Need some cat help please ~ poop issues

[billysmommy]

We adopted a male cat from a shelter in February. The vet said he's about 2.5-3 years old. He's adjusted wonderfully to our house and the kids. He is an indoor only cat. We use Wellness brand food and switched him over to a slightly different formula (talked to the vet about it over the phone). We switched him last week and gradually added some of the new food to the old food until he was only on the new food and he seemed to do fine.

We went away this last weekend from Sat late morning until Mon evening. When we came home, he had pooped once on one of our rugs. We cleaned it up last night but when we woke up this morning he had pooped again on a different part of that rug and on our living room rug. They all looked kind of loose but not watery. We've gone away before for the same amount of time and he's never done this before. I'm going to see how he does today and take him to the vet tomorrow morning if needed in case it's due to an illness.

In the meantime, we're wondering if this could be due to the food change and/or us going away for a couple of days. Any advice is welcome :)

[aa2mama]

I really don't know the answer of what's causing it, but we have never had any litterbox problems from changing foods on the cats. When they have poop issues it seems either to be a territorial thing (assuming that you have only one pet then something like seeing another cat outside the window) or expressing their discontentness with the state of the litterbox. I have heard of other people's cats having litterbox problems when they go out of town, but our two cats have never had problems (knock on wood!).

I would clean your rugs with an enzymatic cleanser like Nature's Miracle if you haven't done so already, roll up the rugs for a few days, and make sure the litterbox is immaculately clean.

[kransden]

One of my cats started doing this when we went out of town. Our solution finally was to lock her in our master bathroom when we left.