[2008chrissy]

My cat will sit down and rub her butt across the carpet. This happens maybe several times a month. Usually when she starts doing this I take her to the vet to get her anal glands cleared out, because he says they are clogged. He says it's normal...
She is very healthy and only eats the good Science Diet dry cat food.

My questions is this - is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening to her, or does it happen to a lot of cats?

[N0help4u]

That can be a sign of worms.

[morgaine300]

This may be due to some disease, but it can also be the "quality" of the stool. Feeding a dry food really isn't helping. Cats don't do well with the lack of moisture in dry food.

I would not consider it normal to have this happening so often. Your vet may think it's normal because a lot of cats really aren't in the greatest health, so that becomes "normal" to them. Left long-term, this can start causing other problems.

You can actually just increase fibre content and one way that can be done is with plain old Metamucil, though I don't know the dose for a cat, but your vet may know. If she seems bothered a lot by it, you can put something warm on her rear end to help with any pain or swelling.

[N0help4u]

Get a stool sample analysis for parasites

[2008chrissy]

This may be due to some disease, but it can also be the "quality" of the stool. Feeding a dry food really isn't helping. Cats don't do well with the lack of moisture in dry food.

I would not consider it normal to have this happening so often. Your vet may think it's normal because a lot of cats really aren't in the greatest health, so that becomes "normal" to them. Left long-term, this can start causing other problems.

You can actually just increase fibre content and one way that can be done is with plain old Metamucil, though I don't know the dose for a cat, but your vet may know. If she seems bothered a lot by it, you can put something warm on her rear end to help with any pain or swelling.

Will adding a can of wet food a week help with the fiber? I had her on wet and dry food before but then she would only eat the wet food (she got spoiled) and she was also getting fat. So the vet recommending the Nature Science Diet and she has done great.

[morgaine300]

Will adding a can of wet food a week help with the fiber? I had her on wet and dry food before but then she would only eat the wet food (she got spoiled) and she was also getting fat. So the vet recommending the Nature Science Diet and she has done great.

Sigh. Vets ALWAYS recommend something of Hills, because what little nutrition they learn is generally learned from places like Hills, who teach them to feed their foods. There is absolutely nothing great about the Hills food and it's all BS marketing hype. Their foods, in fact, are not the greatest. It's sad, but most vets really know nothing about food. (I'm sure that goes for dogs too, but I don't know much about that.)

Canned food isn't "spoiling," contrary to popular belief. It is indeed much closer to the natural diet of a cat. Not all canned foods are created equal of course, but almost any canned food is better than almost any dry food. And one of the reasons is simply because it's canned. i.e. it has the moisture content a cat needs. Dry food can also contribute to urinary tract problems, and in the long-run can cause diabetes and kidney problems. And cats on dry food still have a lot of dental problems, so no, it doesn't clean their teeth either. Cats on dry are also dehydrated due to lack of moisture. AND... most dry foods contain way too much vegetable protein instead of animal protein, which does affect the stool. The whole idea is to create a good solid (but not dry) stool. They were meant to eat animal protein, which is way higher in canned foods. (There are a few dries out there with higher animal content, but... they still lack moisture cause you can't fix that.)

If she's getting fat on it, she's probably just eating too much. Looking at the history of cats, many cats on dry food are fat, partly cause they're free fed and eat too much. Partly cause the amount the food tells you to feed is WAY too high. (I'm not sure where those levels comes from, but they're far from being correct.) And partly cause the high extra carbs (like in that Science Diet your vet recommended) just turn into fat in a cat.

An average cat needs about 6-8 ounces of (canned) food in a day. Foods vary and so do cats. And I don't know what yours weighs. But it's lower than most people would think. And again, what the can says to feed is too high. And that might be why she's getting fat on it. Cats normally can maintain their weight fairly well on their own as they aren't naturally over-eaters, unlike dogs. But... if they've been used to getting free fed dry food, they start getting spoiled by having food out all the time and eating what they want. Plus the canned food is an adjustment, the volume of it feeling different, and until they get used to it, sometimes they think they're starving all the time. (I have a new cat, who was on dry food, and I'm going through this right now with her, just trying to keep an eye on her weight to see if I need to increase or decrease food, which is the only real solution.) Even my 12 lb cat doesn't eat quite 8 oz a day and his weight is fine. In fact, he could stand to lost a quarter or half a pound.

(I also think so many cats are overweight that people don't really know what a cat at the correct weight should look like.)

I don't actually know the fibre content of food well enough to answer that question. I have some charts with info on them and the fibre content seems to vary drastically. I'm looking at converted numbers -- cause you never can compare numbers straight off the package between dry and canned cause of the differences in moisture content. I'm not overall seeing any significant differences between canned and dry. Despite what I know about food, fiber just isn't something I've looked at that closely.

Personally, I think I'd rather just stick to the canned because it's overall a better food. It might not solve this particular problem, but then it might. If nothing else, it's just better for the overall health. If something seems to be working now, it doesn't mean it isn't going to be a problem down the line.

You might try slippery elm bark. It basically can just overall help in digestion. And it does contain fiber. There's a bit about it at this link.

Little Big Cat