6 year old cat, dragging across carpet, licking privates,

by Karen

My 6 year old male cat has been dragging his butt across the carpet and licking his privates a lot lately. This has been going on at least a week. Tonight, he peed outside his litter box in another room, which he has never done before.


He is an indoor cat, and he has never had worms.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer from Kate
Hi well it could be worms or it may be a urinary infection or blocked anal glands. Any of these things will make the cat display these sorts of symptoms.

A trip to the vets is necessary I think so that a proper diagnosis can be made.

Hope he is better soon

best wishes Kate

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Finally - a solution for scooting!!
by: Anonymous

I hope I'm not too late with this information for those of you whose cats are suffering this uncomfortable situation. The last cat I adopted, which I took off the streets on Super Bowl Sunday of 2013 had this problem. She somehow developed it right after I took her home and started feeding her "good" cat food instead of whatever she was having on the streets. I was using Blue Buffalo at the time for my 4 other cats. A few days after, she started dragging her but and licking all the time. Sadly, this went on for over a year. I even kept her butt shaved to get it aired (a suggestion from a vet to alleviate the skin irritation), and this helped, but didn't solve it and kept on happening. I changed food types within the Blue Buffalo brand, tried Purina, went back to Iams and nothing. After 3 or 4 unsuccessful doses of Clavamox, applying topical cream on her butt twice a day for months, even treating her with Cantharis, several trips to the vet, and trying different foods, I kept looking and reading seeking some help for my poor cat. One blessed day (really!!!), I read somewhere that this behavior was NOT due to a gland problem, but instead, it was caused by an UNBALANCE IN HER DIGESTIVE SYSTEM DUE TO THE LACK OF FIBER. I immediately decided to research all the brands that I had used on the PetSmart website, and to my surprise, they all fluctuate between 3% to maybe 6% crude fiber (max). However, Hill's Science Diet has several (two or three) types of food that have 9.5 or 10% crude fiber!!! Regardless of the super bad reviews that I have read about this brand, I went ahead and gave it a try. Long story short: within less than 5 days, my cat stopped dragging her but on the floor. It's now been about 4 months, and I'm a happy owner of a house with 5 cats and no streaks on the floor any longer. Her butt hair has been fully grown for a while, with no need to shave or anything. She's as happy and healthy as she can be, and so are my other 4 cats, all adults. From now on, only the high-fiber varieties on the Hill's Science Diet for my cats!

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