Dirty fur

Hello to everyone, I am really really new to this cat world, I really did not like cats at all, but my wife got a new kitten a few weeks ago (she did not liked them either but she wanted a pet) and it took us 1.5 minutes to fall in love with the little devil .

Today he owns us, completly, he sleeps with us and just does not want to be anywhere if we are not there to please him.

Our problem is that sometimes when he uses his litter box, he gets his tail, the fur around his butt and sometimes his back paws dirty with poop.

He sleeps with us since the begining, we know that is not good, but we really like it, so i have to check his paws, tail and rear end for any poop residue before going to bed. The litter box he has is a normal one, with cover so he can get his privacy doing his stuff, I put like four to five inches of clumping litter and I clean it every night.

He eats cat food that our vet gave us, she said that it was good for him, even though it is not cheap, but it would not make him fat, just healthy.

Does anyone have any advise?

Thanks and sorry if I wrote to much, just wanted to give you as much information I could. And thanks for reading.

I'll put a picture up a soon as i can, so you can meet our spoil child.

By the way, his name is Chuby

Is the stools firm in the litter box? If it is runny I would give him a tablespoon of canned pumpkin. This should firm up any loose stool. I would also take the kitten to the groomers to have the fur near it's bottom clipped so it doesn't "catch" anything. As the kitty gets older this will become less of a problem.

You didn't say how old your kitten is so I'll assume it is over 8 weeks old? This is a little young and will need practice to "get it right"

Keep us posted!

I am not sure why you have an angry symbol at the end of your post? There could be several reasons he isn't clean. One is if he lives up to his name and is obese, then he can't get back to clean himself. If he is just a small kitten, he might not have litter box manners yet, and simply switching from a regular clay litter to something better will help you.

If he has long hair, his waste could be getting stuck on that and clipping his fur is a good idea back there so that doesn't happen.
Brushing him with cornstarch will help, or simply taking an empty litter pan filling it with warm water and letting him soak his feet in it then toweling him dry will help as well.

He probably is just a baby separated to quickly from mom and does not know litter box manners at all.

Sorry about the angry symbol, i thought it was something like a devil, and it was just to accent the name a little, but i am really happy with my cat, Really!! (but it does not take away the fact that HE IS a little devil).

He is around 8 weeks old and it is not chuby, the vet said that he is not over weight. I will look for some place to getting it trim while he gets a hang on it.

His original name was chewbacca__(the wookie on star wars), so we callled him chewy, but our vet did not understood the name and wrote "Chuby" on his vaccination papers, so that is the name he finally got stuck with.

I use those wet baby whippes to clean him when he gets dirty, only where he gets dirty, and use this wet cat cleaning things i got to clean the rest of him once a week.

Thanks a lot for the help.

Welcome to the site! It will take time for him to clean himself more.

It took one of my cats a few months to clean himself better (he was only 3-4 weeks old when I adopted him- he and his brother were rescued from a park). During the first 2-3 months of his life, he'd be strolling around with litter or remains of kittenfood clumped on his nose. I often had to take a warm damp rag and wipe his nose several times to get it completely off. He also didn't clean himself great after using the litterbox so I used special kitty wipes (u can get these at pet stores). After a while, I didn't see any more remains of litter on his butt either.

I like the name chuby! It's cute!!

I noticed yesterday that he is starting to clean himself, but I was wondering, isn't it bad for him to eat his poop?. I'm still gona take him to get trimmed in the rear, but we can't avoid his paws getting all dirty. But anyways i will start using the warm damp rag instead of the baby wipes, just to avoid any quemicals or stuff that could give him a rash or something.

Also, about the name, i forgot to tell you that Chuby in spanish sounds more like Shooby. Thats why his vet got all confused with the name we gave him at first.

Very friendly site/forums you got here, congratulations!!!

That's one reason why I LOVE this website- because most of the people are FRIENDLY and very helpful!!

Also,

He sleeps with us since the begining, we know that is not good, but we really like it, so i have to check his paws, tail and rear end for any poop residue before going to bed.

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it's not bad for cats to sleep with us! Grin. That's one of my FAVORITE things about cats- to have them sleep with me ! However, SOMETIMES I wish I could sleep alone! (I have 4 cats and THREE TEND TO SLEEP ON ME- not on the bed!) So sometimes I can't breathe well or parts of body goes numb due to having three cats' weighting me down!