Dogs, as we know, are flatulent animals, as anyone who has ever lived with one will confirm. But cats? With their apparently angelic air and their proverbial reserve, they almost convinced us that they were immune to farts, a vulgar gesture reserved for other pets.
And in fact, anecdotal aside, there is very little scientific literature on the subject: this is why the prestigious Scientific American decided to conduct an investigation into the matter, first discovering that yes, even cats stink.
Aerophagia…
On the other hand, the opposite would be strange: flatulence is omnipresent in the animal kingdom, almost all mammals stink, and the same goes for many fish and snakes. And they are a predictable side effect of two different phenomena. The first is aerophagia: when we eat or drink we also ingest (we and many other animals) more or less large quantities of air; a part of this re-emerges from the mouth, the rest enters the digestive system and is expelled in the form of gas. When they eat, dogs ingest a lot of air: this is why they are particularly flatulent.
On the contrary, cats are fussy eaters, who rarely binge and prefer to spread their meals over a more or less large period of time. As a result they ingest less air, and their flatulence caused by aerophagia is rarer.
This obviously does not apply in the same way to all breeds: short-nosed cats, for example Persians, are more predisposed to flatulence, because their brachycephaly leads them to swallow more air.
…and digestion
The other origin of stinks is as a by-product of digestion: in animals with only one stomach (including dogs, cats and us), most of the bacterial fermentation occurs in the colon, and one of the consequences of the phenomenon is the formation of foul-smelling gas.
This flatulence is inevitable, and can be worsened by a number of factors: the most infamous is the change in diet, which even in cats can lead to a few days of smelly adaptation.
If you have never heard your cat make a stink, then it is only by chance: even our favorite felines emit gas, although it is true that they do so less than dogs. This also means that flatulence can serve as a wake-up call: cats that suddenly start releasing gas several times a day, when until the day before they didn’t even seem to know what flatulence was, could have an inflammation, or a parasite, or in any case a medical condition to monitor.
In short, if your love for your cat suddenly becomes a gas chamber, contact a vet.
