Litterbox smells - female cats worse?

[TheAntiPam]

Hi PetTalk friends,

My limited experience with 5 cats over several years is that the females left much stinkier poo in the litterbox than the males. These were all "fixed" adult kitties, and ate basically the same dry high-quality cat food.

Anyone have any info or observations to add to this question? Do you notice a difference in the strength of litterbox odor due to gender? Inquiring minds want to know!

P.S. If you receive an email from my girl kitty Noodle offering a bribe to change your answer, please ignore it!

[krazyaboutkatz]

Hi Pam. It's nice to see you posting again. Ever since my cats have been eating a high protein grain free diet, their stools have been much stinkier. I now have 2 males and 2 females and no I don't notice any difference in the smell factor. They all produce stinky stools. I prefer to use unscented scoopable litter but I've been having a problem with odor control. Hopefully some day I'll be able to find one that really works well. Just tonight I came home to a very stinky home and I scoop 2 times a day.

[kb2yjx]

I was jsut about to say the same thing. EXCEPT, when the cat is on antibiotics, the poop is really stinky, even despite giving the cat acidophilus!! We clean the boxes twice a day OR when needed....

[Freedom]

I use odor control Tidy Cats scoopable litter. I also add some Baking Soda. This all helps cut down the smell. Plus, all my boxes have hoods on them. I should have listed that first, as that made the biggest difference in containing the odor.

Like others, I feed a high quality grain free kibble.

[krazyaboutkatz]

Well my cats stools must be extra stinky because even when they use the 2 litter boxes that have hoods on them, I can still smell it. Pearl just did an extra stinky poop this morning in the hooded litter box in my bedroom and it smelled like something had died. I always keep plenty of Oust on hand for times like this.

[moosmom]

I have 4 girls and Bad A$$ Buddy. I don't have any problems with odors coming from the girls. Buddy on the otherhand, unless he drinks alot of water, his urine is VERY concentrated. I try to mix water with his canned food to dilute the urine. It works everytime.

[columbine]

Well, poop is poop, and poop stinks! But food with Yucca schidigera extract in it makes for less stinky poop.

Love, Columbine

[pomtzu]

My son's 2 girls are raunchy!!! If they would just learn to cover it EVERY TIME before they got out of the box, I wouldn't have anything to complain about!!!

[king2005]

Cam's litter box doesn't have a bad smell to it & I clean it once a week. Its larger then a normal kitty litter box so she never has to poop in the same spot twice.

I keep it in the bathroom under the sink. If I put my face near it, then ya it smells, but if I'm in the bathroom doing whatever I never notice it. I forget bout it most of the time, until I see her going into it.

Cam eats the same home cooked food as Digi as its kitty safe. Even Digi has non smelly poops. If she has an accident int eh house I don't know about it until I see it.

[moosmom]

Since I live in a small apt. I use three 19 gallon Rubbermaid bins. One is equal to 2 litterboxes and is so much easier to manage. They're deep so the litter doesn't go flying out.

[TheAntiPam]

I guess I'll have to do a more scientific study of this smelly topic - my personal survey of 5 kitties is not a sufficiently diverse population!

You've mentioned lots of good ideas - food ingredients, litter box style and location, litter ingredients etc. Thanks for your contributions!

Although not smell-related, I have my litter boxes all setup within larger plastic pans to help contain the flying particles when a kitty gets enthusiastic about covering.

I also noted that while sharing a house with a newborn human, I noticed the smell of the diaper pail quite often. However, the baby's mom seemed to always notice the litter box smell... I guess if it's your baby, you don't mind the smell as much!

[orangemm]

Binky's poops are horrendous; they will knock you out. Archy...well, his really don't stink at all. They're supposedly brothers, but I guess that doesn't make much difference.

I'm a multi-scooper, too. Gotta have a clean box(es). I'd like to try the larger Rubbermaid thing, but can't figure out where to put it.

[krazyaboutkatz]

I bought some "No Offense" Natural Litter Box Deodorizer at Target last week and it's made with zeolite. I tried sprinkling it over the litter and it did seem to work but of course they want you to do this every time you scoop which I can't do because I have 4 boxes. I'd be going through boxes of this probably every other day. The litter I've been trying also has zeolite in it too and it seemed to work great when it was very fresh.

I now bought some Fresh Step Lavendar scented litter to add to my existing unscented litter to see if this will help a bit. I really don't want to use scented litter but hopefully a little will help do the trick.

[smokey the elder]

With mine, it seems more to be age than gender-dependent. Diamond (female, 12); Pink Nose (male, 12) and Bubba (male, 14) all lay poops of mass destruction!