Hello all,

I have a 12 year old male himalayan who has always had loose, and VERY smelly stools. Since this has always been the case, I thought it was normal all this time. The stools are dark brown, and not diarrhea-consistency, but rather toothpaste consistency. We feed dry food (purina one). Someone told me recently that cats who eat dry food never get enough water since they dont have a thirst drive, and in the wild they get most of their water from their prey. So the cats are more susceptible to urinary tract issues because of this.

I know you will probably say that purina is garbage and I should feed a better more expensive brand. The cat lives with my dad and he doesnt want to spend the money for it. We can supplement with wet food, but for all 12 years he has been a free feeder, and if we feed wet food wouldnt we need to change that? If you can suggest a supplement which will help this, or a food similar in price to purina one, please let me know. Thanks!

Dolly eats dry food as her main meal, and does well on it.
It's one of the pricey ones though, from the vet, as she is being treated for allergies.
But she was always on a high premium dry food...and she always drank her fair share of water.
I free feed her the dry, it's down all the time, but in the afternoon, I give her a canned food as a treat. Again, this is from the vet, an allergy one...but I have used the Whiskas foil packs before for her and she loved them.
But being a treat, it's not the whole pack or the whole can...it's only 1/4 of the canned she is eating now..or when I used the Whiskas..it was 1/2 the foil pack.
Anymore, and then she would get the loose stools.

Your cat may be having soft stools because of the quality of the food you are feeding...it's hard to say..some do well on the cheaper brands, and some...it just goes through their system and ends up in soft stools.
The companies that make the premium foods say that the cat will not produce so much stool as the food is digested very well by the cat and not all coming out the other end.
Makes sence to me... ..and I have found this to be so with Dolly.
She will be 16 years old in the Spring by the way, and has always been healthy..except for this stupid allergy thingy (I think it was really from all the cheese we were slipping her while we had our pre supper drinks and not really the cat food, but we did the change anyways)

Purrs,
Joan

so ive found a dry food without corn in it. and the good thing is that its actually cheaper than purina. its called healthwise, and the ingredients are comparable to wellness and high end foods like that. The first 2 ingredients are chicken, and brown rice. what do you think, should i buy it? my cat isnt picky at all, so im sure he will eat it, and i really do suspect that the smelly, soft poop has something to do with a corn allergy or something.

this has gotten me to do a lot of research about cat nutrition, lol, and it makes sense that the corn doesnt digest. it explains y the occasional hairball vomit comes out yellow instead of dark brown like the food. its funny; my friend feeds her two persians crazzyy expensive royal canin persian formula, and the ingredients in that arent any better than cheapo purina one. maybe i should tell her...

It's worth a try if it will get rid of the smelly,toothpaste type poops.
Just remember to do a slow intro, mixing a little of the new with the old, increasing the new daily until you finally are just giving the new.
Sometimes, if you just take away the old and give the new straight away, that could upset his tummy and give you worse poops.

Good luck with this!
Joan