One of our cats (behold: Al) has taken to hopping into his litterbox, conjuring up a stinker, and then … merrily continuing on with this day. Without covering it. Leaving it there, to breathe, and stink up the joint.
To get the basics outta the way: He’s a large Maine Coon (17 lbs. and vet-certified as being in excellent health and overall shape, not chunky at all) and he does not seem to otherwise be showing any joint problems that might make scraping and digging uncomfortable. We also have not changed litter brands, and his box is in an out-of-the-way spot in “his” room, around a corner so he has a little visual privacy. (We, however, do not enjoy olfactory privacy.)
Googling around, I found references to the idea that this is a dominance thing. Submissive cats bury their shit to hide it from the dominant cat in the area. There’s something to it, I guess: we have a second cat, a young female. They get along very well (see visual, below) but I suppose cats always have an ongoing push-and-pull to the hierarchy. Right?
Al does have, in his feline ways, some assholish tendencies. (Cat owners will hopefully understand what I mean.) I could totally see him doing this on purpose, knowing we’re sitting on the couch watching TV and suddenly going, “What the- AW JEEZ!!” and enjoying the subsequent show while laughing into his whiskers. Does anyone have any thoughts on this theory?
Better: does anyone have any advice or practical suggestions? Any experience at all with this phenomenon? Obligatory second photo: him snoozing with our other cat, a normal-sized girl. For size comparison, you know. I wish I’d put a quarter or something next to them, for scale, but I was afraid I’d wake them up.
He’s smart enough to have figured out the latter. (Nikki - the other one - can barely figure out breathing. Sweet cat, but it’s hollow in her head, yanno?) The trouble is, that doesn’t get me any closer to solving the problem.
Any way to reassert my dominance without shitting in a litterbox? I have a twisted enough sense of humor that I would so totally do that, but the idea of scooping my very own warm shit into a bag is too much to absorb. I don’t think I could do it.
I always picked up my cats by the scruff of the neck so they kept their “cat handle” as they got older. It was also a way of maintaining dominance on my part. If one of the cats gave me grief I’d pick it up and give it the evil eye or a thump on the head like I was testing a melon. In this case I’d do that, point the cat’s nose close to ground zero and drop it in front of the box.
Of course, some cats are dumber than the turds they drop so success depends on whether some level of communication occurred. My younger cat never understood my displeasure over scratching furniture. The shoe of retribution meant nothing in the middle of the act. The older one stopped after the first “HEY” and never did it again.
I wish I knew. My cat covers up when he wets, but leaves his cat fudges sitting proudly atop a mound of litter for all to see and smell.
The litterbox is in my powder room so I tend to just flush them as I find them, except he’s prone to dropping a deuce while I’m at work so I get to come home to a kitty-ca-ca air freshener
I had the same problem with one of my cats, but luckily the other one would cover up for both of them.
Although, the second cat had his own problem of spending too much time covering up. He’d spend about 10 minutes scratching every side of the litterbox before finally finding his target.
My kitties are kind of the same. Oliver gets in the box, poops, and then scratches the hell out of the top and sides of the box and then jumps out, as though the fault is in the litter for not knowing that it was supposed to move itself to bury the poop. Then my other cat makes a frustrated face and jumps in the box to cover it up for him.
Oh hell, just be grateful he’s doing it IN the box!
Our sweet fellow, gone these many years, never quite figured that out.
He did, however, get the concept if not the context: When we fed him food he didn’t like, he’d take a nibble of it, then stand and scrape the floor next to the bowl with one front paw. Beautifully, eloquently expressed.
The only caveat to that is that I wouldn’t pick up a 17 lb Maine Coon by the scruff, at least not without supporting his body with the other hand. That’s heavy enough that he could potentially take some damage just hanging there.
I had a Maine Coon who did the same. I think part of it was that she was so large that she pooped with her front end out of the box. Then it was just easier to walk the rest of the way out and go about her business than to turn around, go back inside the box, and cover.
Of course, she wasn’t always the brightest cat, and it’s possible that by the time she got out of the box she’d forgotten what she’d done.
