I need help! My 2-yr old black male Persian mix thinks that our house is his litterbox. He ignores the 3 clean litter boxes and poops on the tile floors in our house, pees on rugs. When I totally change out the scoopable litter, he responds by using the litterbox and then dragging his butt across the carpet. :eek: We have 3 other cats (with no problems of this sort), and he’s the odd man out when it comes to interacting/getting along with the others. He’s a gorgeous, sweet cat and I want to find a solution to this problem.
I’m contemplating a pet behavior specialist, and was wondering if anyone out there has had any luck with that avenue. Thanks!
Thanks, calolphin - the cat is healthy as a horse, except he can’t meow due to early kitten throat worms. I’m wondering if his hairy feet/tail make him not want to go in the correct place. If that’s the case, I’m shaving him asap!
Blonde, sounds like you’re having the exact same problem I had. Check out this thread, it provides plenty of suggestions:
Interestingly enough, our cat was also a Persian. Sadly, after fighting this battle for three years, we finally had to give him up 3 weeks ago =( I can’t say we didn’t try though. Anyways, he ended up at a special pet center who deals specifically with persians. Apparently, urinating and defecating around the house is a common problem with this breed. Anyways, what they try to do is find an owner who understands the needs of these cats, and who also doesn’t have any children or other pets (so the cat won’t be scared and have the full attention of the owner).
We had a standard, mutt-type tabby who developed this problem when she was about 12 years old. (She lived to be nearly 20.) It started when we moved to a different state, and could no longer find the brand of kitty litter that she was used to.
The vet could not find anything physically wrong, but she gave us lots of literature on how to re-train the cat to use the litter box. Most of it involved shutting the cat up in a small space that included ONLY the litter box for most of the day, which just wasn’t feasible for us because we didn’t have any rooms that were a) small, and b) had a closable door, and c) would fit the litter box.
The cat did develop a preference for using the strawberry patch in the backyard, even though she was an indoor cat. This wasn’t much of an option if the weather was bad, or at night. But we let her out during the day whenever we could.
BTW, Oxyclean diluted in water does a wonderful job of getting rid of the smells and stains. After she passed on, we rented a Rug Master and used an Oxyclean solution on all the carpeted areas. It even got rid of the odors in the carpet padding.
