One of my cats locked herself in my bedroom once. When I let her out, I could smell the faint scent of poop in the air. I went nuts looking for it–up, down, all around. Finally I concluded I was just being paranoid.
When I moved out of the apartment 18 months later, I found the ossified little poo pellets. She’d climbed into a bag of stuff I was going to donate to Goodwill, pushed some stuff aside, gone potty, then covered it back up with the stuff. Fortunately, I’d never gotten around to taking that bag over to Goodwill. I’m sure they wouldn’t have appreciated my cat’s donation.
Before we realized that Dottie was peeing inappropriately because she didn’t think that scooping every other day was good enough, Dottie peed on a covered tennis racket. This pee dried funny, and in it there were strange shards that looked like slivers of broken glass. This caused an emergency AM/PM vet run - tennis racket and all, which may have been a first for them.
The racket was “tested” and nothing appeared to be wrong, yet they still wanted a good sample. This had us going home with a small jar of plastic balls, which were each about the size of a beebee. The plastic balls were to be poured into a clean and empty litter box. Once she peed on the balls, we would scoop the mess up into another jar. The balls ended up covering only a small pancake sized area of the litter box.
We waited all day in our bedroom for her to pee on the balls. Us and Dottie. Dottie and Us. All. Day. Long. She would go in, move the balls around, and come out with a look on her face like “What?”
We rubbed her tummy, trying to smush her bladder, and asked, “Don’t you have to go pee on the balls now?” Nothing. Until we looked away for one moment and she snuck into a closet and peed on a white dress shirt, absolutely drenching it.
Have you ever seen two people trying to wring pee out of a white dress shirt into a small plastic jar? I hope not.
Eventually, it was decided that nothing was wrong, and whenever the litter boxes were less than stellar Dottie would pee in some random place. Thankfully, most often on an easily washable surface.
My cats used to consider the bathtub to be Plan B. Then my son moved back in. For some reason, the bathmat he brought with him is considered to be superior to the tub.