Cat is always covered in poop

Hi. I have a 2 year old neutered male indoor cat. We adopted him from a shelter at 5 months old. My husband was leery of him because he was very clumsy and kept banging into walls, but our kids fell in love with him. He would dig and dig in the litter box until his paws were covered in feces. The vet said this was common and around 1 year old he should grow out of it. Well he is now two years old and it is a full-time job cleaning up after this cat. He doesn't like being cleaned so he becomes aggressive when we are trying to wash him up. He has ripped through shirts and drawn blood on several occasions. We have other cats and he will wait until one of them uses the litter box and go in and dig again so this a constant thing. We have tried litter mats, different kinds of litter, a collar infused with something to soothe him. It is getting to the point that everyone in our home is frustrated because of how much maintenance he requires. I have to keep bedroom doors closed because he jumps on the beds covered in poop and I have washed blankets until they are falling apart and cleaned floors until they are almost stripped! He also does other weird things our other cats don't do. When he is stepping off the area rug onto the hard wood, he feels around with his paw first before he takes a step. He is very skidish and approaches the other cats with his head tilted and

seems "slow" when he is playing with them. If he were just tracking a little litter it would be one thing, but this is disgusting. I don't want to make him an outside cat because our other cats are indoor cats. Plus we live on a busy road and I'm sure he would get hit by a car because of his slow reaction time. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Answer by Kate
Hi
well this does sound odd. My first thoughts are i wonder if this cat has some sort or mental disability? It does rather sound like his behavior could be associated with some sort of mental problem. if that is the case then unfortunately he will take more looking after than a normal cat.

You seem to have done everything else to help him. I assume you have more than one litter tray for your cats as this can sometimes cause problems if not.

The only other thing I can think of is getting one of those automatic cat litter boxes which cleans up the waste after use, this would prevent him getting it on him when he goes in after another cat etc. It would also mean that scent would be gone straight away and this may be a trigger for him.

This is the only other thing I can think of that may help. I know the automatic tray cost more but it depends on how much of a problem your cats behavior is affecting you. Anyway it was only a suggestion. there are examples of some of these litter boxes here

https://www.our-happy-cat.com/cat-litter.html


best wishes Kate

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