My Litter Box Stinks To High Heaven Please Help!

[Johnv713]

I’ve tried just about every products to keep the odor down a notch without any success. Bought horse pine pellets, baking soda, activated charcoal, horse stall refresher( zeolite granules) , extra strengh carpet odor eliminator for the litter box. Nothing worked except for the carpet odor eliminator but that only masked the smell.

I feed my cat dry food and Friskies cans. Do you think the food is the culprit? If so, please recommend food to keep the foul odor away thanks

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi!
Can you change the dry food?
Try that first, try Merrick Backcountry or Blue Wilderness, or Open Farm.

Hopefully that helps, if not then you could also try changing to fancy feast or tractor supply's 4Health or paws and claws.

 

[Johnv713]

I would love to but my cats are total divas and spoiled brats. They wont eat dry food unless i mixed it with can food. Same goes with the 10-15 strays i feed nightly in my sub. They’d just look at me funny if i gave them just dry food by itself.

Btw i scoop at least 2x a day. The urine doesnt give off any smell, just the solids that stink up my house and seep into my clothes.

 

[lisahe]

If the diva cats (this is familiar!) prefer canned food, I'd switch them to all canned food. It sounds like you have very smart cats!

In general, the more digestible a food is for a cat, the less the poop will smell. Very often it's the fillers in cat foods -- particularly stuff like grains and carby vegetables -- that generate the smell. Cats who are fed diets of raw food or even (like our cats) raw, homemade food, and canned foods with very high protein and very low carbs hardly make any smell at all. Based on what many other site members say, it seems like cats who eat only raw food produce the least poop and the least smell. Even on their mixed diet, our cats don't even poop once a day, per cat.

Good luck!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi!
Change the brand of dry food to one of the brands I suggested and mix that in as you have been. If you find the smell still occurs, then change the wet food that you're mixing the kibble into.

 

[Johnv713]

Just picked up Fancy Feast and theyre pricey considering the cans are eo tiny. Also bought a 10 lbs bag of chicken breast. Whats the best way to get them to switch over from cans to raw if i need to un the future?

 

[tabbytom]

Also bought a 10 lbs bag of chicken breast. Whats the best way to get them to switch over from cans to raw if i need to un the future?

Feeding them raw is a little tricky.

We have a Raw and Home-Cooked Cat food forum here :- raw-home-cooked-cat-food.65
You may start a thread there for tips and queries on feeding raw to your cats.

 

[cheesycats]

Avoid foods will fillers. It’s good that you’re changing foods. That is the first step in less smelly poop. Hopefully you’ll start seeing less poop as well. My cats sometimes don’t poop but once every other day. It’s small, dark, and odorless. I also use everclean cat litter. I’ve tried just about every cat litter sold in the US it seems like lol and that one masks what little amount of smell is left after they pee and poop the best.

 

[Johnv713]

Yup. I, too, have tried every litter under the sun. From clumpy to crytals, then shavings, now horse pellets.

Fed my cats Fancy Feast and they wolfed it down in seocnds. I swear thesw little stinkers can tell which food is expensive and which is not

 

[DreamerRose]

I feed mine Fancy Feast, Friskies, and Iams. My litter boxes don't stink because I use Fresh Step litter. I'm using the lightweight now because I get twice as much as a single regular box. NOTHING stinks, and one of the litter pans is in the kitchen. Fresh Step is dusty and it tracks, but that's easier to put up with than the odor.

 

[mizzely]

I think it's important to experiment with foods to see what helps. My late cat Jasmine had the WORST poops on higher quality foods like Redbarn Naturals, ZiwiPeak, etc, but switching her to Pro Plan Sensitive and Friskies was like turning the stink switch off. Lydia is the opposite and does better and smells better with the better stuff.

Cat diets are not one size fits all, but the extreme poops means something needs to change

I use cheap litter (7.50 for 40 lbs) and rarely smell it now just by changing the diet!

 

[Jcatbird]

I use a truck in my worst boxes. My cats were rescues and always went outside. They loved leaves and pine straw. After bringing them in, I discovered that adding a small bit of pine straw or leaves to the litter helped the smell considerably. It doesn’t take much. It’s harder to scoop the box but well worth it. The cats cats used the straw over any other choice outside. Now I know why!!

 

[Elphaba09]

Arm and Hammer Clump and Seal Multi-Cat is the best litter, in my opinion. I have a sensitive sense of smell and nine cats. Two have super stinky poop, but as long as they cover it up, the smell dissipates fast. Simon is not always good about it, so I sometimes have to go and shake the pan to cover it.

I do not like the "lightweight" or "slide" versions of it. They are just not as good at clumping and eliminating the smell.

 

[di and bob]

Fresh Step has worked the best for me too. I have one cat that doesn't bury, and can small up the whole house fast. I have used about every other brand including clump and seal and tidy cat,etc. and keep going back to Fresh step. To keep the tracking down I got a small rubber litter mat at Walmart that has a lot of looping rubber fibers in it. Works really well set in front of the litterr box. It is amazing how much litter is shook out of it.

 

[lisahe]

Avoid foods will fillers. It’s good that you’re changing foods. That is the first step in less smelly poop. Hopefully you’ll start seeing less poop as well. My cats sometimes don’t poop but once every other day. It’s small, dark, and odorless. I also use everclean cat litter. I’ve tried just about every cat litter sold in the US it seems like lol and that one masks what little amount of smell is left after they pee and poop the best.

To get back to the food side of this -- since it's what cats eat that makes the smell! -- thank you to cheesycats for emphasizing my point about fillers. It's very often filler ingredients like potatoes or grains or peas that cause the smell. Lots of combinations of foods, particularly if the ingredients are basically just meat and nutrients, can reduce smell significantly without feeding only raw! As tabbytom mentions, making food takes some research and effort. It can be very worthwhile, particularly if a cat has food sensitivities or other digestive issues but it took me a fair bit of time to work up to making two kinds of cooked food for our cats.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

~ Only thing I can think of is kitty not covering the mess because the box is too small or not enough litter ...

 

[Johnv713]

~ Only thing I can think of is kitty not covering the mess because the box is too small or not enough litter ...

Thats a very good observation. I did notice sometimes my cat dont cover up their golden nuggets I’ll try to add more litter.

 

[Furballsmom]

Best of luck with it all

 

[Elphaba09]

Some cats will not cover their poop due to dominance issues. We are certain that is why Simon does not cover his, as he is the sort of leader of the glaring.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

We are certain that is why Simon does not cover his, as he is the sort of leader of the glaring.

~ Some cats are just too proud