Thread: Probably should have posted in "diet & nutrition" but hey ho...poop problem!

Sid's got mad skills!

Hi Tracey,

We had the exact same problem with Beau since we brought him home - nothing to do with the breeder by the way - and he's now 10 months. Exactly the same as Neo, he's in great health, but just used to smell!! You could tell he'd been in the litter tray as soon as he walked into a room lol. And they always go when somebody's due to visit, don't they?! We tried most brands of decent quality food - including Bozita which he liked but made no difference. As you've been giving him Whiskas & Go Cat, I'm guessing you're in the Uk, so I will tell you that the food that solved our problems was.... Butchers! Seriously. I don't consider it a high quality food so I'd not even thought about it, but after some research on the web I decided to give it a go. It is actually grain free - it's also very cheap, and he loves it! I supplement with some raw foods (beef/chicken) and also occasional treats of fish and liver, but I swear to God, you can't even tell when he's been to the litter tray any more! It's so cheap it's worth giving it a go if the Bozita doesn't do the trick.

Hi there, sorry for the radio silence, but we've had a mad-mad-mad summer! We run a small animal boarding hotel and - of course - the summer is our busiest time, so no time whatsoever for forum-chatting....or socialising, or sleeping, or eating for that matter

Many thanks for the replies

After the crisis-point-weekend-of-a-thousand-baths, Neo was seen by our (excellent) vet who said she'd start off with the most conservative investigations, so we collected poop samples over 4 days. The results were positive for Feline Coronavirus and positive for Clostridium perfringens. Ironically, the latter could have been caused by us feeding Neo raw meat (although the raw food experiment was started in response to him having diarrhoea, so it's unlikely to have been the cause).

We therefore started him on a short course of Metronidazole (5 days) which was like a miracle cure! Almost overnight, the poops went back to almost normal (and definitely the most 'normal' we'd ever had from Neo). Neo continued to improve, until, by the end of course, he was 95% 'normal' (there were still occasional soft poops and the smell was still pretty offensive).

So the vet decided on another, longer course of Metronidazole (10 days this time), of which we are about 3 days in.

The improvement is amazing.....we now only have one or two poops per day (normally one, whereas it was half a dozen before the treatment) and the poops are pretty solid. The smell is horrendous though, but then I suppose poop will never smell of roses, will it!

Neo is very happy cos he hasn't had to have a bath since he started the treatment

So, we're going to see if this longer course of Metronidazole sorts out the problem, and if not, then a blood test for an inflammatory bowel condition is the next proposed investigation.

Fingers crossed!

Tracey x

Originally Posted by PandK

Hi Tracey,

We had the exact same problem with Beau since we brought him home - nothing to do with the breeder by the way - and he's now 10 months. Exactly the same as Neo, he's in great health, but just used to smell!! You could tell he'd been in the litter tray as soon as he walked into a room lol. And they always go when somebody's due to visit, don't they?! We tried most brands of decent quality food - including Bozita which he liked but made no difference. As you've been giving him Whiskas & Go Cat, I'm guessing you're in the Uk, so I will tell you that the food that solved our problems was.... Butchers! Seriously. I don't consider it a high quality food so I'd not even thought about it, but after some research on the web I decided to give it a go. It is actually grain free - it's also very cheap, and he loves it! I supplement with some raw foods (beef/chicken) and also occasional treats of fish and liver, but I swear to God, you can't even tell when he's been to the litter tray any more! It's so cheap it's worth giving it a go if the Bozita doesn't do the trick.

Hi there, thanks for this. Actually, I've been feeding Butcher's lately, as I'd read somewhere it was grain free, and all four of the cats really seem to like it! So, assuming we get the problem under control, I think Butcher's will be the way forward.

And, yes, like Beau, Neo always would stink the place out about 10 seconds before we were due a visiting customer! How do they do that? It's like some kind of sixth sense!

Tracey x