Good afternoon everyone.
Our cat is a 1-year-old British Shorthair and we have always difficulties in feeding him, because he refuses almost everything.
When he was about 4 months old, we noticed that he was leaking a whitish fluid from his penis after going to the litter box, either to pee or poo. The 4 different vets who have examined him since then have not been able to solve the problem.
Here are the results of the examinations carried out so far:
- cytological examination (slide of collected fluid, 2024.10): cocci and rare extracellular bacilli; presence of keratinized epithelial cells; abundant mucoprotein residue; absence of spermatozoa.
- urine examination (2024.11): negative, but ‘proteinuria with inactive sediment’ was reported
- abdominal echo (2024.12) negative.
- bacteriological exam from urethral swab (2025.01): high number of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and Pasteurella multocida germs. With 2-month therapy of amoxicillin + clavulanic acid 250mg, 1/4 tablet per day, the frequency of episodes decreased to 1/3 of the evacuations. At the end of therapy, the situation returned as before.
- Haematology (2025.03): Erythrocytes 13.79 (ref. 6.54 - 12.20 M/µL); Haematocrit 53.2 (ref. 30.3 - 52.3 %); Haemoglobin 17.5 (ref. 9.8 - 16.2 g/dL); RDW 30.3 (ref. 15.0 - 27.0 %).
Leakage did not decrease after castration. Photo attached. Can anyone please help us? Thanks in advance.
Hi, thank you for sharing this information about your kitty. What kinds of illness type symptoms is he showing (such as frequent litter box use, inappropriate urination, excessive genital licking/grooming, that sort of thing)?
@chris-vanderhoof
thank you very much for your reply.
The cat goes to the toilet once a day to poop and about twice a day to pee. He stays in the litter box for a minute to a minute and a half for peeing, while when he poops he can stay up to two or three minutes.
If we do not immediately clean the genital area after the evacuations, the cat tries to lick the area, but he cannot always clean himself well as the substance is sticky and sticks to the fur.
A very evident behavior, however, is the following. If we do not immediately clean the cat after evacuation, and he comes into contact with surfaces, he compulsively and insistently scratches the surfaces that contain traces of that substance. This can go on for dozens of minutes, then stop and then start again. If we clean up the contaminated surfaces, the cat immediately calms down.
I hope some of this information can be useful. Thanks again for your interest!
Thanks for the added info. I’m not sure how helpful in the end my insight will be, but I hope it helps.
Of the two bacterial strains cultured, one is a potential concern, and the other is less likely to be. Pasteurella is a very common bacteria found in the mouth and respiratory tract of cats, so it stands to reason it would easily be found in and around the prepuce area as it’s a common place cats lick and groom. Pasteurella is easily treated with a number of antibiotics. I would doubt it’s causing a significant part of the problem in terms of the persistence you’re seeing.
But the other bacteria you mentioned, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, could be a problem. It’s a rarely heard of bacteria, but in looking into it more, there are a number of studies looking at it in people and animals. It can be readily found in the environment, especially water sources and soil. It frequently shows resistance to multiple antibiotics and is very challenging to get rid of if it’s causing an infection. It appears to cause little harm most of the time, but in immunocompromised patients (people and animals) it can cause very serious and hard to treat infections.
Here is one link to a general research paper on it in a human setting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK572123/
It has been demonstrated to cause upper respiratory infections in cats, here is a research paper summary about a case of it: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356613478_Stenotrophomonas_Maltophilia_as_a_Causative_Agent_of_Chronic_Respiratory_Disease_in_Scottish_Tomcat
So what is possible here is that you have a young kitten with a still immature immune system that somehow acquired this bacteria in his prepuce area and it is demonstrating resistance to a traditional antibiotic course.
Preputial infections are not common in pets in general and I don’t know that I’ve diagnosed one in a cat. But in dogs where they rarely happen, the signs are similar to what you’re seeing where there is excessive licking/grooming and persistent discolored discharge from the prepuce. This is different from a UTI where the urinary tract/bladder is affected.
In dogs I have found the best success combining systemic antibiotics with prepuce flushes using dilute chlorhexidine to flush the pus type material out.
One thing to discuss further with your veterinarian might be to reculture the prepuce area and the material to get an updated sensitivity for the Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. Since it tends to be heavily drug resistant, you’d need a culture and sensitivity to guide therapy.
Cleaning or flushing the prepuce alongside an antibiotic would likely be best as well. In a cat compared to a dog though, this might be easier said than done.
It is possible I guess that your cat just produces a lot of smegma (which is composed of oil secretions, dead skin cells, etc.), which even after neutering is taking time to resolve. But what you’re describing certainly seems more abnormal than that. I’m not surprised he’s fixated on the material on surfaces. Cats tend to behave that way with urine and stool as well when it ends up on inappropriate surfaces. Cats have much more sensitive noses than we do and it probably smells irresistible to him.
Thank you so much Dr. Vanderhoof for all the precious information you provided.
Indeed, we were not aware of the characteristics of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, let alone the pathophysological aspects in the human context.
Whether this is the principal cause of our cat's problems or not, we now have even more reasons and motivation to better understand the issue.
We will keep you posted.
Thank you again