What are intestinal parasites?

Intestinal parasites are anything that is living in the intestines of your cats or other animals that are not supposed to be there. Our intestines have a lot of what we call commensal bacteria, meaning bacteria that live with us, don't do us harm and help us digest our food. A parasite would be in the intestines or in the intestinal tract that is causing harm to its host and, in this case, our kitty cat.

Intestinal parasites are commonly known as worms. They are types of parasites that can get into your cat's intestinal tract and do some harm by either affecting the intestinal tract itself or by feeding on some of the nutrients that your cat ingests before passing out in the stool.

Intestinal parasites include intestinal worms, plus there's a sort of a separate category, what we would call intestinal parasites. I'll give you the breakdown. What's the difference between intestinal parasites and intestinal worms? Intestinal worms would be brown worms, hookworms, and tapeworms. Those are the three that we're most likely going to see in cats. Then we have two other types of organisms there. If you think back to eighth-grade biology, you're looking under the microscope or drop of water, and you see this little single-celled organism swimming around. Well, there are two of those. One is called coccidia and the others call Giardia, which we also see in cats, but those are not worms. They are just intestinal parasites, just these little single-celled organisms. I want to make that distinction. When we use a dewormer, we're just getting rid of the worms. If we see either one of these two intestinal parasites, each of them has its own unique medication to eliminate them.

Intestinal parasites are organisms that live within the intestinal tract of cats. Some of the more common ones include roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms.