I have owned - or been owned by - cats all my life, and I’m ancient so that’s a long time. Currently we have five cats, all indoor of course, all healthy and happy and no apparent health or behavioral issues.
Until last night. Suddenly, some time within two hours after our dinner, a poop and two pees occurred in the area of the downstairs half bath. All of them happened on the throw rugs.
Our cats have NEVER EVER EVER done their stuff outside the boxes. Not once, never.
We have no idea who did this. None of them seemed upset or even glum. All were present and accounted for around the time of the Deed, playing or napping normally. There haven’t been any stressors - that we know of, obviously - in our environment recently. No arguments or furniture rearrangement (not that the latter seems to bother cats in my experience), no new food or people in the house or chemicals or changes in comings and goings, or anything. I would say yesterday was as normal a day as any I’ve ever lived, cat wise and in every other wise, until we found the Evidence.
Of course we took up the rugs and washed them in vinegar and rinsed everything else in the area in vinegar right away. (Vinegar is the only cleaner we use.) We made sure the litter boxes were unobstructed, clean, nothing to dissuade the Clan from using them. Both water bowls were full and fresh. Food bowl was sufficiently full.
Does anyone have any ideas? We are stunned and dismayed, and of course we need to tackle this before it gets out of hand. Someone obviously has an issue, and we need to figure it out. Has anyone else dealt with this?
Oh I know. But I’m home all day, they are observed intensely - more so today! - and no one is displaying any other symptoms. All of them are self-grooming, which is the first thing that is abandoned when there’s illness, in my experience. They all feel happy. It’s most peculiar.
When cats get a UTI, they start peeing anywhere…but the box. It may be a good idea to have them both checked out at a vet. Unattended it can lead to serious problems.
From a purely practical standpoint, before I pushed the panic button and assumed that something was terribly, terribly wrong, I’d wait to see if it repeated itself. If it was just a one-off, maybe it was just…a one-off. Shit happens, yanno?
Have you done anything to their litter, i.e. getting a different brand, putting in some of that smell good stuff, moved their box or anything (I assume, of course, that you are regularly changing the litter, of course)?
Hm. Well, there is one time that Lenny really, really had to go, but Squiggy was in the box. It resulted in Lenny taking a dump on the bathroom floor and looking utterly mortifed and remorseful about it. That was a one-off (and I was a witness, which made Lenny feel even worse. Or maybe I’m projecting, but he looked really upset).
If there’s a repeat though, then someone is probably ill. The only other time Lenny has gone outside the box was when he had a stomach ailment. And then another time after the vet had seen him for constipation. In that case, he’d needed to go for quite awhile but hadn’t been able to. It seems that when he was finally able to poop, it kind of caught him by surprise.
Agreed with the above. Wait to see if it happens again, because it might just be a total one-off.
Ariel the Free-Thinking Cat is notorious for expressing her emotions by peeing outside the box. It’s almost always a one-off with no obvious trigger, and she promptly goes back to using her box having satisfied herself that she’s avenged whatever imaginary slight she suffered.
Given that you have multiple cats, it’s quite possible that one initiated and the others just followed suit because the carpet now smelled like an appropriate litter area. Anyway, that part of the problem got fixed when you cleaned up the mess and sanitized, so any additional offenses would probably indicate a sick kitty.
It’s so hard to believe anyone is ill, because they are all playing and seemingly quite well. But something is obviously going on.
I have a call in to my vet. Of course it’s his day off and since I have a 20+ year relationship with him I don’t want to talk to any of his partners.
I also have sterilized a syringe and a bottle, ready to collect any future urine to take it for urinalysis. We might not know who is doing it, but we’ll know if we’re dealing with an infection. If we are I’ll take all of them in together (YIKES) or as many as I can manage in a couple of trips.
In the meantime I’ve been reading in a chair pulled up to the door of the new “elimination area.” Very boring, but necessary.
Is there only this one litter box? If you have 5 cats you really need more than that, even if you clean daily.
All it would take to put a cat off a litter box is one incident, such as Cat A is in the litter box when Cat B wanders in to use it. Cat A just dropped a stink bomb and tears out of there like his butt is on fire knocking Cat B out of the way. Cat B now decides that the litter box is a scary (an stinky) place and goes elsewhere. Or Cat B gets in to use the litter box when Cat A shows up with an urgent need and pops Cat B upside the head so she’ll get out of the box. Cat B gets out and decides that the litter box is a scary place. Cat B is in the litterbox and the same time there is an earthquake, Cat B decides the litter box is a scary place.
One of my cats started doing that out of the blue one day. He was about two years old and nutured. We kept finding pee spots here and there and everywhere. We were only able to figure out that it was our boy when he tried to piddle on the dogs blanket in the middle of the night. The sound of the pee hitting the nylon woke us up and we caught him in the act. After the trip to the vet and a couple traumatic tests, we decided that he just being a territorial. We put him on prozac for a month or two, and it stopped. We haven’t had a problem since.
He was totally normal and mellow before he went on this kick. In fact, we were almost certain that it was our other cat before we caught him in the act.
Are you sure you only have 5 cats? It’s easy to lose count.
Seriously, though, you might want to pick up some enzymatic cleaner at the pet supply store next opportunity. It removes even those traces of pet urine and feces that are undetectable by our clumsy human noses and that inspire copycat (sorry) soiling. I’m a huge fan of vinegar, but even that does not do the job on pet odors.
Three boxes may not be enough if you’ve got five critters. Rule of thumb is a minimum of one box per cat, since cats will usually not use the box if it’s already occupied and may not be inclined to wait until it’s free either (also, some cats aren’t very fond of using a litterbox that smells like another cat).
Not very easy if you’ve got a small place, but it’s definitely something to consider if the issue keeps happening and the vet gives a clean bill of health.
We’ve always had three huge boxes, cleaned out twice daily and changed entirely once a week. It’s always been fine, and it’s enough. Whoever thought up the “one box per cat” thing was IMO a bit demented and probably worked for a litter manufacturer.
We did switch to Swheat litter a couple of weeks ago, but we implemented the changeover in a gradual way and there were no problems with it. (SO glad we stopped using that dusty, environmentally nasty clay stuff!)
Our cat room is upstairs - they have their own bedroom - but the area where they were eliminating inappropriately is downstairs by the back door and in the downstairs half bath. My working theory is that someone had an accident and the rest followed suit, although I’m not completely happy with that theory. I’m watching them all like a hawk.
Still waiting for my vet to call, but I don’t think he’ll have much to say unless I can bring him something or someone to test. I adore my vet, but he’s not very good with behavioral problems.
