We have two cats. Skyy (the little princess) and Brownie (the large brown cat).
A while back I put an entry in here about how the little princess wouldn't eat "used" food (both their wet food and dry food are Science Diet)... So, we started adding a little tuna to the wet food the cats get twice a day, and that seemed to HELP. She'd more often eat the wet food. Brownie always eats the wet food eagerly, and when Skyy turns up her nose, Brownie eats Skyy's food too.... These are small amounts of food - more a treat than a meal, so Brownie's not growing to the size of a great dane.....
BUT, and I admit we're putting events together and deciding there's a connection, one of the cats is now defecating outside the litter box. She consistently uses a throw rug near the back door. They both appear to be urinating in the box, but one is defecating outside it..
When collected, the feces seems very dry and hard. The feces SEEM to be "large" so we're presuming it's coming from Brownie, but it only happens at night, so we haven't actually caught anyone. Noone has not used the litter box during the day that I can find.
This is recent behavior, we believe starting shortly after we routinely started adding tuna to the food.
Both cats have been to the vet, and pronounced happy and healthy, and both are about 4-years old. We've always had a large Littermaid in an open but sheltered spot, and use a platform with catch basin so the contents get dumped every day. The box is clean but we also clean it regularly...
I'm not sure what other information to add to help with this diagnosis...
SO, first question - is adding tuna to their wet food a cause of the hard, dry feces?
If so, is it reasonable to think that the cat is constipated, and associates the litter box with a painful movement and is therefore going outside the box? (I read the notes in here on going outside the box and that seemed like a common cause).
I always thought adding tuna (the little princess prefers Chicken Of The Sea, I'm not kidding) would make their feces softer because of the fish oil, but am I incorrect?
We're going to stop the tuna, and today we'll pick up some Petromalt or other hairball stuff to mix in their wet food - the notes said that would help soften the feces.
We'll also add another litter box to the area where she's been going...
What else do we need to do to get this behavior corrected?
A while back I put an entry in here about how the little princess wouldn't eat "used" food (both their wet food and dry food are Science Diet)... So, we started adding a little tuna to the wet food the cats get twice a day, and that seemed to HELP. She'd more often eat the wet food. Brownie always eats the wet food eagerly, and when Skyy turns up her nose, Brownie eats Skyy's food too.... These are small amounts of food - more a treat than a meal, so Brownie's not growing to the size of a great dane.....
BUT, and I admit we're putting events together and deciding there's a connection, one of the cats is now defecating outside the litter box. She consistently uses a throw rug near the back door. They both appear to be urinating in the box, but one is defecating outside it..
When collected, the feces seems very dry and hard. The feces SEEM to be "large" so we're presuming it's coming from Brownie, but it only happens at night, so we haven't actually caught anyone. Noone has not used the litter box during the day that I can find.
This is recent behavior, we believe starting shortly after we routinely started adding tuna to the food.
Both cats have been to the vet, and pronounced happy and healthy, and both are about 4-years old. We've always had a large Littermaid in an open but sheltered spot, and use a platform with catch basin so the contents get dumped every day. The box is clean but we also clean it regularly...
I'm not sure what other information to add to help with this diagnosis...
SO, first question - is adding tuna to their wet food a cause of the hard, dry feces?
If so, is it reasonable to think that the cat is constipated, and associates the litter box with a painful movement and is therefore going outside the box? (I read the notes in here on going outside the box and that seemed like a common cause).
I always thought adding tuna (the little princess prefers Chicken Of The Sea, I'm not kidding) would make their feces softer because of the fish oil, but am I incorrect?
We're going to stop the tuna, and today we'll pick up some Petromalt or other hairball stuff to mix in their wet food - the notes said that would help soften the feces.
We'll also add another litter box to the area where she's been going...
What else do we need to do to get this behavior corrected?