Pet care: Missing the litter pan – bad aim?

Q: I recently adopted a 1½-year-old cat. She’s as sweet as can be, but she defecates just outside the cat box on the floor, so I named her Loo. She tries to cover it up, but she’s pawing at the floor! She urinates in the box. I’ve tried different litters and different boxes, but the behavior continues. There are two other cats in the house, but they live in their own sun room.

Dr. Nichol: Your new kitty knows how fortunate she is in her new home, but she needs to get her %$ together. There can be a variety of reasons for this conundrum. A sudden thumping or buzzing from a laundry appliance while Loo was blissfully using the loo may have startled the you-know-what out of her, resulting in an immediate and permanent fear association with that bodily function in that room.

Cats can be fastidious. If their clumping litter isn’t scooped twice daily and their pans dumped, washed and refilled weekly, they can perceive a hygiene problem despite routinely urinating on target.

Our kitties are domestic pets who belong in our homes. They also need us to support their innate behaviors. In the wild, they eliminate in a variety of fresh locations. Equip your house with one litter pan per cat, plus one more. Spread out those four feline latrines in different rooms. Size matters, too. Provide sweater storage boxes with part of one side cut down for access. Older pans retain odor and should be recycled and replaced.

Stress-related anxiety may be another driver of Loo’s lapses in restroom etiquette. Ugly pheromone insults among all of your cats can be addressed by adding environmental enrichments. Visit my website, drjeffnichol.com, for a good list. Visiting neighbor cats will need bus tickets to Poughkeepsie.

With repetition, house soiling can become a deeply entrenched behavior, making it really difficult to treat. Safe antianxiety medication, like fluoxetine, should not be reserved as a last resort. Catch Loo doing the right thing every chance you get, but never punish. Set her up for success.

For help with behavior problems, you can sign up for a Zoom group conference at drjeffnichol.com

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