The Vine: August 1, 2007
Dear Tomato Nation:
I am a single parent living in Brooklyn with two young children (aged 9 and 3) and two cats (aged 15 and 14). About five years ago, after a long period of disruptive construction in our house, the 14-year-old cat, Phoebe, simply stopped going in the litterbox, and long story short, despite efforts to re-housetrain her, Phoebe hasn’t gone in a litterbox since then. For the first four years she was fairly orderly and predictable in where she went — urinating near the front door and pooping at the base of the stairs, always on tile, which wasn’t too hard to clean. For sentimental reasons, I have put up with this, cleaning up after Phoebe every day and warning friends and neighbors who come home with us, “When you step inside, watch out for pee and poo.”
Recently, though, Phoebe’s habits have gotten a lot worse.She was always a skittish, shy cat who hid during the day and rarely came out except late at night, but recently she’s grown even more withdrawn, and constipated as well, and she now relieves herself wherever she wants — under my desk, on the floor in the kids’ room, under the kitchen table.She often goes on clothes, backpacks and other items that were left on the floor. I took her to the vet again recently, and the vet said that aside from the constipation (which I’m treating with a laxative) she’s an otherwise healthy cat — not sick, not feeble.
I love Phoebe, but I’m going through a roll of paper towels and half a bottle of cleaner a day, and I’ve had to throw out a lot of stuff she’s soiled. I don’t think I can deal with this anymore. I don’t want to just have her put down. But I can’t in good conscience deposit her on the doorstep of the Humane Society, since I can’t imagine anyone adopting such an old cat with her bathroom habits; I’d hate to think of her spending the rest of her life in a confined space, awaiting the inevitable. What are my options?
Sincerely,
Perplexed Cat Owner
Dear Perplexed,
Regular readers know the drill here, so I’ll spare you the “a pet is not a piece of luggage, you can’t just give it away” lecture, because I think you understand that.My usual advice would be to consult with your vet, because this kind of behavior often indicates illness, but you’ve already tried that.
Go back.Make sure the vet can spend half an hour with you, discussing solutions; tell her everything you’ve just told me, and ask her what options she can suggest.Veterinarians hear this sort of thing on a daily basis, and she should at least be able to recommend some strategies, even if they’re not all as workable as you’d like.Maybe it’s possible to make your cat an outdoor cat, or an indoor/outdoor cat.Maybe, given that Phoebe sounds pretty neurotic, this is a case for anti-depressants.Maybe there’s a method of re-housebreaking you haven’t tried.
Failing that, perhaps the vet can recommend a placement — a foster home for Phoebe, or an organization that takes in “problem” cats.When I used to volunteer at Bide-A-Wee, I know they had a place where they’d send the incontrovertibly feral felines; it was like the Fresh Air Fund, but for cats that couldn’t live with people, so the cats could live out their lives happily and nobody got bitten.(Or, more relevant to your letter, shat on.)
I’ll leave the comments open for the readership in case they have any specific suggestions for NYC-based organizations that help with, or adopt, troubled cats.But in case I haven’t been clear on this…you can’t have the cat put down because she’s become inconvenient, not least because that’s a hell of thing to have to explain to your kids (or worse, lie to them about).The constant bowel terrorism is untenable in a house with young children, but said children really don’t need to learn by this example that messy/otherwise irritating family members will be permanently disappeared.A pet is a commitment and you have to find some way to honor that commitment — without waking up to find poo in your shoe.
Readers, if you know of any appropriate feline-rescue organizations local to NYC, please post them and any other suggestions in the comments.
Tags: Ask The Readers cats
My mom had a similar problem with an older kitty – the poor thing just kind of went bonkers and was afraid of everything and peed on the floor like there was no tomorrow. She discovered there is a product out there called Feliway, that I think is made from kitty pheremones, and you can get diffusers for it (think Glade Plug Ins) or spray bottles, which you spray on the cat’s favourite areas.
The stuff isn’t cheap, but my mom’s cat went from a very neurotic, unhappy creature to an affectionate, snuggly, content soul very quickly, and in a few months he was completely accident-free, even when my parents got a new dog. It was a good alternative to anti-depressants because it was much, much easier to administer.
You can order it online (not sure where, but google would tell you). You can also get it cheaper on ebay.
Your recommendation re: anti-depressants is spot-on. My cat Boo is/has been super-neurotic and also developed a particular phobia about the litter box. Once the vet determined that he was okay physically, she prescribed Prozac. A hilarious story to tell the folks back home, but it has worked like magic. Not only did he get back to the litter box right away, but he’s a lot more relaxed and sociable and far less skittish now. I’m in the process of weaning him back off of the meds (I don’t want him to be a junkie all his life), and sometimes his former freaky-kitty personality peeks through, but he hasn’t gone outside his litter box since first putting him on the drug a year ago.
I know dogs and cats aren’t the same, but my parents have a particularly “nervous” Jack Russell, and she has incredibly poor bladder control – she likes to sleep in her cage (it’s her bed and she often spends time in there with the door open), but at other times, we simply leave her in a “confined” area of the house – either by closing doors or through the strategic placement of safety gates, the dogs spend their “alone” time confined to the kitchen (it’s a pretty big eat-in space), where there aren’t any rugs or mattresses or piles of clothes to ruin. Perhaps there’s a way to keep the cat to one area of the house, so that, at the very least, you won’t be so “surprised” by the surprises when you get home…
Good luck. My late cat used to much prefer our freshly laundered clothes to his litterbox. Talk about a way to encourage otherwise sloppy kids to put things away!
Oh, and I should also add that the neurotic dog has been taking doggie-paxil for years.
There’s also cat attractant litter:
http://www.petsmart.com/global/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441779416&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302033738&ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=2534374302023690&bmUID=1185996610269&itemNo=19&Ntt=cat+attractant+litter&In=All&previousText=cat+attractant+litter&N=2
Not entirely sure how it works, but apparently it does.
i have a friend who went through something similar. her cat is not on valium, and she uses those clear under the bed storage boxes for litter pans. not beautiful or anything, but effective. what happened in her case was one cat was creeping up and scaring the other, so he stopped using the box. maybe try a bigger box in a v. open place, sort of out of the way, but close to where she normally goes. like, by the front door or at the bottom of the stairs if possible. hopefully she’ll figure it out.
good luck!
I don’t know if this would work on a cat who has done this for 5 years, but we did successfully retrain a cat who went to the bathroom on our bed for 6 months, forcing us to cover the thing with a tarp and move out of our room.
The vet suggested that we keep the cat in a large dog crate with her litter box. The crate was big enough that she didn’t have to sit in her litterbox all the time and small enough that she didn’t have a lot of choice other than to use it or soil her living space. She was only allowed out under direct supervision. I can’t remember how long we had to do this, maybe 2 weeks? Longer, I’m sure, for a cat who has been on strike for 5 years.
It sounds a little drastic, but sometimes, they just need a reboot if they have gotten in an undesirable habit like that. And it’s a whole heck of a lot kinder than sending an elderly, long time pet to a shelter if you can avoid it. Being forced to use it for a month or two may be enough to get her permanently back in the habit, and is certainly worth a try. If it seems to have worked, I would get the carpets professionally cleaned or maybe replaced to discourage further messes, and maybe keep her confined to the bathroom or other tile areas for a good several months until you are sure that she is committed to using the litterbox. Drastic, yes, but maybe enough to fix this.
The caveat here is that you have made sure that all physical aspects have been eliminated, which it sounds like they have. If she still refuses to use it while confined, I would experiment with different types/textures of litter, etc. or even an empty box, We eventually discovered that my cat’s habit began when she got too obese to comfortably fit into the hooded litter box and then just became habit.
(A personal note here, I don’t think euthanasia would be cruel in this case if you ultimately need to go that way. Animals don’t fear death, and I would pick this option for my timid, elderly cat before I would subject her to the change in routine and the new people and animals that would truly terrify her if I sent her to a shelter, no kill or otherwise. This is not a whim, you have done a lot to try to fix this.) Good luck!
I have to second the Prozac. It made the last year of my poor cat’s life much easier for all of us. The other thing to consider is that the cat may be in the beginning stages of renal failure, which is what Alex had. It takes a while to develop to the point that it can be diagnosed, and can’t really be cured. Treated properly, though, a cat can live for a while and be perfectly content. Good luck.
This can also be from litter box issues. My friend’s cat started doing this very thing suddenly when it was about 7 years old. After trying everything else, she finally decided there was a chance it was the litter box itself that had become unappealing. So, she switched litter to a very sandy one (which her vet had said many cats prefer), used more in the box than she had been, and got a really enormous box with no top on it in case the cat was feeling crowded or claustrophobic. She started scooping it out twice a day to keep it super clean, and changing the litter out once a week. I don’t know WHY the cat had suddenly decided the old litter set-up was no longer acceptable, but this ended up working. Now she just scoops once a day and changes the litter out completely about every two weeks, and her cat has never had issues again.
It’s definitely worth a try, and it’s pretty easy to rule this out as one of the contributing problems. Whatever you’re doing now with the litter box, just change it up — if you had a box with no top, get one with a top. If you were using sandy litter, try the non-sandy kind. Etc. But also definitely pursue this more with the vet. The peeing thing in particular can signal kidney issues, which cats are VERY prone to.
Good luck!!
I third Prozac. My two-year old cat began wetting in anything other than her litter box. It was HORRIBLE. Her preference for baskets of clean laundry about drove me over the edge.
After determining it wasn’t a physical problem, the vet put her on Prozac. She’s not had another accident since. And it’s been a year. We give her 10 mg/twice a week. It’s not fun, but it’s not horrible either. One of us holds her while one of us uses the little syringe-type pill pusher to shove it down her throat. If she’d eat treats or tuna or canned food, it’d make life easier, but she doesn’t like any of those. Cost-wise, it costs us $17 every three months for her pills. It is kind of embarrassing to buy them, since we have to go to a ‘people’ pharmacy to get them, but hey, we love her! It does make a great story over cocktails…’yeah, so I was giving the cat her Prozac and…’
I recently told my hubby that I’m not crazy about having her on Prozac the rest of her life, but you know what? I then realized that I rescued her off the mean streets and she has a pretty plush life with us (and our other two rescued cats). If her life is shortened a year or two due to the Prozac, I’m ok with it, because it’s still a longer life than if I killed her because she kept wetting in my boxes of Christmas decorations (another of her favorite places). :)
Please try taking your kitty to a feline veterinary specialist for a complete urinary tract work-up before proceeding any further. I have a friend who has been dealing with this issue for a while, and while her cat is a special case (and so is she), they finally found the answer in a combination of surgery, pain management, and anti-anxiety medications. Leif has developed some urinary tract irregularities and has a “special” personality and this has really helped him.
Good Luck!
I have a cat who was previously feral, and while she’s a proud pooper, she always uses the litterbox. However, she was a nervous wreck most of the time. I used the kitty pheromones & they’re worth every nickel…my cat is SO much happier now and seems to feel at home in my house. She actually curled up in my lap & went to sleep once I started using the pheromones.
I hope they work as well for your Phoebe, the poor kid. If not, perhaps she could be confined to an easily-washed part of the house – the confinement may actually make her feel more secure, as she’ll have less territory to guard.
Of course I haven’t observed Phoebe, but it’s possible that she’s getting senile. Senility can cause a lot of the behavior that Perplexed Owner described. Meds (like Prozac) can help, but Perplexed Owner should ask her vet about other things for helping deal with a senile pet.
Ooh, meant to add: Pee is acidic & baking soda is alkalai, so the baking soda neutralizes the pee. If you put some baking soda & water in a spray bottle & spray the spot by the front door & wherever else she’s peed, she may not feel the need to pee there again, and it definitely kills the pee-stank to save your noses!
Good luck!!!
I also would recommend Feliway. And, though this is going to sound New-Age-y and strange, Whole Foods or the like usually carries Bach’s Flower Remedy, which, when dosed as a few drops in the water dish daily, works wonders to calm cats down without toxicity. Neither is guaranteed to work, but considering you’ve had this cat for 14 years, $30 and $10 respectively is a far less steep price to pay than having to put down your friend. And if it does work out, you just saved a life….
I second the dog crate method. It worked better than locking the cat in some tiled room because we could move the crate around the house to where people (and the other animals) were.
Many of the suggestions so far may be helpful, but I would recommend seeing a vet who is certified in behavior (http://www.dacvb.org). The nearest one is in Fairfield, NJ, so that may not do you any good, but a behaviorist who is also a DVM will be able to help rule out any medical problems and then, if necessary, work with you to develop a behavior modification plan and/or prescribe an appropriate medication for your cat. If Phoebe’s bill of health keeps coming up clean, you could also try to find a vet closer to you who has an strong interest in behavior and would help you come up with options for treatment.
Good luck!
I found an invaluable website for all kitty matters far and wide. Many vets and behaviorists are moderators and they have great solutions for any kitty problem. http://www.thecatsite.com and check out the forums page.
Also, I second the idea of checking out if its a behavior issue that could be easily remedied. As kitties get older, they get more persnickity.. if for some reason the litter box is unappealing, unsafe (loud noises, kids, wrong litter) or something. The kitty experts on the website can help with this.
Feliway is a savior at my house – my Bella doesnt have litter box issues, but is skittish and moody and the Feliway is a godsend. Petsmart in my area sells it for $15.99/refill and if you print out the online price, the store will match it. Dont give up on your kitty!! They are too precious and its just going to take some doing to figure out what is wrong. Good luck from Jenn and Bella :)
Make sure, too, to have enough litter boxes. The standard rule is N+1 boxes for N cats. (The 15-year-old may have established dominance if there is only one box.) As previously mentioned, boxes should be open (not covered/domed) unless the cats clearly don’t mind the enclosure, and they should probably be shallow given the ages of the cats involved (to make getting in easier). Solids and clumps should be removed promptly/frequently, and the litter type should not be changed once the cat has established a preference. (I have a pudgy calico who still hasn’t forgiven me for trying to switch away from clay.)
We had Peeing Issues with our cats and it was driving us bananas. Finally someone suggested three things: add another litterbox (we had 2 for 3 cats and now have 3), take the covers off the litterboxes, and switch to an unscented litter. It was magical. No more Pee Issues. Apparently cats really really don’t like scented litter, even though that’s what we had always used. Unscented litter is surprisingly hard to find. We switched to the brand you buy in bulk from PetCo (PetGold, I think it’s called) and haven’t looked back.
We also tried the Feliway but didn’t notice much of an effect on the peeing; however, it does calm cats down pretty effectively.
I have to agree with the previous poster who gently pointed out that euthanasia is not necessarily a cruel thing in this instance as well. If the cat is old and senile and possibly incontinent, I think it would be a kindness compared to sending her to a shelter or whatever. However, if it really is just a behavioral issue, obviously that should be addressed first.
Oh, and Nature’s Miracle is very effective at getting the smell of cat pee out of things, especially fabrics. :)
not much further advice to give, but props to you for your patience for 5 years. I just gave birth to a new baby, and for the last month while I was pregnant our two young cats (1.5 yrs) started freaking out and peeing in laundry baskets, beach bags, anything soft that was on the floor. Not rugs interestingly enough.
Turns out my husband, who had been in charge of litter duty while I was pregnant, wasn’t being vigilant enough… we moved the litterbox, mopped everywhere, changed litter types, and he scooped more often… no more surprises in the laundry! So far! Knock wood!
I was going mental about it, and this was only a few weeks… your patience is amazing.
petsmart also sells this Nature’s Miracle stuff that is supposed to eliminate the odor so even cats can’t smell it anymore.
I’ll echo the command to get her back to a vet, and to get a second opinion if the vet sees nothing wrong. I’ve seen two cats — one a beloved childhood companion, one a housesitting charge also beloved — who started doing this at the onset of chronic renal failure. It’s one of the leading causes of feline death among those who live long enough to get it.
The dog crate method sounds very promising, too.
I’ve gotta second the Feliway — it works like a charm. We have a Feliway plug-in set upi n our bathroom, because our oldest cat suddenly started peeing in there non-stop. (I suppose she at least had the right idea.) A friend gave us the Feliway plug-in and… shazam! About a week after we set it up, our kitty stopped peeing in the bathroom.
And no, she didn’t start peeing anywhere else in the house. She uses her litter pan now, like the sweet kitty she is, thank you. I don’t know if this would work as well for a pee habit that’s been entrenched five years, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to try.
I agree with JML. We had a cat who did that to us, mostly out of spite. We always suspected it was because he was kinda evil, but we took him to the vet, was told he was healthy, tried the pheremones, tried the kitty-Prozac (btw the kitty-prozac made him madder at us because we had to pin him down to give it to him.) Did not work in the least, maybe cuz he was quite content to pee on our stuff, and so the problem wasn’t depression-related.
Then my mom did the crate thing. He lived in the crate with some food, water, and litterbox for awhile, and he was only let out if he was going outside. (Don’t ask me why the cat didn’t just go to the bathroom outside.) Then he graduated to just one room with nothing on the floor for him to pee on, again with the litterbox, food and water and not being let out except to go outside.
Now he’s allowed to have supervised breaks. Although despite the cessation of the “inappropriate peeing” we don’t totally trust him, cuz, well he’s evil. But peeing in the litterbox, so it’s an improvement.
Actually, I have a recommendation for dealing with the cat – we had something similar with an elderly cat who’d experienced emotional trauma. Long story behind hers, but if she’s like our Mouse, then sometimes you can solve the problem with a surprisingly simple solution: just move the litter tray to somewhere that works better for her.
Like, if she’s developed a thing for enclosed spaces like under places… stick a tray there, and she might use it again. We shifted the tray about six feet and Mouse started using it exclusively again (unless someone other than her family had come into the house when we weren’t there, in which case she freaked the hell out and was pooping on the carpet for several weeks, but this is part of her above-mentioned emotional trauma; she only felt safe with humans if one of HER humans was present).
I’ll back up the recommendation for Feliway. It’s sold under a different name now, Comfort Zone. It does still say Feliway somewhere very small on the label. It might be worth trying before moving on to antidepressants.
I’d also recommend Nature’s Miracle or some other brand of enzyme-based cleaner. Using it on the spots where she’s peed seems to remove even the scent that only cats can detect, making less likely she’ll pee there again.
Alrighty, I appear to be in the minority, but I think Feliway is a waste of cash. When my 5 year old male cat suddenly decided that the litterbox was far less appealing than, say, our bed, our sofa, our clean laundry (I agree with the above poster- I am the last person on earth who’d harm an animal, but I ALMOST strangled him) that was the first route I went (aside from buying new boxes, new litter, adding an extra box, etc. and all the other things people tell you to do.) Did NOT even REMOTELY help. We are still battling this problem, and the cat basically has to stay in what we refer to as his “condo” (basically, a giant dog crate about 4 feet by 3 feet by 5 feet) with his food and his litter box when we aren’t home to watch him, lest we come home to pee-soaked pillows.
Maybe we should go the kitty prozac route. I think we have actually tried every single other option. We are beyond “inconvenient” to… I don’t even KNOW what… Misery? Hell?
As a nurse (people, not cats), I’m wondering if your vet was really thorough with his exam. Did he draw labs? The first thing to do if you can afford it would be to get a second opinion from another vet.
Of course, it just may be that your kitty has become incontinent due to old age.
Oh, and as an infuriating aside… kitty is fond of peeing in one spot at the top of the stairs. So… we added a litter box, RIGHT THERE. Within 4 feet of the OLD litter box. So, please picture 2 litter boxes within maybe 10 square feet, one where he SHOULD be going and one where he IS going. Where did he pee? Right next to the new box. At that point, my head exploded.
Great suggestions by everyone. If all fails, though, you could always try Sars’ suggestion. There has to be a farm or sanctuary out there that would allow the cat to spend her last few years with dignity.
Were urinalysis and bloodwork done by your veterinarian? Changes in litter box behavoir may signal early or mild systemic disease, for example hyperthyroid cats often start to eliminate inappropriately before becoming classically symtomatic. Good luck!
This may have started out as strictly a behavior problem, but at Phoebe’s age, it could be exacerbated by thyroid problems. It’s very common in older cats, and litter box issues is a symptom of that. Is her appetite erratic – does she sometimes not eat, and other times eat everything in sight? That’s also an indication that there’s something wrong with her thyroid, and that she’s dehydrated. I am not a vet, but I’ve had several cats who’ve gone through this. If the vet hasn’t checked Phoebe’s thyroid, she needs to go back.
As for euthanasia, I’m of the opinion that if a pet’s quality of life is still good, it’s best to hold off. But if the suffering far outweighs the joy, the most loving thing you can do is have it put to sleep. You know Phoebe better than anyone. You’ll know when/if it’s time.
Heh. I wrote my own letter to the vine on this very issue, not long ago. Feliway, I must say, has done nothing for us. We have doubled the litter boxes, we have used bottles and jugs of Nature’s Miracle (which is awesome stuff, by the way), and have had him checked out at the vet several times (he’s also diabetic, so she wanted to be triple sure it wasn’t a kidney issue).
Our next trick will be to rent one of those carpet cleaners from the grocery (our little spot cleaner has tried its best, but it’s in too deep), cover the affected area (hallway carpet) in plastic like the mats for under your desk chair, and put the litter box RIGHT on the spot he seems to prefer. So what if it blocks the door of the bathroom? We can’t use that bathroom now, anyway.
We’ve had the same mental anxiety. Of course we can’t abandon him or put him down, he’s family. And I can’t imagine anyone, anywhere wanting to adopt or foster a stubborn, skittish, diabetic, 14-year old cat that pees everywhere. So we have to make it work, but we also have a baby in our small apartment, and she just learned to crawl. Did I mention his preferred hallway is directly outside the nursery? Yeah.
I sympathize. Mine does this in phases; I know I’m lucky it’s not chronic. I’ve had this happen to my [now] 14-year-old monster several times over the past year, and it’s usually been a result of stress (me going on vacation, poor abandoned beastie) or a bladder infection setting off all kinds of ick. The last time, when the blood, fecal & urine tests turned up zilch, the vet basically pointed out that at 14, she’s getting quite senior, this does happen without explanation, is likely to get more frequent, and I should start considering when enough will be enough, whereupon she handed me an article about euthanasia. After crying for an hour, I decided that it really wasn’t a horrible option given the right health circumstances, but a bit premature at the time.
When she has the stress attacks, I tend to make sure her box is really free of clumps, the litter is changed twice a week, and that her claws are kept clipped. I’ve found that if they get too long (and they can, since clipping is a major production involving a towel and turning her into a squirming, whining kitty burrito) she won’t cover the waste and may actually avoid the litter completely rather than get gross stuff in her toes.
Thanks to all for the recos on Nature’s Miracle – does it work on barf marks, too?
Christina,
if your cat pees in the hallway where the baby’s nursery is located, and this hasn’t been ongoing for years, but only started right before the baby was born or right after, the problem might be that the cat feels threatened by the addition to your family. Sure cats can be loving to young and old, but the key here is that a new family member has been added, and s/he didn’t have a say in it. This really pisses cats off sometimes.
My questions for you are: have you had the cat get acclimated with the baby? Maybe by doing stuff like sniffing a blanket recently used by the baby, or having the cat sniff the baby while heavily supervised? Does he appear more skittish and upset when the baby’s up and about?
I used to be one of the biggest fans of Nature’s Miracle, but the last time I tried using it on a bad pee stain, it did *nothing*, I was totally kerflummoxed. I asked around and heard a rumor that the Nature’s Miracle name was bought by another company who fiddled with the formula. Possibly the original company was still selling their original formula under another name but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know it’s true or not, I just know that it didn’t seem to be as effective as it had in the past.
Anyway, I found something else at the Petco that works wonders (you can buy it lots of places online, too) called Simple Solution. It has enzymes that Nature’s Miracle does in order to break down the stain, and in addition it also contains non-pathogenic bacteria cultures that basically eat the particles that are left after the enzymes are done. This stuff totally worked where the Nature’s Miracle didn’t. I still keep some Nature’s Miracle around for the smaller clean-ups but for any really nasty stains I use Simple Solution instead, because it is so awesome.
We had an elderly cat that started doing exactly this. There wasn’t anything physical wrong with her; the vet’s theory was that she had dementia, and it wasn’t really treatable (at the time; things might have changed now).
What we ended up doing was getting a Very Large Dog-sized dog crate, the kind you would put a Great Dane in, and a small litterbox, and setting it up so that this cage sat partially in shade and partially in sunbeam. Her food and water at one end, litterbox at the other, and a towel draped over top to assure that she always had shade available to her.
I felt terribly horribly guilty about this at first, but it was amazing how well it worked for her. She calmed down a lot, was less scared and flinchy about EVERYTHING, and ate better. She’d sit in the sunbeam and purr, which she hadn’t done in months; when we took her out, she’d curl up on us and purr and headbutt and act normal — again, she hadn’t done that in months. Then we’d put her back after a few hours and she’d go right to sleep. The cage gave her a feeling of security, I suppose — she had everything she needed right there, and nothing scary (like the other cats) could get at her.
It seems to me that as with many animals, the more you let it “drive you crazy” and make your head explode, the less likely you are the fix the problem. The cat may be picking up on your irritation – and anger towards them – and continuing to act out. In this case I’d say use whatever method is likely to make you the most calm about the cat and the messes – maybe confining them to an easily cleaned space or the dog crate thing. Cats don’t respond to punishment training so getting mad at them won’t help, and if they’re afraid of you they’re not likely to do what you want.
We had to crate-train our cat recently, too. We didn’t have a problem with her not using her litter box, but after I got married and my husband and his cat moved in, mine started exhibiting all kinds of behavioral problems: meowing at the top of her lungs all night, knocking pictures and vases off of shelves, destroying furniture, etc. The two cats fought constantly, too. We couldn’t afford to medicate her, so after various other homeopathic remedies and just paying her lots of extra attention didn’t work, we broke down and bought a large dog crate to shut her in at night so at least we could get some sleep (we live in a studio efficiency, so there are no rooms we can enclose her in). At first I felt horrible about it, but in the first week her behavior did a complete turnaround. She stopped trying to tear things up, she stopped bullying the other cat, and she became more affectionate. She also lost some weight that she badly needed to lose, since she could no longer do any nervous eating throughout the night. She still complains vocally when we put her in the crate at night, but she goes in willingly, and usually goes right to sleep. During the day she likes to hang out near her crate and defends it as her territory. She also has to supervise whenever I clean the crate and change the litter. I think it must make her feel secure, having this space that’s hers and hers alone. At any rate, I’m constantly amazed at what a difference it’s made, and how much it’s improved her ability to function as part of the family.
I have one suggestion: when I introduced the crate to my cat, I used catnip to entice her into it, and it worked like a charm. Have you tried sprinkling catnip in and around the litter box to tempt her back into it?
I have a slightly insane 8 year old cat named Thisby. Although she has used the litter boxes in the garage for most of her life, she recently decided that the guest room bed was a far more pleasant place to urinate. She does not, however, feel the need to limit her poop to one spot so it can be found all over the house: on the floor, on my dresser, in the bathtub, etc. Insane. Anyway, I have a Chihuahua (named Reynolds) who uses potty pads and for the last few weeks, Thisby has used them to pee on instead of the bed. I didn’t train her to use them, she just did. I don’t know if she’s attracted to Reynolds’s pee or the chemicals put on there to attract the dog. Anyway, I don’t know if your cat has developed some sort of litterbox phobia, but I wonder if she might like the pads better? I would train her by keeping her in an enclosed area like a bathroom, closet or even crate with the pads completely covering the floor. When/if she starts to use them, you can gradually remove the pads until there’s just one and then slowly move it to the spot you’d like her to do her business. I don’t know if it will work for your cat because (as I’ve mentioned) Thisby is crazy.
Also: I think the reason Thisby started peeing on the bed was that she was sick, as I discovered when I took her to the vet and she had a raging UTI. She now eats only special (and, naturally, expensive) C/D cat food and has been UTI free.
We had a similar problem with an elderly cat, and we ended up fitting her with small dog diapers. It felt damn silly but we didn’t have to burn stuff anymore.
For the people whose cats are peeing in a particular place every time, here’s something I heard: Put food in a food bowl where they are peeing. They won’t pee on or near their food. Of course, I suppose you could end up with a pretty fat cat (sorry Joe!) but it might save your sanity.
Also, with the vet, I second the recommendations to get a full workup. Unfortunately, that can be expensive, and sometimes if there’s no baseline bloodwork to compare it to, it’s hard to catch subtle abnormalities, but it would be a start. My sister is a (brand-new) veterinarian and I think sometimes I know more about cat behavior than she does. Most vet’s offices are more dog-focused, so I take my cat to a Cat Hospital, and that way I know the vets see any issues she has on a very regular basis.
I also second the recommendations to try different litter and especially clean out the litter religiously.
Re: jeanjeanie’s post:
While catnip is great for attracting cats to some things (it was a good idea for the crate, because she sleeps in there, too) I’m not sure it’s a good idea to use it to try to attract a cat to a litterbox. Catnip is for sniffing, eating, and rolling around in, and that might make the cat confused about the purpose of the box. I think it would be like sprinkling treats in the litterbox or something – nobody wants to eat where they do their business. :)
Re: Jess:
I don’t think your kitty is crazy. A UTI is really painful, whether you’re a human or a cat. If she had a UTI around the time she stopped using the box, it sounds like she started associating the pain and discomfort of the UTI with the litterbox itself. Kitties don’t understand being sick, so she probably thinks that the litterbox was causing the pain, and now she’s scared to use the box because she thinks it will hurt like it did last time. I wonder if you could try using the potty pads to get her back on the box? I’m thinking you could put the potty pads in a litterbox with no litter in it… if she’s OK with that, keep it up for a few weeks start putting a just a little bit of litter in the box with the pad. If that keeps working, you could slowly over time add more and more litter until it’s a proper litterbox again. Perhaps doing it slowly and sneakily like that might get her to disassociate the box from “hurts when I pee” and get her back on the box.
My mom’s cat had a similar issue. She was a sick sick cat (thyroid problems, allergic to her own fur, it wasn’t good), and she just couldn’t get the whole litterbox thing together. We ended up confining her to the upstairs anytime she was home alone (no carpet up there). I would suggest that you put a litter box in a bathroom/kitchen/somewhere tiled and anytime you’re not around, leaving the cat there. Another vet check isn’t a bad idea either – more often than not sudden litter box problems are a sign of an illness. Good luck!
I really hope you find a solution. I have to say though, on a purely selfish note, it’s been very comforting to read this. Lately I’ve been thinking my cat has some sort of brain disease. Now I remember – she’s just a cat. I got her as a tiny kitten, a stray – saved her from the streets, and she just loves to be outside. Except when she wants to come back inside. And then go out again. And then – inside again. All of this in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT when I’m trying to get some damn sleep. My cat has totally trained me to be her doorman. Every single night. YEARS OF THIS! It’s like waking up hourly to feed a newborn that NEVER GROWS UP. I should have tried to stop this behavior years ago, but when she’s clawing and yowling, it’s hard to practice tough love. I just want the noise to stop so I can sleep. Every single night I curse her to the depths of hell and want to hire Silvio from the Sopranos to make it stop. And then it’s daytime and she’s all cute and furry and the kitty love totally wins me over. I know it’s my own damn fault, and I know I’ll be very very sad when she is gone.
I’ve seen a couple of responses suggesting the problem is psychological and to consult a cat behavioural expert and I wanted to endorse that. There’s an expert named Vicky Hall who’s done a lot of work in this area and written a couple of books about it and has managed to cure a number of similar problems.
The letter writer clearly loves her cat and it’d definitely be worth sinking a couple of hundred dollars into this approach.
From what I’ve learned from these books and a couple of websites suggests something in the cat’s furry little brain has caused her to forget where she should be peeing. So she needs to be retrained to learn this. At the moment she’s very likely to be going back to places that smell of her urine and to places that feel like her idea of a litterbox. The letter writer said she’d tried retraining but I believe you have to keep at it with an iron will to get the cat to understand. Five years is a long time for bad behaviour to have been continuing but with perseverance it could be fixable.
Wanted to 2nd and 3rd the suggestions for Perplexed to visit a feline-only vet. I’ve been going to a cat vet for five years now, and she knows EVERYTHING about cats and works really hard to help correct behavioral issues.
Lots of good suggestions here — just wanted to add that it’s worth trying a few anti-depressants if the first one doesn’t work. Kitty valium, kitty Prozac, and kitty Buspar are all possibilities, and there may be more now. My former cat came down with interstitial cystitis (painful, incurable) when she was two, and she stopped using the box because the box was where the pain happened; and just at the point where I was convinced there was nothing I could do to help her and would have to put her down, we tried Buspar and it worked like a charm — she still had the cystitis, it just didn’t result in pain anymore. She used her box religiously for the rest of her life, until I finally lost her to kidney cancer at 15 last year.
See a specialist, and try everything on this list and whatever else your vet and the specialist can come up with.
A friend of mine told me about this site because I was having the same exact problem with my cat (though I didn’t let it go on for 5 years) and she seems to really like the crate. She even goes in there when the door is open. I have another cat and they don’t get along, so I think this is good for her because she gets a chance to get away from him.
I am also going to try the Cat Attract litter and the Comfort Zone.