cat breathes funny

Question
Hello, I have a 11 month old male cat who has always been rather crusty around his nose and eyes.  He appears to clean himself on a regular basis, but I frequently catch his brother cleaning him as well.  In addition to this his breath tends to smell funny, and his brothers does not even thought they eat the same foods.  He generally smells worse than his brother because he farts frequently and they are more pungent than his brothers.  Due to this I have been writing off his bad breath as his body chemistry and therefore his dirty face to a lack of ability to clean himself.  However he is almost pure white with little blotches of tan and the rest of his body is immaculate.  Today I caught his brother giving him more than just the usual face cleaning, his brother was actually cleaning his entire body.  In addition to this I realized that when he sniffs things you can actually hear him sniffing like a dog.    I remembered that he has always sniffed loudly, literally you can hear him sniffing in the other room.  He does not appear to have a respiratory infection, he doesn't sneeze and there is no mucus around his nose just dirt.  So now I am wondering if there is something internally wrong with his nose, or if he is just a weird cat.  I know that some mother cats will abandon or kill a kitten if there is something wrong with them, so I naturally assumed that he was just dirty.  He appears to have a sense of smell though because he prefers the clean litter box and when he was a kitten he didn't need to be bottle fed for lack of finding his mother or the milk.

It just seems odd to me that he sniffs funny, doesn't clean his face well, has bad breath, and relies on his brother to clean him.   I would be very grateful for your opinion.

Answer
Apologies for the delayed response.  I have been fighting off a touch of the flu.

While not diagnostic of one, it is possible that the breath and flatulence are a result of a food allergy or intolerance.  Many kittens in fact are lactose intolerant.  You may try a different food and see if there is any improvement in his "odor".

As for the nasal question, it is possible for cats to be born with defects of the septum or such related problems.  There can also be structural blockages of the tear ducts which can lead to eye discharge.  Though such crustiness is often a sign of respiratory infection it would be possible something like this is present.  I would suggest bringing him to your veterinarian who can examine him to see if there is some abnormality.

Best of luck to you and your feline friends.