beautiful but dirty cat
 

We have a 3 year old, healthy, indoor, mixed breed cat with orange fur and lots of it. The problem is that she doesent seem to clean herself very well around her rear end, and at times elswhere. As she has so much fir it becomes matted with feces. Although on the exterior she may appear clean, under her furry backside it definately isn't and as this material dries up pieces of it tend to fall off.

We thought this may be related strictly to having so much fir, but when he had her trimmed last summer the problem persisted.

I believe that part of the problem is that she cannot reach to clean that area. I have been told that after spaying a female may develop a bit of a sag in the abdomen (for lack of a better description) plus she is a little heavy but not excessively. It does appear that when she is washing her underside that her anus may be obscured by her little belly

Also, she was taken from her mother too soon due to the fact that the owner was going to get rid of the kittens quickly. Could that be that she doesn't know how to groom herself?

We bathe her regularily but not enough to keep up as it would dry her coat too much and chasing her with a wet wipe isn't all that effective. I know this probably sounds like a small issue but we are planning on having children soon and having a cat that leaves a little nuggets around the house is not an option. Any advise you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

T and B

Overweight cats, and cats very long fur do have a very hard time grooming properly as they cannot always reach the area.

If she has diarrhea or constipation this will make it even worse.

You might want to try getting her to lose weight. What and how much is she eating?

Thanks, for the reply

She has always been on dry food. We have just switched her from a hairball formula to a light calorie/weight loss formula. She doesnt seem to have a diarrhea problem from the looks of her litterbox. Hopefully when she looses a little weight her grooming will improve

I see so many obese cats who eat dry only and have it available all the time.

I would try switching her to canned. More satisfying, yet mostly water.

something that helped one of our cats lose weight is if you have stairs, put the litter box upstairs and the food downstairs. mia lost a few pounds just by going up and down the stairs.

She doesn't seem to do well with wet food, as it makes her existing problem worse. She is doing pretty well with her smaller portions and I do suppliment that wit a bit of canned tuna every couple of days. I like the idea of the litterbox and food separately.

Iv'e attached a photo so you can see isn't huge, but quite furry.

cotier,dirty bum or not,she certainly is a beauty:love:
I have to clean my white cats bum on occasions,if he has runny stool.
Thats if I notice before he leaves a brown streak on my rugs:pawprint:
I vary my 3 cats food,canned as main meals and dry for free-feeding,none of them are overweight.
I too keep the litter-boxes downstairs and they have to run down 2 flights of stairs,good exersize!!