Cat with "cow patty" stools otherwise fine

First post here; new user. I've been reading this forum for ages for my other cats but my current baby seems to have a unique issue.

Ever since I got him, his stool has varied from very soft, stinky, and relatively formed to normal. Recently however he's been having frequent issues with cow patty stools. He is negative of Giardia and acting perfectly fine otherwise. He drinks his water and still loves to play. Wondering what the problem could be?

He's been on a grain free diet since he reached adulthood (using Purina Beyond brand) and never had a problem with it though I'm wondering if it could be too rich for him?

Any help would be amazing!

Soft, stinky poops are generally, though not always, indicative of food intolerance.  I have a kitty who cannot tolerate an all grain-free diet, so he gets gf canned food and a little supplement of Royal Canin Gastrointestinal HE dry mixed with Taste of the Wild gf dry.  He used to get gf canned and only RC dry, but we've adjusted it to a level where his poops are still nice and formed, but he's not eating a strictly gf diet.

I wonder about a food sensitivity, too. Which Beyond are you feeding him? If it's canned, does the problem seem linked to any particular food? Fish is a common irritant and some Beyond foods have sweet potato and carrots, which might be a little carby for some cats. M

Whenever i see posts like these i always mention raw food. Its all that works for one of my cats. He cant even do a combination of raw and wet. Has to be all raw or else he gets the cow patties which leaves his butt dirty.

It could be an intolerance to his food. My kitten was on Natural Balance at the shelter (where he had tummy issues and poop issues) and he still had tummy issues and poop issues when we got him. He was also on antibiotics when he came to us, so that didn't help. His vet gave us some FortiFlora for us to mix in pumpkin and give to him. That helped a lot and changing his food helped even more. I've noticed that sometimes he gets soft "cow patty"/"pudding" type poop, but I stop feeding wet food for a few days and he'll be fine. I also use some In Clover prebiotics on him and my 14 year old cat. That works really well! 

Did someone sneak away my cat when I wasn't looking?

I'm aware this is an older post, but I have a cat who I adopted not quite 2 months ago who has these problems. We thought it might just be stress & changing diet, but even going back on the food he has been on he's started to go back to cow pat poops. We've not yet taken him to the vet (booking him in now) but I did some searching around and found something interesting. He, like yours, has occasional cow pat, smelly poops but perks up again after a short period of time.

I am not a vet but I found something called Tritrichomonas foetus. It's apparently common in cattle, but has been found in cats over the past ~10 years. Its symptoms are "waxing and waning large bowel diarrhea" (basically it comes and goes, diarrhea is frequent and in small amounts and often with mucus, long time to poop and cat strains while pooping) but the cat eats, drinks, and plays perfectly normal. Basically, if you weren't keeping an eye on their poop/litter box you wouldn't know anything was wrong.

This seems to match pretty much 100% what my cat has, and it might be worth trying to see if your vet can get some tests run to confirm or deny. Other than that, possible things are IBD or dietary intolerances.