysts are very resilient outside the cat, which makes transmission via surfaces and contaminated objects possible.
The following measures are useful for preventing recurrent giardia infections in your feline friend:
At the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen I was extensively trained as a veterinarian and was able to gain experience in various fields such as small animal, large animal and exotic animal medicine as well as pharmacology, pathology and food hygiene. Since then, I have been working not only as a veterinary author, but also on my scientifically driven dissertation. My goal is to better protect animals from pathogenic bacterial organisms in the future. Besides my veterinary knowledge, I also share my own experiences as a happy dog owner and can thus understand and enlighten fears and problems as well as other important questions about animal health.
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