So I’m fostering a cat right now. (Remind me not to do this again - my permanent cat is sooo pissed!)
The cat is healthy, fixed, between 9 and 12 months old, and adorable. She was caught as a feral, but clearly is not -she’s a love bunny and very happy to be back in a house. But her shit stinks worse than words can describe. She doesn’t just clear a room, she clears off a whole floor of the house!
She’s been getting uber-healthy cat food for over a week now, she was getting regular-healthy food before I took her, her stools are ‘formed’, and her ‘aroma’ could still be used as an agent of chemical warfare. Put one of those in an airplane and you wouldn’t HAVE to hijack it!
Any ideas? Does she need that gut-yogurt they advertise on TV for silly women? (She lived on her own, she’ll eat anything.) Do they make intestinal flora pills for cats? Would that fix it anyway?
She saw a vet recently and was pronounced healthy but skinny (recent rescue, poor baby - but I’m fattening her up!). I forgot to ask about the poo question because keeping the permanent cat from killing the transient cat was more relevant.
I’ll bump this for you just by way of saying that I don’t have any answers, but I wasn’t aware that there was any other kind of cat shit other than weapons grade.
You can feed a dog on all manner of unhealthy, over-processed food, and it won’t smell like that. Heck, you can do the same to a human being, and the smell will be below asbestos suit levels.
But there is something about that cat poo that I suspect is just innate to it. Little wonder that cats feel the need to pile dirt over much more than dogs.
I’m not an expert, but I’ve dealt with six different cats. Some cats just have stinky shit. It might be allergies - my parent’s cat stopped stinking when they changed foods. You can try changing foods or feeding her a little bit of plain yogurt (I’ve never done it, but I’m sure somebody here can advise you), but you might just have to put up with it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, permanent kitty does not shit any roses. Getting used to cat poo in the house (she is an indoor cat) was a major adjustment.
But this - this is an offense against all that is rational. How one six-pound cat can create something that can send two fully grown adults running for shelter defies imagination.
Latest episode in war between the cats: permanent kitty ate crunchies from rescue kitties bowl, and then barfed them back in. Ew.
Just checking in to sympathize and express interest in any answers this thread garners. I’ve got two cats, one of whom is definitely in the weapons-grade category, stinky-shit-wise. His tend to be soft, though – bordering on diarrhea. He’s also much more prone than the other one to episodes of barfing.
They’re both on Iams, although I just switched formulas in the vain hope that I might be able to sleep through the night without being awakened by the miasma emanating from the catbox.
For what it’s worth, Iams in the pink bag works wonders for our 3 cats. If we run out and have to substitute something else, the poop smells AWFUL until we get the Iams again.
I feel for you. My cat has IBS. I had no idea cats could get IBS. She needs to be fed special food (IVD Green Peas and Rabbit) and man, does her poo stink. She is rather gassy too. But it is better than the explosive diarrhea she used to have…
No cite handy, but look for cat food that’s low in magnesium. I feed my three the Iams in the orange bag (I forget which!) and it really does make a difference.
I’ll call the vet. But I know that when she was rescued (a month ago) she was de-wormed. This issue, besides the obvious mutual-hatred with the other cat, is the primary reason we don’t think she’s going to be able to stay here. Sigh.
Our kitty gets regular Science Diet and there’s no poop smell at all, amazingly enough. (Well, I suppose there would be if I got down on my hands and knees and sniffed, but just standing right by the box there’s no odor).
Good for you for fostering! It sounds like a wonderful kitty, smelly poo notwithstanding. Too bad your permanent cat is having a problem. We’d love to get another cat but the one we have would kill it immediately. Sigh.
It could be from the mere fact that her diet was changed when she moved in with you. I feed a pretty high quality diet (Wellness Core grain-free dry and Merrick canned) to my beasts and while it doesn’t smell like roses, the smell is not that bad.
FWIW, my new kitty eats Royal Canin dry cat food (I switch back and forth between several different varieties, including “Select 35/30” “Light” and “Adult Fit,” and her poop is remarkably inoffensive. (My beloved previous kitty ate Fancy Feast canned food and produced a mighty plume of stench.)
It is probably just a reaction to changing the food. When I adopted my Oliver he got switched to the food I had for my cat Joey and it didn’t work very well for him. It made his poo runny and streaked with blood. I had to call the woman I adopted him from and find out what she had been feeding him and switch him back over to that to fix the problem.
have you tried giving your cat grain-free food? Taste of the Wild is a good one to try out if you haven’t already. They don’t use grains or by products in their ingredients, so it may help your cat’s digestive issues.
may i suggest science diet indoor for adults? it has large tannish triangular kibbles. it worked for my furry girl who had bad tummy troubles.
they do have a flora thing for cats. it is a powder you sprinkle on thier food. also you could try no more than a teaspoon (more than a teaspoon will bring other problems) of plain yogurt, if kitty will eat it.
One of our kitties had this problem as a wee thing, just rescued from the gutter…literally. She could clear a room, the smell was so bad . A few days of giving her some active-culture yogurt along with her regular Purina Kitten Chow, and she was all better. In fact, until the day she passed in our arms, over ten years later, she never had another attack of the fumes. Cheap, quick, effective…my kind of remedy. I’d give that a chance before worrying about different types of food (I refuse to have finicky cats, and I think changing foods often on them contributes to finickyness. Mine get Purina or nothing, and in nine cats we’ve never had a picky eater)
