Cat Avoiding Cat Box - Deposits Gifts Elsewhere

Factual Questions
1

One of our three cats (the youngest - 3 years old) has been urinating and defecating in various areas around the house and inside our car. This has been an ongoing problem for a few years, mostly because he was found to have crystals in his urine. As a result, he’s been on medication for some time and it seemed to correct the problem for the most part (excluding the occasional mistake every few months). However, he’s once again began the ‘using the entire house as a cat box’ trend and he’s this close to being put down. He freaks out whenever someone unknown enters the house and perhaps this contributes to the problem. Why might he be doing this?

Note: I provided a very condensed version of the story, he’s been seen by the vet copious times over the years and at one point was placed on pills to “calm him down”. This resulted in our cat essentially being turned into a vegetable, and was fun for neither him nor us. He hasn’t been on those pills for at least a year and was doing great up to a week ago.

2

Here’s some possible suggestions on Feline House Soiling.
Since you’ve been seeing a vet, the medical information might be stuff you already know, but it’s worth seeing if any of this is new to you.

My wife the vet brought home a sample of a product called “Cat Attract.” Here’s a web site for it:

http://www.preciouscat.com/WebPages/catattract.html

Can’t really tell you if it’s any good or not (has not made much of a difference with our geriatric 19 year old cat) but it may be worth trying.

3

Our oldest cat has started doing this. It’s getting to be annoying. Until recently, if she “went” anyplace besides the cat box, it was on a non-porous surface, easily cleaned. But lately she’s been using the rug.

We found, purely by accident, that if we put a shallow pan in the spot where she goes, she’ll go in the pan. There’s no litter in the pan. We just clean it out in the morning.
We suspect she’s either staking out her turf, or has just gotten too old and arthritic to go downstairs to the cat box. Or maybe both.

Give it a shot.

4

My cat used the whole house as a litter box when we first got him (he was a kitten). The solution in this case was to change his kitty litter. We were using the clumping (scoopable) litter, like we had used with our previous cat, but our new cat hated the clumping litter. We changed to regular litter, and it never happened again. I hope your solution is something simple like that.

5

richardb, that was a very informative site, many thanks.

In regards to the cat liter, we’ve been using the same type for years, thus I don’t think that’s the problem. Thanks though.

6

Two, OK, three reasons that cats don’t cover their “business”:

  • The cat is ill.

  • The cat doesn’t like the litter you have provided.

  • The cat is asserting its dominance (read: lack of submission to another).
    Let me guess… your other two cats are female.

I’ll bet you flush all of your own smells away.

Have you neutered your stinky boy?

Try taking a dump near the litter box and don’t cover it up. I’m serious. Reclaim your dominance!

7

Is your cat spayed? We found that when our youngest male cat hit adulthood (before being spayed), he exhibited behaviors similar to the ones you discribed.

After being spayed, the problem little by little slowed then finally stopped. Well, unless one of the other cats uses “his” litterbox. In which case, he teaches us a lesson for letting that cat use the litter box by using other facilities.

TV

8

gluteus maximus, the cat in question is Male, while the other two are male and female.

TV time - Our cat is neutered

9

How often do you clean the litterboxes?

10

Every day, and we have 2 large ones.

11

UPDATE

Well, it’s been almost a year since I started this thread, and several years since this incident first began. Anyways, our cat is still urinating and defecating in places he shouldn’t be, though oddly, he’ll go weeks (or even months) without a single mistake, then he’ll start right back up again.

Some details on the cat. He’s a four year old male persian. He’s had a crystal problem in the past, though he’s on a special diet and some type of pill, taken twice daily, which should aleve him of that problem (there doesn’t seem to be any crystals in the urine at this time either). We’ve tried isolating him, as suggested, in a small room with food, water and a catbox several times (he’s isolated right now) so he’d hopefully learn to use the catbox for bathroom behavior. It seems to help for a short while, then he’ll go right back to finding various places around the house. It’s interesting though because he does use the catbox frequently, but yet we’ll still find urine around the house.

So here’s where we stand, my parents are understandably fed up with this behavior. They’ve tried virtually everything to curtail this problem to no avail. They were going to put him down, but the vet recommended an organization that deals with this problem. Don’t get me wrong, my parents love the cat and really did not want to put them down, so they’re glad another option is available.

So we gave the organization a call and as it turns out, the woman we spoke with deals specifically with Persians. She said what we’re experiencing is very normal for this breed (presumably because of the inbreeding) and that most everyone she’s taken a cat from has been in our exact situation. Upon receiving the cat, she’ll try to find a home with people who have no children or other pets and who are aware that this is a special needs cat. If this doesn’t happen, she’ll simply keep the cat in her tailored home (ceramic floors, etc). This is obviously a better method than putting the cat down, and even I agree it’s the better situation, but it’ll be tough to give him up.

Anyways, I’m just wondering if there’s anything else we could try before we commit to this. The only thing I could think of was that might be contributing to the problem would be that we only have two catboxes for three cats, however, they’re very large cat boxes (cleaned daily) and even I doubt it’s the cause of the problem. Again, while it looks like there’s nothing else we can do but give the cat up, I just wanted to do one last check and make sure we’ve exhausted every possible correction. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks.

12

I had a male cat that had taken to spraying urine all over the house. I tried numerous things to no avail and was at my wit’s end when my vet recommended a phermone spray called Feliway. Basically I sprayed it in all the places the cat used to go inappropriately. It had no odor to my nose but it was the only thing that kept him from urinating everywhere. It had to be reapplied every few days. Eventually I was able to stop using it and he still behaved himself.
Now, my cat’s problem was strictly behavioral-he was mad at me I think-so I don’t know if it’d work in your situation but it’s worth a try to avoid giving up the animal.

13

Thanks so much. I’m willing to try anything at this point, I just hope my parents feel the same way (though they’ve tried plenty over the past 2 years). If anyone else has any other suggestions that worked for them, I’d be most thankful.