"Outside the box" is not desired with cats

In My Humble Opinion
1

I have two cats: Miranda, a petite and anti-social (so anti-social that I don’t have a photo of her) 15-year-old female grey tabby, and Julian, a big honkin’ neutered male who came to us as stray and whose age I am estimating at 3 or so.

Miranda hates Julian and skulks and darts around when he’s near. Consequently, he thinks she’s a toy and chases her. Early on, he thought it was fun to ambush her when she was headed to the litterboxes in the basement, so we had many “outside the box” incidents.

I set up in the 1st floor bathroom what I thought was a litterbox too small for Julian to get his fat, fluffy ass into so Miranda would have a box for her exclusive use. Unfortunately, Julian discovered that he could ambush her on the way to that box, too, and that he could fit into it.

Julian seems to have tired of the ambush game, but Miranda is traumatized. Regardless of how often I scoop the box, Miranda will poop there, but prefers to pee on the newspapers surrounding the box.

As far as I’m concerned, peeing on newspaper is vastly better than peeing on the carpet behind my chair or underneath the phone stand. But it’s more work to change newspaper than to scoop the box.

I’ve been thinking I should just get some of those puppy training pads and put them over the newspaper.

I’ve had her checked out at the vet and she’s fine. Does anyone have any experience with this or suggestions I haven’t thought of?

2

Yeah, I’ve got one neurotic cat that, no matter what I try (and I’ve tried all the tricks and recommendations made by cat experts), tends to pee outside of her box. No matter how large the litterbox is, or how many litterboxes we have, what litter we use, how often we scoop the litter, where the box is located, etc etc.

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that, yes, I have to put puppy training pads around the litter boxes. I had success with pooch pads , but I got tired of washing them. Just recently I started using the disposable kind. I don’t care if I save more money with the washable. I’d rather just throw them away.

So yes, I’ve been in your position and that’s the only solution I can think of. I’ve decided to stop worrying about it. It’s HER not ME. She’s just a freaky cat with box issues and it’s not worth the stress.

Use the puppy pads. Save your sanity.

3

My neurotic cat Judy won’t go outside since we moved house - unless it’s 4am, I tried getting her to use a litter tray instead of waking me up to no avail, she started peeing on the bed and any clothes she found on the floor, until one night I hardened my heart and put her in the bathroom for the night. She wailed and cried and scratched at the door, but she did pee in the litter box - and my clothes and bed have been left unmolested since…