Kitten won't clean himself after pooing

[SeeyouontheothersideofCovid]

Hello

I hope some of you can help with some advice and encouragement as we are really struggling to deal with our six month old kitten (neutered male). He is used to going outside and no longer uses the litter tray. We acquired him when he was eight weeks old, which in retrospect I wonder if he had fully learnt all he needed from his mother? He is a short-haired tabby.

On and off he has had problems with loose stools (dumping suddenly in the house, very soft and like gravy) and we have taken advice from the vet at all times. He has been on pro-kolin and is now on a diet of half wet and dry (wet Royal Canin and dry Jameswellbeloved). He seems to be happy enough with his diet. He is also up to date with flea prevention and worming tablets.

But, he comes back in, with dried poo around his anus and stuck in his tail, and the tail itself has poo in it (not lumps but just, I don't know, poo juice?) Between us we try to clean off as much as we can with sensitive baby wipes but he absolutely hates it and we can never clean him properly as he tries to get away as fast as he can. Not that I blame him of course.

So we're living with our kitten that perpetually has poo attached, and he's all over our house, carpets and soft furnishings. Sometimes he scoots across the floor. When we find any evidence of poo we clean it up but the situation has become very distressing for all of us (me, my husband and the young kitten). It's now getting to the point I feel I can't cope. I'm worried about poo being all over the house (as we can't clean him properly), the health implications and the thought of having to deal with this for as long as he's with us is quite frankly just an awful prospect.

We have decided to put him back onto the pro-kolin as previously this seem to settle the poo issue down, but will we need to do this all the time? If so, fine, we will do it. The other thing is, will he magically turn into a fully-grown cat that cleans his bottom properly? At the moment, he grooms himself generally but pays very scant attention to his testicles and bottom/tail. The cat we previously had was very fastidious in that department and we had no issues at all with her. So when we acquired our new kitten we weren't prepared that his toilet habits would become such a major issue.

Any advice, please? I have been scouring the internet for ideas and also left a message with the Cats Protection League. At the moment we're thinking we will try and hang on until he's a year old (give him a chance to grow into an adult cat) but if this situation remains a constant theme we will probably think about re-homing him. Which would be really sad as in all other aspects he's a lovely pet.

Seems like you definitely need to change his food ASAP... of course if all was well you wouldn’t do that but it’s not. Hope things improve for you soon!

Cats don't like to lick off lots of poo not surprisingly, so you need to get to the bottom of the diarrhoea (no pun intended).
it's really soul destroying I feel your pain, my elderly cat has had diarrhoea for many years and despite every diet under the sun and thousands spent on the insurance claims for it I never got a diagnosis or cure. Its been about 10 years now, she's 19 and she can't wash herself as she is arthritic.
The utility room sink is only used as the cat washing sink and she get dunked and washed on a regular basis. But even so sometimes there are shitty paw prints to be cleaned up.
You need to keep pestering your vet and do as much reading as you can to try and get this under control, rigid diet and possibly medication.

Switching to James Wellbeloved really helped ous in a similar position.

Has he been checked for a giardia infection?

This. You say you’ve “had advice from the vet at all times” but have they done any actual medical investigations? Stool samples etc? I’d request those if not just to rule out anything biological.

I agree with looking at his diet again. Start with cutting out the wet, or drastically reducing the portion. Find the best quality food you can find, i think mine are on concept biscuits and cosma tins.

The other thing you can try are probiotics, sprinkle into his food. Fortiflora is one. Won’t do any harm.

8 weeks is very young. It may be he hasn’t learned to groom himself. I have a rescue that was used very young for breeding, and she has never got the hang of covering up in the litter tray, she just uses it and leaves. She also has the stinkiest guts i’ve ever come across, but is an extremely fussy eater so at least it’s normally solid,

Definitely ditch the baby wipes, due to smell and taste. Use a towel to make a "kitty burrito" and use a warm wet cloth instead.
You'll need both of you to start with; wrap the cat, hold firmly but gently, get it over with as quickly but calmly as possible.
If its bad enough, a gentle shower (low setting, warm, again keeping as calm as possible) plus a warm towel to be snuggled in afterwards.
(My late boy was a longhair with occasional upset tummy; he hated being cleaned at first but after a few times realised it was better than being pooey. He'd even come and find me if he needed a clean up).

may be worth looking into a raw diet. vets don't always support raw though. you can get easy to serve raw, we use Luna&Me. other good canned food brands on sites like zooplus are bozita, Smilla and animonda carny. but as others have said, boiled chicken until his tummy settled down.

Second the above re medical investigations, especially to rule out giardia.
Possibly a prescription sensitivity diet - but probably best to keep him in while trialling a diet to exclude the possibility of him eating elsewhere!!

Yes I'd keep him in with a litter tray in case he is eating outside or elsewhere. You need to see the poo texture and how he deals with it

Hi Op,
I can sympathise. My cat has had part of her colon removed and she does awful poos and makes a mess too but that's because of her colon but I'm sure the posters on this forum will provide good advice (the advice I received here saved my cat's life!). My vet recommended food (funnily enough Royal Canine) that really did not help my cat at all so don't feel bad going with a different brand. You'll figure it out - hopefully sooner rather than later - but maybe in the meantime have your cat use a cat litter tray indoors that way you can clean him up before he wanders through the house.

A few things.

Royal Canin is awful food, when looking at cat food you need to remember two key things, cats are obligate carnivores, they also have a very poor thirst drive as they are designed to get their fluids from their food.

If you ask Royal Canin what percentage of a food is meat (as in actual meat) and for a breakdown of that meat, e.g high value muscle meat etc they will not tell you. If you went to a restaurant and they refused to tell you what you were eating would you really choose to eat there?

Cats need high meat content, wet/raw and ideally no grain.

There are lots of options, some are expensive, many aren’t. You also need to remember the more meat a food has the less you have to actually feed when they are adults, but kittens like babies should be fed based on their demand.

Some good foods are
Natures menu
Atuu
Feringua
Bozita
Applaws (only the pate is a complete food)
Thrive (but adults only, too low fat content for kittens)
Catzfinefood
Encore
Grau
Lilys kitchen
Granatapet
Mac
Smilla
Wild freedom
Taste of the wild

An okay but not amazing food, okay meat content, no sugars etc is butchers in the orange tins.

With raw you can make your own, of if you’re lazy like me you can buy premade from natures menu (petsathome), raaw (morrisons), natural instinct, purrform, alaska, nutriment.

When was the kitten last wormed? What worming products were used? Has the kitten had a three day stool sample tested for gardia etc?

Also, six months is far far too young to go outside, its like allowing a five year old to go out and play alone.

Hi everyone thanks so much for all your responses. I will take a good look later and think about where we go from here.

Just back from the vets - he's going to have a faecal sample tested for everything (cost £200) and we've been tasked to collect some sample poo so we can get that back to the vet on Monday. The vet has cleaned him up and trimmed his bottom & tail so it will be easier to keep clean. He did a poo this morning so we managed to take a picture of it for the vet - it's just like a cowpat, thick and glistening gravy.

Definitely no more baby wipes as someone here pointed it it could be what's making him unwilling to clean himself, so we will try to clean him with warm water after poos.

Someone above says at eight weeks he is rather young - he's nearly 7 months old and has been going outside for the past 6 weeks and has given up using the litter tray (though we keep it there in case he changes his mind).

Again I asked the vet about a diet of white fish / cooked chicken. Again she seemed reluctant to endorse this route, her thoughts being we should not change his food and routine.

We also have some liquid medicine to give him a daily dose for 5 days (I think it is another type of anti-biotic) and the vet says the tests will take about a week to come back (probably longer as this will be over Christmas).

Still for now we have one clean kitten so that is rather nice!

The whole food thing is complicated. As far as we're concerned money is no object and we will pay what it takes to give him the right food.

All processed pet food appears to be that - processed! When he's fully grown we will prefer to give him a diet of pure meat if possible, in combination using the current dry food he's on which is Jameswellbeloved (fish for kittens). We only put him on Royal Canin because several people including on here recommended it as a food they feed their cats without any problems. Yes I am reading whatever I can, looking at the internet for advice and I do appreciate any thoughts from this site too - it's knowing there's a coterie of cat-lovers who I can rely on for support!

You shouldn’t feed dry and raw at the same time, really you shouldn’t feed dry at all anyway.

Does the vet, by any chance sell royal canin 🤨?

I would put £10 on it being one of the cereals in his food.

Switch to boiled chicken and save the £200.

Have you looked at the ingredients of royal canin? They are not good for the price you pay.
The Jameswellbeloved kitten food is under 35% meat and has lots of rice in it.

Cow pat poo is not normal. It should be formed and not squishy. I wonder why the vet is reluctant for you to change to a better food with high meat and no grains

Cats don't do well on pure meat - they need additional taurine which they would get in their natural diet from eating whole animals. They can't just eat meat as humans do.

I also don't understand your vet's enthusiasm for Royal Canin - cats don't need to eat grain, they aren't designed to do it. There are lots of wet and dry grain free foods out there, esp if you look beyond the high street petshop - Simon JT has a great list.

I fed my kittens Feringa, then Bozita (they just licked the gravy off the chunks so didn't work for mine) and now grown up she has Animonda and Purizon dry food.

They looked at James Wellbeloved like it was poison and went on hunger strike and these are cats that were never fussy.

Plesse swap onto grain free asap. It might not be that but what you are describing are typical symptoms of grain intolerance.

It seems all vets recommend royal canin. I did my own research and put them on hilife which has a high meat content.

How is your boy today? For the scruff feel above his shoulder blades and back of the neck. He’ll have soft excess skin and you can grip it and pull it up so you have it in your hand - strong grip. Mine submits when I have him like this. It’s how their mother held them. It’s quite easy but just be confident when holding him life this so he feels secure.

I think the 5 day course you’ve been given is worming stuff for giardia, that’s probably what the vet suspects. Your kitten is also too young to be going outside and may well be getting very stressed by older cats and eating stuff he shouldn’t.

Is it Panacur? Thats a worming medicine

Please don't scruff a 6 month old cat

I had a cat who absolutely couldn't tolerate dry food - I tried several times to introduce it gradually, even literally giving her one piece one day, two the next etc, but as soon as she got to any quantity her stomach erupted (she was an indoor cat, so easy to spot!) and I had to give up. She was fine on tinned food (this was 30 years ago, before sachets were really a thing) so I stuck to that.

Agree with everyone else, cats aren’t really designed to eat grains and lots are wheat intolerant.

We had the same when my cat was a kitten - we treated for giarda and just fed boiled white fish/chicken for a few days until stomach settled.

Now we only feed wheat free food - it’s a bit more expensive but worth it for the cat.

Natures menu wet food and ava dry (both grain free) sorted out my sphynx kittens poo problems. Sounds bonkers but shave the area around the bum too ( I do this with our long haired rabbit as he has a very sensible stomach). So much easier to clean.

Could he also be eating outside?

My boy also didn't tolerate royal canin at all.