Litter tray *smells* !!

Hi All,

being a new indoor cat owner i thought i'd stop lurking and see if anyone had any advice on my litter tray problem!

A bit of background! I've recently ( 5 weeks ) brought a new member into the house, a lovely 5 month old male Maine Coon called Loki ( most appropriate name i've ever given a cat!! )

At first i was following the breeders guidelines for food and litter until the smell became so bad and i found this site,

after changing his wet food from Felix to Almo Nature and Schesir, then his litter from some cheap brand to Worlds Best and finally his litter tray from an uncovered to covered tray i'm still having massive smell issues!

The only reason i'm even asking is because people here seem to have changed their food or litter and now have minimal or no smell in an uncovered tray!

His dry food is James Wellbeloved btw...all food is of kitten variety,

so....without buying arm and hammer or some deoderiser...does anyone have any other advice?

i also scoup every other day....have tried daily but the smell is the same regardless of it being a day or 10 minutes...tis quite pungent! ( my girlfriend cant clear out the tray without gag reflexing to prove a point

TIA,

If your cat is healthy (no health or UTI issues making the litter box smell bad) then I recommend dumping baking soda in the litter box. Also, if your cat is intact his urine will smell very distinct.

Is Loki neutered yet? If not, you will have a very strong urine smell - it's normal for male cats to be stinky like that.

I recommend scooping daily - if you don't like the smell, imagine what the kitty thinks about it!

howdy, i'm no litter scientist but it may stem from a given cat's digestive system and the particular brand of food it's eating. i got some 'gourmet' canned food for my cats once (i think it was called 'Triumph'). they loved it but dear GOD what a horrible smell later on! i don't know if it would have subsided as their systems got used to it but i didn't wait around to find out and went back to the old food.

lol...on the ball round here

He hasnt been neutered yet...i've had the recommendation to wait until hes 7 months old before getting it done..

with regards to his diet...hes smelt like that from day 1, i changed the food after realising his original diet had 4% meat so thought a kebab a day couldnt do him any good!

Its not a urine smell...its definately his poo...i'll ride it out until hes neutered and see if that makes any odds...

its not a big deal, i can leave the bathroom window open and burn good scented candles but i'd obviously rather it wasnt *this bad* lol

Mind you...compared to the breeders house its absolutely nothing...maybe its just Maine Coons?

I have a Maine Coon girl, her poops are very firm and non stinky. She is spayed.
I feed very simple formula foods such as:
California Natural Chicken & Rice
Sensible Choice Chicken Meal & Rice
Nutro Natural Choice
Nutro Max Cat Roasted Chicken

When I fed more complex foods Felidae, EVO, smell was awful.

I think with simple foods they can digest more, so less poo and less smell in the litterbox for you.

Good luck!

hmm...i thought the food i was feeding him *was* pretty simple...ie. one main ingredient with just water and no cereals...

maybe the dry food is the cuprit given the smell is the same regardless of the wet food used....i'll maybe try some orijen in the next batch

Originally Posted by thechangingman

hmm...i thought the food i was feeding him *was* pretty simple...ie. one main ingredient with just water and no cereals...

maybe the dry food is the cuprit given the smell is the same regardless of the wet food used....i'll maybe try some orijen in the next batch

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Thats what I meant, I feed simple dry foods. I am not familiar with James Wellbeloved foods, their website does list lots of formulas, some are even hypo-allergenic (usually very simple with a single protein source). Sharky on this site is very very good with foods understanding and analysis, perhaps you could ask her for some advice.

cheers for the tips...

i'll slow move him to a new dry and report back!

I've been using Feline Pine litter and think it's really good smell-wise

I use WBCL as you do and have little to no odour (except of course when he is doing his thing or has just completed it). I switched our kitties over to Orijen recently and I must admit the litter box has little to no odour.

I also would highly recommend you scoop AT LEAST once per day. I think you will find the litter will last longer and smell better even if you don't think it will. I would suggest washing out the litter pan, filling it with new litter and then scoop daily at least. On weekends when I'm home, I sometimes scoop twice daily. If I happen to go to the bedroom (where we keep the litter) and I detect any odour, I scoop, then again before bed I always scoop.

The other thing I noticed is that you said the vet won't neuter until 7 months. That seems odd since most of our more up-to-date vets will now neuter as soon as a cat weighs a minimum of 2 lbs.

I've ordered some orijen so hopefully it will help!

Its not that a vet wont do it...the breeder recommended waiting until he was 7 months before neutering so he grows his maximum size in the long run...

right / wrong?!

Cheers.

Originally Posted by thechangingman

I've ordered some orijen so hopefully it will help!

Its not that a vet wont do it...the breeder recommended waiting until he was 7 months before neutering so he grows his maximum size in the long run...

right / wrong?!

Cheers.

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I was told the same thing for my Maine Coon. I waited until 6 months and then spayed her.
I wanted to make sure to maximize her growing potential.

Ok, I have to ask....has he been wormed? Parasites can also cause smelly poos.

Originally Posted by taterbug

Ok, I have to ask....has he been wormed? Parasites can also cause smelly poos.

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yes...he was wormed in July....

Originally Posted by thechangingman

I've ordered some orijen so hopefully it will help!

Its not that a vet wont do it...the breeder recommended waiting until he was 7 months before neutering so he grows his maximum size in the long run...

right / wrong?!

Cheers.

Click to expand...

Wrong. Neutering has nothing to do with ultimate size. Bijou was neutered very young and he's a hefty 17.2 lb. Siamese - in July he was 18.5 lbs. He sister Mika is 8 lbs. I think you will find most people will agree with me that early neutering will have no effect on ultimate size. Late neutering can however, have pretty negative results if he starts spraying (pretty nasty smell) and once they start spraying, it's no guarantee they'll stop after neutering.

There's much to be said FOR early neutering.

Hi there Thechangingman

We have two indoor Maine Coon kittens, aged 9 months, and we too are not enjoying the smell! We are also based in the UK, so have similar feed and litter options to you. We currently free-feed Royal Canin Kitten dry food, and alternate between Applaws (v similar to Almo Nature I think), and wet kitten food made by Natures Best, HiLife and Felix (I know Felix is junky but they love it and it's cheaper so we are continuing until they are adults and we hope they will learn to like better foods from a wider range).

We use WBCL which we think is really good as long as the poo is buried, but unfortunately our daft kittens can't seem to work out how to bury it - they scrape at the sides of the litter tray endlessly and pointlessly instead! I have to say that if we're in, we scoop as soon as we know they've done a poo - we can tell when that is from the amount of scraping! Immediate scooping is the only way we have found to save the house from smelling! Otherwise we scoop the wet twice a day. If your kitten doesn't bury his litter, you could just flick some litter over the poo as soon as he's done it, if you don't want to scoop. But if you're going to do that you might as well scoop I suppose!

Ours were neutered at 5 months - the earliest I could find anyone local to do it (we're behind the times in the UK!). Our breeder recommended waiting until seven months for Bruce (we have a male and a female), but we wanted to get them done at the same time, wanted no risk of unwanted pregnancy/seasons/fighting, and no risk of spraying! Lots of people on this site say that neutering early doesn't really affect their growth - and Bruce is growing very nicely!

We have a plug-in air freshener near the litter tray that we switch on when it's really bad.

I don't suppose it's a Maine Coon trait - I think it's just cat smell! Hope you're enjoying your new boy otherwise, and don't forget to share some pictures! (you can find some I've posted of our two by searching my name or looking in Fur Pics)

Bruce&Sheila

I use JWB and have never had smelly poos with it but I suppose different cats react differently (I gave mine hills science diet once and that gave them very smelly poos). They currently have mostly wet (natures menu, bozita, hi life, applaws kind of thing) and Mosi has a bit of dry. The dry used to always be JWB but I now give him orijen most of the time, but I still use the JWB sometimes. Apart from the immediate smell when they do a poo, there is no smell from the litter tray. I use golden gray clay clumping litter (from zooplus) and have a covered litter tray. I certainly can't smell anything when I get in from work or up in the morning until I take the hood off the tray to scoop. And it's not really smelly then unless Jaffa has done a poo and not covered it.

Despite what vets were taught, maybe many years ago, neutering does not affect the cat's eventual size. Male hormones do change the shape of their face; neutering early might not trigger the broad cheeks and thicker neck of the typical tom.

PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF EARLY NEUTERING

A neutered kitten's growth is not stunted, although males do not develop the characteristic tomcat "jowls". In a parallel scheme for dogs, early-neutered puppies were found to become "leggier" adults than those neutered at the more usual age as the sex hormones appear to affect the 'switching off' of bone growth. Though no data has been collected, the same may be true of early-neutered kittens. Fears about stunted growth are unfounded. Legginess and the absence of tomcat jowls is only of concern to exhibitors (breed standards should make provision for neutered cats having a slightly different appearance).

It is hard to assess whether earlier neutering has any additional positive effects on behaviour (other than preventing sex-related behaviours), but no adverse behavioural effects have been noted.

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http://www.messybeast.com/earlyneuter.htm

On a personal note, I adopted a Maine Coon mix from a shelter two months ago. He was 4 1/2 months old at the time, and his "package" was really prominent for that age. Maine Coons take a long time to mature, yet kittens under adverse circumstances can go into puberty early, as this is nature's way of trying to get a new generation going before it's too late.

On balance, I decided it would be best to get him neutered before he reached 7-8 months, which was my usual vet's advice. The quote above was part of my research. So once he had fattened up and had no health issues, I found a vet who understood my rationale and found no medical reason to disagree with me. I was very concerned that he would start spraying, and once they start, neutering does not always solve the problem.

I did find that the litter box became stinkier, which I attributed to his metabolism healing, because he'd gone without food for so long in his past that he lost his down (the soft fluffy underlayer.) We feed canned Fancy Feast & Nine Lives, and Evo dry (no grains.)

I fixed the litter box stinky problem (baking soda, my routine additive, wasn't cutting it) by adding Cedariffic litter to my clumping litter. It still clumps and the Litter Robot still works, the smell is gone! You might try that.

BTW, the breeder probably has intact male cats on the premises, thus the odor.