Cat Poop - Advice/help wanted pls pls pls pls.

Nasty subject, but I really need some help.

One of my three-year-old indoor-only cats (we have two from the same litter) just started pooping outside the box. Essentially, he's acting like he really doesn't want to poop at all and holds it in until he can't anymore at which point he goes wherever he happens to be: on the floor, on the dryer, on the mantle, in the bathroom. Then he runs around like a maniac and drops some of it all over the place. We've taken him to the vet and after a lot of testing, the good doctor has ruled out any and all medical problems and wants to put him on Prozac, which should remove/reduce whatever stress he's apparently under. The wife and I don't really want to keep the cat drugged up but at the same time we can't get him to stop. We moved into a new house about 6 months ago but the problem didn't start until a month ago and we can't identify any other changes to his living conditions (no new diet, no new pets, no new household members, no new tension with the other cat).

We have tried: new litter, new boxes, new box locations, confinement, Feliway spray, carrying him to the box when he's pooping, moving the poop to the litter box and showing him. All to no effect whatsoever. He still pees in the box with no problems but he doesn't scratch or cover it up which leads us to believe it might be a litter issue, but again we've tried clumping litters, clay litters, pine litters, all of various sizes and scentless.

Any ideas ilxors? You're our only hope.

Thanks in advance and Alyosha will thank you too cuz the little bugger's about to become an outdoor cat.

sadly i have no advice, the prozac might be a good idea. poor kitty :( any toilet issues my kitties have had are 100% due to me not changing the litter the moment they decide it needs to be changed.

We have a friend with a cat on prozac and it essentially just stares at the wall all day, and frankly as an animal he'll probably be better served by moving outdoors despite the fact that it will open him up to other various problems. Man, I just want to go back to when he didn't do this.

take him to a vet. If he's waiting until he can't possibly hold it anymore to go & then doing so outside the box, it is likely because the act itself has become painful & he associates the pain w/ his usual pooping spots. One of my cats did the same thing except sub pooping for pissing & it turned out he had a urinary tract infection. Srsly, take him to a vet, describe the problem & have him checked out.

We've taken him to the vet and after a lot of testing, the good doctor has ruled out any and all medical problems

We've taken him to the vet and after a lot of testing, - whoops. missed this somehow. Second opinion, maybe?

painful poops does make a lot of sense tho

we have an orange tabby who for 9 years had problems with pooping. he was inconsistent w/ litterbox use. also, he would periodically have bouts of throwing his food back up (not hairballs). vets diagnosed irritable bowel or cat version of crohns. we had cat colonoscopies, it was ridiculous. the (apparent) cure? a teaspoon of mineral oil in his wet food, i think its every other day. now, he poops regularly, in his litterbox, and hasnt thrown up in 6 months (when we started this). its like a miracle, and i like this cat now.

interesting.. i'm having problems with chucking kitties lately, but only when they eat dry food

i was extremely skeptical of this "cure" fwiw, but then weeks passed, without me scooping up puke and attempting to clean carpets. it was a fucking gross and dire.

that's why i appreciated the onion headline "Want shit in your house? Get a cat!"

mineral oil? you got a brand or something? this could help, though he's shown no signs of stomach discomfort like vomiting, etc. we were thinking that his diet may be too acidic or something that irritates him to the extent that he has pain or discomfort or something similar, so we are going to be trying different foods. he currently only eats wet food twice a day because he had trouble with urinary crystals in the past (so no dry food).

the vet looked into pretty much every cause she could think of, but essentially she said that he's a very healthy cat (in the physical sense, he's clearly mental). we don't have much reason to disbelieve her.

luckily we have hardwood floors, except this morning he chose the couch. thanks, dude!

Let him outside ffs

Of course he's mental if yr keeping him inside

One of ours occasionally has similar troubles (esp. the mad dashing about, either just as he's finishing or immediately when he's done). We have to keep the Feliway plug-in running (the spray didn't have the same effect on him) and dose him every 2-3 days with Kittymalt (the hairball stuff that is mineral oil + vaseline + malt from the looks of it).

we just got a seven-month-old kitty last week. he is pretty awesome, and after one day largely spent under the bed, he seems to be adjusting well. i've never had a cat before, though, so i have a couple questions:

1. he kind of smells a bit. not of poop (he's been totally fine with the litter box), but of like . . . cat . . . only more so. some of it might be his breath, but it seems like there's more to it. any ideas?

2. speaking of breath, the shelter materials suggest brushing his teeth like daily. i had no idea, and don't think it would go over particularly well with him. is this done?

3. he seems to be sneezing a lot. he doesn't have any goop in his eyes, though. is he allergic to us?

4. he doesn't seem terribly hungry. he usually eats everything (not always), but spread out over many hours. he seems active enough (when he's awake), but we have nothing to compare it to since we just got him.

he is allergic to you take him back get a not smelly cat

http://www.msgr.ca/msgr-9/cats%20smelly%20cat%20by%20phoebe.gif

You can wash him to see if the smell is maybe in his fur. Get some damp paper towel and some dry paper towel. Stroke him with the damp one, always with the grain of his fur, like a momma cat would, then dry him the same way.

there's no way in hell I'd brush my cats' teeth.

Yeah seriously do you like to live?

lol i would not want to get near jaq's cats' teeth, either!

u have to floss him first.

he doesn't seem terribly hungry. he usually eats everything (not always), but spread out over many hours

This is quite normal, my cat does this, she'll eat a bit, then come back to it later to snack on it. I leave her dry food for this reason as well as wet.

I don't know about the OP's poopin' cat (except maybe get a second opinion? Although that gets super expensive. But even though I am firmly of the opinion that all cats are completely mental, that just really sounds like a physical issue), but mookieproof, is your cat fixed? Intact animals definitely smell more animally than neutered animals.

Our vet just the other day suggested that we clean our cats teeth a couple times a week with a cloth and peroxide, because he scraped a big hunk of tartar off one of her teeth (which explains her wicked breath) and she's already had one tooth removed. I love the cat and I don't like her nasty breath, but it's highly unlikely I'm going to clean her teeth because it's highly unlikely she'll put up with it.

Our other cat gets sneezy sometimes. It's usually nothing, but if she gets a cat cold, we just shut her up in the bathroom when we shower to steam her and it helps get rid of it faster.

take him back get a not smelly cat

too late why b/c i love him

yeah he is fixed. but thanks for the advices!

Maybe kittens are smellier cause they dont yet know how to clean themselves as well? I cant recall wether my 2 cats were pongy as kittens, but they may well at least have smelled a bit of wee.

another source of bad breath in cats is kidney problems--uremia, i think its called. really common in old cats, but not kittens.

he is an adult cat!

One of my cats is pretty old and was recently behaving strangely. It turned out that he had feline diabetes. We've been giving him some kind of prescription food and 2 units of insulin twice a day and now he is doing well.

Our boy cat is stinkier than the girl but when he got fixed he also got less stinky.

We have a very old a cat who had really bad arthritis and couldn't jump in the box last winter because it was painful. We put down puppy pads and she peed on those. Maybe try putting some puppy pads out and see if he goes for them?

Oh, I forgot to mention that the vet did treat him for diarrhea (which he only had once) and then also gave him a steroid shot in case he had an inflammation that wasn't showing up on the tests.

The vet checked his anal gland? Once I had a cat with an abscess in her anal gland that was huge but the vet missed it somehow.

yeah i think a couple times. she even once said he had "good anal tone." ew.

good anal tone

it's sort of a compliment i suppose

Who'd be a vet, honestly.

good anal tone

Why thanks! When we first got him he farted completely out of tune.

cat prozac. what a world

electroshock therapy is too passe.

Some friends of ours put one of their cats on prozac briefly - she was obsessively nursing on herself and also peeing inappropriately in any open container left on the kitchen counter. Though it helped with the obsessive behavior, it didn't touch the peeing. After they gave up on the drugs, the cat started peeing in the toilet, not every time at first but after a few months it became her open container of choice.

i'd be pretty happy if we could train him to use the toilet, but according to mingus he has to be using a box first.

Ok, so we changed the cat's diet with no effect. The only thing he responds to is when we lock the other cat in a bedroom and encourage him to use the box. Like sitting on the ground coaxing him to the box and into the box and then begging him to take a shit in the box. This takes approximately one hour and I am unwilling/unable to do it twice a day because I have other things in my life to attend to. But when I did this he showed no signs of pain, so I was hoping that he would learn that whatever physical discomfort/mental anguish he had been associating with the box was gone. No luck, as when we do not actively coax him into the box he shits everywhere again.

So, my last plea for helps. Any other ideas folks? He's going on prozac soon.

You are a trooper.

Have you tried moving the box or using a second one in a different location?

my god I'm surprised he doesn't have you singing the "poop in the box" song too. Abbott otm, that's really sort of beyond the pale in my book.

yeah we moved the boxes around and added two more. no luck.
and yeah i'm completely fucking fed up with this. this cat has essentially ruined our relationship with both the cats in the house in that we don't much like being home or coming home or feeding them or any number of cat-related things whereas before we loved cats pretty unconditionally. ah, conditions!

Are they at least in noticeable places or are you finding surprise poops all the time?

:(

cat poop can't stay a surprise very long. shit is toxic.

Not true. We had to make our kitties outside ones and we were finding surprises for the next year. In luggage, under beds, etc.

I'm changing litter (from sunflower seeds to fired clay pellets) this weekend and am so hoping it doesn't throw my guys off-track.

How much it stinks is related to what you feed them. We had to switch from very low stink Authority to medium stink DM for the diabetic cat. But when they were eating supermarket cat chow, it was max stink.

I never thought about food making for stinky poo.

wellness seems to give my cat flatulence

send cat to harbl

For future reference in case anyone has a similar problem. This article discusses how this is likely a behavioral problem and another possible fix: http://www.perfectpaws.com/xmas.html