During the past two weeks, I have noticed a strong ammonia odor coming from my litterboxes that causes a burning sensation in my eyes. I have not changed the type of cat litter or cat food.
My family thinks the issue is the number of cats -- I have 11 (10 females, 1 male, and all are fixed), but I also have three litter robots that clean the litterbox to a tray underneath every seven minutes, and two regular litterboxes that I used to manually scoop once a day but now do 2-3 times a day since the smell issue started, even though there's not really much in them. I never had this problem in the four months I've had this many cats, but the 6 kittens are now a little over 4 months old -- would the kittens getting bigger make that much of a difference in the smell, from even 3 months to 4 months?
I have also tried completely replacing the litter in the two regular litterboxes (haven't gotten around to the litter robots yet), and although it initially seemed better, it's starting to hurt my eyes again after only 3 days. For those that have a lot of cats, could 11 cats really cause this, especially when the litterboxes are regularly scooped?
My biggest concern is that the change is not from number of cats or kittens growing up, but that it is an actual health issue, that one of the cats is dehydrated, or has an UTI, or kidney problems, or one of the many other things that could cause a high amount of urea in the urine that could lead to the stronger ammonia smell and burning sensation. None of my cats are acting any differently, and they are all using the litterbox normally. I have not noticed any of them eating or drinking more or less than usual.
I've tried shutting a single cat in a room with the litterbox one at the time and seeing if it smells like ammonia, but I'm not getting consistent results. I think it's because urea doesn't turn to ammonia right away, and also because my sense of smell is subjective. Is there are better way, like some sort of at-home test or special cat litter I could use when separating the cats to narrow down which cat might be the issue if the smell is health issue-related, and then take only that cat to the vet? I would love some suggestions on what route would be the most cost-effective, or easiest to do, or more likely to give an accurate result.
Thanks so much. Any suggestions on how to narrow down which cat (if it is a single cat with a health problem causing the issue) or how to reduce the smell (if it isn't health-related) would be appreciated!
My family thinks the issue is the number of cats -- I have 11 (10 females, 1 male, and all are fixed), but I also have three litter robots that clean the litterbox to a tray underneath every seven minutes, and two regular litterboxes that I used to manually scoop once a day but now do 2-3 times a day since the smell issue started, even though there's not really much in them. I never had this problem in the four months I've had this many cats, but the 6 kittens are now a little over 4 months old -- would the kittens getting bigger make that much of a difference in the smell, from even 3 months to 4 months?
I have also tried completely replacing the litter in the two regular litterboxes (haven't gotten around to the litter robots yet), and although it initially seemed better, it's starting to hurt my eyes again after only 3 days. For those that have a lot of cats, could 11 cats really cause this, especially when the litterboxes are regularly scooped?
My biggest concern is that the change is not from number of cats or kittens growing up, but that it is an actual health issue, that one of the cats is dehydrated, or has an UTI, or kidney problems, or one of the many other things that could cause a high amount of urea in the urine that could lead to the stronger ammonia smell and burning sensation. None of my cats are acting any differently, and they are all using the litterbox normally. I have not noticed any of them eating or drinking more or less than usual.
I've tried shutting a single cat in a room with the litterbox one at the time and seeing if it smells like ammonia, but I'm not getting consistent results. I think it's because urea doesn't turn to ammonia right away, and also because my sense of smell is subjective. Is there are better way, like some sort of at-home test or special cat litter I could use when separating the cats to narrow down which cat might be the issue if the smell is health issue-related, and then take only that cat to the vet? I would love some suggestions on what route would be the most cost-effective, or easiest to do, or more likely to give an accurate result.
Thanks so much. Any suggestions on how to narrow down which cat (if it is a single cat with a health problem causing the issue) or how to reduce the smell (if it isn't health-related) would be appreciated!
