I got a kitten from a breeder, 10 weeks old now. Had him for 2 weeks, poop was always very watery, yellow, and smells horrible. The vet said that this is probably due to the stress of a new home and adjusting to the food. I feed him Purina Pro Plan Focus Kitten dry food and have been mixing a spoon of Fancy Feast Kitten Can food. His litter box has been in the same location since we got him. I transitioned him from regular litter to pine and he has been doing well using it regularly. Litter box is VERY clean, I clean it up right after he poops. I probably clean it 3+ times a day and once a week wash it out. Yesterday he started pooping on the couch, but ONLY at night. He meows a bit before he does. Last night was the second night and did it twice in the same spot. Each time I clean with the pet spray cleaner to eliminate the odor. This morning I fed him as usual and he peed and pooped in the litter box. I have no ideas on what is causing this. He is the only cat. We have a puppy that he plays with and gets along with very well. The kitten's food, water, and litter are all not accessible to the dog. It is separated by a baby gate. We did take the gate down a couple days ago for a day to see how it would go but ended up putting it back up by the end of the day.

Welcome to our forum. There are a couple of things going on here.

1. It appears you got this kitty at 8 weeks which is WAY too young to be taken away from the mommy. It is no wonder you are having issues.

2. It is true that stress can cause a change in bathroom habits. However, you should always continue the kitten on the food the breeder was feeding. This kitten was barely weaned before being taken away from mom and siblings. I will caution you to NOT feed Purina products, including Fancy Feast. A lot of contaminated dry and wet food has been sold and cats have gotten sick and/or died. A friend of mine who runs a cat rescue had 200 cats get sick and five died. Purina claims their products are 100% healthy -- but if you look at the ingredients, you will find they are not.

3. As for the litter box issues -- again ... this baby was not trained well because the mommy and breeder did not take the time to train him. Had you gotten this kitten at 12 weeks, the time he should have left the breeder, you probably would NOT be having these issues.

You cannot blame the kitty for this behavior. He doesn't know any better at this point. All you can do is keep the litter box clean and put him in it when you feel he may be wanting to go outside the litter box. You might also consider adding a second litter box in another area of your home. It could be a LONG walk to the litter box for a little kitten.

My opinion is, if you're having to gate off part of your house, you are in big trouble! Pets should be able to roam freely and without restriction. A bengal will require this due to the breed.

Make sure you are using an enzyme cleaner made especially for cat messes and clean the area completely. Many kittens prefer open litter boxes, some prefer closed -- it just depends on the cat. Many prefer a certain type of litter.

Your breeder obviously does not care much about her kittens or she would have made sure the kitty didn't leave until it was 12 weeks old and she would have provided food and litter to start you off. What's done is done and unfortunately it will be up to you to continue training your kitty because the mommy isn't available to do it for you.

I'm sure you were unaware of any of this -- you wanted a bengal cat and purchased a bengal cat. However, bengals are not like your ordinary cat and come with challenges and adventures any other cat would never take you on. Make sure you read up on the breed and feel free to continue to ask questions and get answers.

What matters most here is that this baby will have a loving home and lots of cat toys, beds, and a tall cat tree to enjoy.

Welcome to our forum. There are a couple of things going on here.

1. It appears you got this kitty at 8 weeks which is WAY too young to be taken away from the mommy. It is no wonder you are having issues.

2. It is true that stress can cause a change in bathroom habits. However, you should always continue the kitten on the food the breeder was feeding. This kitten was barely weaned before being taken away from mom and siblings. I will caution you to NOT feed Purina products, including Fancy Feast. A lot of contaminated dry and wet food has been sold and cats have gotten sick and/or died. A friend of mine who runs a cat rescue had 200 cats get sick and five died. Purina claims their products are 100% healthy -- but if you look at the ingredients, you will find they are not.

3. As for the litter box issues -- again ... this baby was not trained well because the mommy and breeder did not take the time to train him. Had you gotten this kitten at 12 weeks, the time he should have left the breeder, you probably would NOT be having these issues.

You cannot blame the kitty for this behavior. He doesn't know any better at this point. All you can do is keep the litter box clean and put him in it when you feel he may be wanting to go outside the litter box. You might also consider adding a second litter box in another area of your home. It could be a LONG walk to the litter box for a little kitten.

My opinion is, if you're having to gate off part of your house, you are in big trouble! Pets should be able to roam freely and without restriction. A bengal will require this due to the breed.

Make sure you are using an enzyme cleaner made especially for cat messes and clean the area completely. Many kittens prefer open litter boxes, some prefer closed -- it just depends on the cat. Many prefer a certain type of litter.

Your breeder obviously does not care much about her kittens or she would have made sure the kitty didn't leave until it was 12 weeks old and she would have provided food and litter to start you off. What's done is done and unfortunately it will be up to you to continue training your kitty because the mommy isn't available to do it for you.

I'm sure you were unaware of any of this -- you wanted a bengal cat and purchased a bengal cat. However, bengals are not like your ordinary cat and come with challenges and adventures any other cat would never take you on. Make sure you read up on the breed and feel free to continue to ask questions and get answers.

What matters most here is that this baby will have a loving home and lots of cat toys, beds, and a tall cat tree to enjoy.

I agree with what Sherry said, but I'll just add an emphasize a few things...

1. You cannot fix the litterbox problem until you fix the runny/smelly poo problem. So that needs to be the focus. Forget about trying to find the perfect litter, or the perfect place for the box, or the right amount of cleaning and all that. When he goes, he is in great discomfort (thus the meow), and nobody is working to get that solved for him, so he's trying to find a solution on his own (i.e., seeing if "going" in different places will help). So he's not going to suddenly have perfect litterbox habits while he is in that much discomfort. Next time he goes outside the box, and you end up with the unpleasant job of cleaning it up, apologize to your cat for not helping him fix his problem, and use it as motivation for yourself to work harder to get it fixed.

2. It could legitimately be diet related. So the first thing to do is to immediately see if you can discover *exactly* what his diet was when he was at the breeders, and go back to that. Presumably he was going fine while he was there, so you need to try to replicate that success. You should though, keep in the back of your mind, that you might be also dealing with a parasite like TF here. There's articles on that here in the forum, lots of discussions and experiences with that, and lots of advice to be had. There's also a ton of material online about it. https://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/di ... richomomas. I would recommend resetting his diet first and seeing how he does with that. Give that a week or so, then if he's still having the same poo problems, getting a TF test done.

Now just some other less important comments (those first two are the biggies for right now, but this is stuff for further down the line...):

1. When he left the cattery (too early as Sherry pointed out) he had an opinion of what a litterbox is. What size, what shape, whether it was open or closed etc. He also had an opinion of what the litter was like: how deep it should be, how it smelled, how it felt to his paws etc. So, again, just like with the food, you want to replicate that success what he was having with all that, as much as possible, before even thinking about "transitioning" him to what you want him to use going forward. There probably isn't a bigger change that you could have made, of going from a clay or grain type of litter to a pine one. What possessed you to do such a thing? Even if he didn't have this terrible "poo problem" that he has right now, I *still* wouldn't be surprised if he had serious litterbox aversion problems, just because of this monumental and ill-advised change that you made. Also, just an opinion, but I really hate the idea of pine-based litter. It's really un-natural for them, the texture of it alone has gotta be awful to climb up a pile of that stuff, go, and then not really be able to bury his waste (which is his instinct), so I would re-think that long-term, even once he is "reset" back to using the litterbox consistantly and successfully, with his "poo problems" a distant memory.

2. Food-wise, you should never mix dry and wet food together in the same bowl (if that is what you are doing). The wet food will coat and contaminate the dry food, making it unsafe for him to eat unless he consumes it immediately. At his age, he also needs to be eating ~6 or so meals a day, so you either need to be leaving out dry food all the time, or be there to feed him those meals throughout the day. And male bengals will grow like crazy and get to be *big* cats, so eating with a good appetite is a big deal to them.

3. You're giving him awful food. I gotta say that. Depending on the specific formula, here's the first few ingredients of that garbage:

Chicken, Brewer's Rice, Corn Gluten Meal, Poultry By-Product Meal, Soy Protein Concentrate, Fish Meal, Soy Protein Isolate, Soybean Meal

So it's actually, on paper, it's an extremely high-protein formula, but he's getting a bunch of that protein through by-products (which should never be in a cat's diet) and soy (which is even worse).

There's some really good articles to check out here:

http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/s ... -pet-food/
http://www.littlebigcat.com/category/nutrition/

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The little monsters 3

Ok, I appreciate all the insight. Please go easy on me, I'm new to all this and trying my best to care for and love him to the best of my ability.

Everything I've read says a kitten is ok to be separated from it's mom starting at 8 weeks and many of the breeders do just that. So I didn't see that as a red flag. The I'm feeding him is the food that the breeder was feeding him, she sent me home with a sample. She said that he likes it when you mix the dry food with the wet food but that wet food can give him diarrhea. So I give him dry food mixed in with a little bit of wet food. What he doesn't eat I dispose of and clean the food bowl. I do this about three times a day. Between these feeding he has access to his dry food. If the Purina Pro Plan is not quality food and that it what the breeder gave me, what food should I give him instead (preferably quality dry food)? When should I start transitioning him to the new food?

I took him to the vet fr a general exam and told them about the diarrhea and they said it was most likely due to adjusting to his new home and to bring him in if it continues for another week.

I didn't transition him to a new litter overnight. Every time I cleaned out his litter box I added a little bit of pine litter. He uses the litter box no problem most of the time, at night he started to poop outside of it. I don't know if it's because of the litter since he was using it constantly for a while and just now started to poop outside of it. Tonight I'm adding a second litter box with clumping litter to see if he likes that better.

Obviously I'm not blaming the kitten, I'm trying to figure out the best approach to take regarding the issue.

The gate is for the puppy. The cat can easily bypass under it and is free to roam as it pleases. The gate is in place so that the cat has a area that it can call it's own and do his business without the dog interrupting.

I'm well aware of the breed's unique personality, characteristic, etc. that I why I choose a bengal.

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The little monsters 3

Brian is one of our most dedicated and thorough members. His posts are always spot on and you can take what he says to the bank. Bengals are not like domestic short-haired cats. Your baby has some wild blood in him -- and it is so important that the bengal kitten remain with its mom until at least 12 weeks. 95% of your breeders agree with this and will not let their kittens go any earlier. The reason they do is so they don't have to continue spending money on the litter and they can get their money out and move on. There are a few breeders out there who want the litter gone to get their queen pregnant again and repeat the cycle.

We are not trying to be hard on you. We know you are new to this game and we are just trying to answer your questions. We all want to take a kitten who is well adjusted to the food and litter box and we can just love on the kitty. I know you are frustrated because you don't know what is going on and your kitty can't tell you, except by going to the bathroom in other places.

I agree with Brian on pine pellets. I would definitely consider continuing the litter the breeder used. Note, the litter is not for YOUR convenience. It is for your cat's. If you want him to use the litter box, he has to want to use the litter box.

I'm glad Brian agreed with getting a test for TF. Most vets are not able to do the test and have to send the sample out. And if it comes back positive, it will be a challenge with the medication and the length of time it takes to eradicate this horrible parasite. I hope the isn't the case with your baby.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say the kitten was having issues at the breeders and they continued when you got the kitten. You have no proof the cat was healthy at the breeders. Yeah, there are some breeders who will let go at 10 weeks, but at 8 weeks is really strange and way too early. And no breeder wants to put up with five or xix babies with poop problems.

If this breeder has a cattery name, please PM me the information -- or the breeder's name. I'll check my database and see if I have any of their cats in there.

Above all, be patient and kind. Pour a ton of love onto your baby! He really needs it now more than ever.

I switched back to the old litter I was using and he is going to the litter box again. Unfortunately, the breeder did not tell me what litter he was using, but he seems happy with the clumping litter.

Ok, I took him to the vet last Tuesday so I’ll schedule another appointment this week. I brought a sample of his poop last week and asked about testing but they said to give it a week. Maybe I should try a different vet.

Yeah I was trying to find a natural litter solution, I thought it would be better for him.

Thanks everyone!

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The little monsters 3

Honestly, a simple change of the type of litter solved the problem? BINGO! Happy to hear you listened to us. Many cats do not like the pellets!

I wouldn't change vets. It is very common for a vet to say "give it a week" and then we'll deal with it. Note most vets will test for the common parasites -- Giardia and Coccidia are common and vet will test for them, but TF is different. If the bloody stools continue, I would definitely have a sample tested for that. Note, too, with many parasites, vomiting also occurs and the cat becomes lethargic and does not want to eat. That may not be the issue here. So, then we would be back to the food situation.

Hang in there and you will solve this issue. Look at how easily the litter box issue was solved!!! When a cat goes outside of the litter box, they are trying to tell you something isn't right. Since they can't talk to you, then you have to become Sherlock Holmes and figure it out. I am happy you have ONE thing out of the way now.