2 Cats - Wiz is 11 months and Maui is 5 months

I am pulling my hairs out. I have tried science diet, wet food and now I'm back to dry food. What is normal for how many times a cat poop a day? I got one that covers and one that doesn't. When I got home from work yesterday, I thought my son hadn't cleaned out the litter box. I texted him and he said I changed the litter and the liner in the morning. Well you could have fooled me because I thought it hadn't been changed in 2 days. What is going on? They just go go go all the time and I need to know what to do. Even the litter is making me angry because it dosent cover up any odors anymore. I've gone from fresh step to arm and hammer. The commericials are telling fibs. What do I do? Whats the best food to feed them and what's the best litter. HELP!!!!!!. I don't know what to do. What make matters worst, they will set there and watch me clean the litter box and go and crap again. What!!!!! how you going to do that after I cleaned it. Woke up this morning for work and I can just smell it. Is this normal? I have them on meox mix dry now which leads me to believe this not the best choice and could be the problem but then again I had them on expensive science diet and it was the same way. So I'm begging for help because I'm at WITS END!!!

Sorry your cats are having BM problems.

What is the consistency of the BM?

Dry food can cause really smelly diarrhea as can worms.  Are they strictly indoors?  Do you have a dog that could have brought in worms?

That your cats are having smelly poop on both dry and wet leads me to think maybe they are allergic to an ingredient in the food.

Did you notice *any* difference when feeding wet--and what kind of wet did you feed? 

How often a cat poops and how smelly it is directly depends on the quality of food in my experience. When my cat was on a combination of cheap grocery store dry and wet, she pooped at least once a day, and they stunk! Then I started switching her to better quality wet and raw, and she started pooping less with less smell. When she was eating close to all raw, she pooped every 3 days with no smell. The raw feeders on here all says the same. Much less poop with no smell.

To me, that shows how much of the food is actually being absorbed by the cat's system. When cats are fed a high animal protein/very low carb wet diet, there is almost no waste. When they are fed species inappropriate fillers such as grains, fruits and veggies, they are not utilized and literally pooped back out. In addition, to me, dry food causes the stinkiest poops because cats have a tougher time dealing with the nature of extruded kibble which by definition has inappropriate ingredients.

If you are interested in finding some better food for your cats, please go to www.catinfo.org. Along with a lot of great feline nutrition and health info, it has a handy chart of common cat foods alone with a breakdown of protein/fat/carbs.

They are indoor cats. I know its not worms because they were just checked for that last month and I have no dogs. I can't tell who is doing what. Sometimes it soft and then some is normal. We changed from wet food because we thought that was the reason they were going so much. The wet food they were on was fancy feast. The dry food have ranged from science diet, meox mix and Natures choice, something like that I can't remember the name of the third one. It was more of a more healthly nututional blend but I didn't see any difference.

What do you mean by Raw?

Raw meat, either commercial raw food prodcts or homemade/home-prepared raw. Check out the Raw Feeding Forum under Cat Nutrition for more info. There's a resource thread that will answer any questions you have about raw.

In my opinion, there's not that much difference between dry foods in terms of stool quality. They are all still extruded kibble, and kitty systems will still have difficulty processing it.

I feed Raw; Ritz poops maybe three to four times a week, doesn't smell at all.

Thanks for all the information. Really appreciated.