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- Dec 20, 2012
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Hello everyone : )
This is my first post and this is mainly fueled by the events of today. I'm taking care of my friends 3 cats while she is away on holiday. Today was my first day going over there.
[If you are squeemish or don't like reading about poo skip past this bit]
In the past when I'd do this service I'd notice the litter boxes were filled pretty high with (brace yourself) urine clumps and feces.
Now today I was expecting it to be about the same, but when I decided to... /gross... dig a little deeper to my horrible dismay I noticed that the issue *WAS NOT* just the surface. Out of the 3 - one box was completely solid from what is presumably days/weeks (i hope not months) worth of urine/feces seeping down into the litter down to the bottom of the pan. (And these are short and very deep boxes... not the standard wide and very shallow ones) The second was about midway but the litter on the bottom was still dark gray and wet. Then the last one was just a mixture of wet litter with god knows how many weeks worth of waste. Every box had to be scraped on all sides to remove everything. yuck.
I can only presume that my friend feels that taking care of the litter box is just dumping fresh, new litter on top of whatever mess is already in there... I guess this because she had two boxes of freshstep that were empty in the same room, and you could tell it was just poured on the top. The ironic thing is she has one of those kitty gene disposal devices, yet it looks as if it is hardly ever used. As you can imagine the smell is horrific, and something you smell immediately upon entering her one bedroom one bath condo. The boxes are so terrible that the plastic tarp that my friend keeps under the boxes had a puddle of urine in the middle (god knows if they're going somewhere else??? and who can blame them?!) And she has 4-5 bottles of air freshner sitting on a table outside the closet where the boxes are kept, along with cat box deodorizer and odor eliminator crystals.
Mind you - I wondered (and being cynical... expected) if it would be this bad, so I brought a costco sized bag of freshstep and had to empty/dig/carveout every bit of clumped stuck litter. Had to wash the three pans top and bottom, clean the tarp (in the shower no less), etc etc etc. Mind you this took at least a hour and a half. I'm not sure how long it takes for cat poop in a litter box to turn light brown/pastel but there was some in that state hidden away in the miasma of each box...
Just to give perspective on the cat owner, she does suffer with mental health issues (such as bipolar/psychosis/etc) yet is financially well off enough to not have to work and she also quit college b/c she wants to try spending a year writing a novel and has 30+ resin ball-jointed-dolls (for those unaware, those things are usually 200-500 a piece...) She has no real responsibilities apart from taking care of the condo and/or playing D&D with her friends online.
I'm a cat owner (my cat is 19 y/o black shorthair that I've had since I was 10) and I care deeply about the duty you owe your pet when you chose to adopt them, they have no say in where they end up, so if you're responsible you do a &)%&(* good job of taking care of them! so maybe because of that I become extremely disgusted and infuriated by the poor care these cats are getting considering how little real responsibility my friend actually has. I can assume they are fed regularly (two tabbies that are extremely fat, a white cat that is normal stocky size), I can't attest to the state of how often their water is changed (when they're under my care its every day scoop litter/cleanwater/food/etc). But I really wonder if the water bowl situation has the same treatment as the litter boxes.... : (
(btw if this makes you furious, I'm right there with you)
tl;dr [my real question starts here!]
So my question is what kind of specific diseases or bacteria/parasites can cats get from a extremely overfilled/poorly kept/unsanitary cat boxes? Since this is not just an issue that has happened one out of the 4-5 times I've watched her cats, I'm driven now to finally say something once she returns because this is not fair to the animals (or me!) and if she does not have the energy/drive/etc to take care of them they deserve a better home.
One of the cats, the white short hair, always has horrific smelling soft stool (not diarrhea mind you, but not normal tootsie roll) . I am wondering now if perhaps he has some kind of parasite or internal problem due *specifically* to the poor cat box. They are strictly indoor cats. They are only fed Iams adult dry cat food - there is no wet food anywhere. From the time I've known my friend she's always complained about the white kitty having really fowl smelling poos, and now because of how poor of a track record I've noticed from her care, I'm wondering if her inactivity is mainly to blame. The cats have been taken to the vet by her for checkups, but one time during my sitting one tabby got a cold/chills and had to have medication.. i only wonder if the litter box state might have played a part in that illness too???
Three cats in a one bedroom one bath condo is the max her apartment allows (thank god), and while they are all rather pudgy and fat and seemingly happy, this is *NOT ACCEPTABLE* in my book and when she returns I want to at least research all possible risks she's posing to them by not taking proper care of them. I need specific names and diseases because she can be a bit dismissive of anything that questions her knowledge - and if it is scientific names it will be better so she can look them up herself.
I'm on the fence about taking a stool sample to the vet for testing since she will be gone for two weeks...
Sorry for the super long post... I love cats and while I can call a vet tomorrow, the situation has me so rilled up I felt I had to do *something/anything* about it this evening.
Thanks in advance,
-meowington
This is my first post and this is mainly fueled by the events of today. I'm taking care of my friends 3 cats while she is away on holiday. Today was my first day going over there.
[If you are squeemish or don't like reading about poo skip past this bit]
In the past when I'd do this service I'd notice the litter boxes were filled pretty high with (brace yourself) urine clumps and feces.
Now today I was expecting it to be about the same, but when I decided to... /gross... dig a little deeper to my horrible dismay I noticed that the issue *WAS NOT* just the surface. Out of the 3 - one box was completely solid from what is presumably days/weeks (i hope not months) worth of urine/feces seeping down into the litter down to the bottom of the pan. (And these are short and very deep boxes... not the standard wide and very shallow ones) The second was about midway but the litter on the bottom was still dark gray and wet. Then the last one was just a mixture of wet litter with god knows how many weeks worth of waste. Every box had to be scraped on all sides to remove everything. yuck.
I can only presume that my friend feels that taking care of the litter box is just dumping fresh, new litter on top of whatever mess is already in there... I guess this because she had two boxes of freshstep that were empty in the same room, and you could tell it was just poured on the top. The ironic thing is she has one of those kitty gene disposal devices, yet it looks as if it is hardly ever used. As you can imagine the smell is horrific, and something you smell immediately upon entering her one bedroom one bath condo. The boxes are so terrible that the plastic tarp that my friend keeps under the boxes had a puddle of urine in the middle (god knows if they're going somewhere else??? and who can blame them?!) And she has 4-5 bottles of air freshner sitting on a table outside the closet where the boxes are kept, along with cat box deodorizer and odor eliminator crystals.
Mind you - I wondered (and being cynical... expected) if it would be this bad, so I brought a costco sized bag of freshstep and had to empty/dig/carveout every bit of clumped stuck litter. Had to wash the three pans top and bottom, clean the tarp (in the shower no less), etc etc etc. Mind you this took at least a hour and a half. I'm not sure how long it takes for cat poop in a litter box to turn light brown/pastel but there was some in that state hidden away in the miasma of each box...
Just to give perspective on the cat owner, she does suffer with mental health issues (such as bipolar/psychosis/etc) yet is financially well off enough to not have to work and she also quit college b/c she wants to try spending a year writing a novel and has 30+ resin ball-jointed-dolls (for those unaware, those things are usually 200-500 a piece...) She has no real responsibilities apart from taking care of the condo and/or playing D&D with her friends online.
I'm a cat owner (my cat is 19 y/o black shorthair that I've had since I was 10) and I care deeply about the duty you owe your pet when you chose to adopt them, they have no say in where they end up, so if you're responsible you do a &)%&(* good job of taking care of them! so maybe because of that I become extremely disgusted and infuriated by the poor care these cats are getting considering how little real responsibility my friend actually has. I can assume they are fed regularly (two tabbies that are extremely fat, a white cat that is normal stocky size), I can't attest to the state of how often their water is changed (when they're under my care its every day scoop litter/cleanwater/food/etc). But I really wonder if the water bowl situation has the same treatment as the litter boxes.... : (
(btw if this makes you furious, I'm right there with you)
tl;dr [my real question starts here!]
So my question is what kind of specific diseases or bacteria/parasites can cats get from a extremely overfilled/poorly kept/unsanitary cat boxes? Since this is not just an issue that has happened one out of the 4-5 times I've watched her cats, I'm driven now to finally say something once she returns because this is not fair to the animals (or me!) and if she does not have the energy/drive/etc to take care of them they deserve a better home.
One of the cats, the white short hair, always has horrific smelling soft stool (not diarrhea mind you, but not normal tootsie roll) . I am wondering now if perhaps he has some kind of parasite or internal problem due *specifically* to the poor cat box. They are strictly indoor cats. They are only fed Iams adult dry cat food - there is no wet food anywhere. From the time I've known my friend she's always complained about the white kitty having really fowl smelling poos, and now because of how poor of a track record I've noticed from her care, I'm wondering if her inactivity is mainly to blame. The cats have been taken to the vet by her for checkups, but one time during my sitting one tabby got a cold/chills and had to have medication.. i only wonder if the litter box state might have played a part in that illness too???
Three cats in a one bedroom one bath condo is the max her apartment allows (thank god), and while they are all rather pudgy and fat and seemingly happy, this is *NOT ACCEPTABLE* in my book and when she returns I want to at least research all possible risks she's posing to them by not taking proper care of them. I need specific names and diseases because she can be a bit dismissive of anything that questions her knowledge - and if it is scientific names it will be better so she can look them up herself.
I'm on the fence about taking a stool sample to the vet for testing since she will be gone for two weeks...
Sorry for the super long post... I love cats and while I can call a vet tomorrow, the situation has me so rilled up I felt I had to do *something/anything* about it this evening.
Thanks in advance,
-meowington