ok, you folks were great on why cats like to get in your lap and proceed to knead like crazy right before going to sleep.
we have recently noticed that the male volunteer (big honking cat - not overweight but just a big boy) has taken to peeing and crapping in the front bathroom toilet. got no problem with that as now the litter box can well and truly be discarded.
but is this normal? and where in the world would he have learned this behavior? i mean we didn’t do anything directly to try and encourage this behavior. it’s just like he started doing it one day. did he just see the rest of the clan doing their business on the pot and decide hell that’s cleaner that going outside or using the litter box? i mean can cats be that intuitive?
well and that’s what busted him. i kept finding pee in the front toilet with no toilet paper (i am the only male in the house) so i kind of started wondering, what the hey. until one day i noticed him heading towards the head and followed discreetly. sure enough you could hear the piss hitting the water. but now recently he has taken to crapping in there as well. but you know what, i’ll take it. if the next user just needs to flush cat residue down rather than clean a litter box or the let the sucker out in the middle of the night - small price to pay.
stray that just showed up. we have a bunch of feral cats in the neighborhood. this one must have been smart enough to say, screw that" and decide to volunteer to be part of the family.
Cat knead to stimulate their mother’s to give milk. If your kitty is doing this as a grown up to your blanket or your thigh, he’s a happy kitty.
Assuming your cat is healthy and has no physical problems, bathroom issues usually involve some sort of issue with the litterbox. Cat’s like to bury their waste and tend to be REALLY fussy about it. So may have happened to the litter box and the cat wouldn’t use it. So he decided “I think others use this area for waste,” and he adopted it as his own.
You need to retrain him to use the litterbox. Start with a new litter box, with clean litter. Why the cat stopped is anyone’s guess, sometimes they just don’t like the type of litter anymore.
Then it’s a matter of taking the box where he’s now going. You move it slightly away. Then you wait. When the cat goes to his place, you need to say “No,” and perhaps re-enforce it with a squirt of water or a tap (not hit but tap) on the back side. Then you physically pick the cat up and put him in the litter box.
You then take his paws and show him how to dig in it. Cats like this. When he starts to use the box again, each day move it a few feet away, till the litter box and the cat are back where they belong.
But he’s going into the toilet, Markxxx. What’s the problem there?
Litterbox retraining is a good idea if the cat is going in a closet, on the floor or in the laundry pile, sure. But I see no reason to litter box train a toilet trained cat.
