Kitten Is Very Messy In Litter Box

I adopted a two-month-old kitten recently and for the first few days, he was doing great in the litter box. He was clean and covered everything up. However, in the last few days he's gotten very messy and gets poop everywhere. He gets it stuck on the sides of the litter box, on the wall, and in his fur and feet. The change came out of nowhere and I can't figure out why. I have been feeding him the same diet that he was given at the shelter. The only thing I can think of is that after confining him in the bathroom for the first few days, we've been letting him out to play in the living room and he's been using our adult cat's litter box because it's located closer. The kitten's box is filled with anti-clumping clay litter given to us by the shelter, and the adult cat uses clumping clay litter. I don't know if him using a different litter affected his litter box behavior completely but it feels like a sudden 180 and I'm absolutely baffled. I'm of course prepared to put in the extra effort to care for him and I'm expecting him to need to figure things out as a young kitten, but it's a bit frustrating having to deal with poop tracked everywhere multiple times a day, so any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi! Welcome!!
Make sure the kitten isn't eating the clumping litter - they can have a bad habit of doing that.

You might want to put a big plastic tub around the kitten's litter box to help contain things along with a litter catching mat or two.

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Is the kitten making a mess with both litter boxes now? He shouldn't have access to the clumping litter since young kittens tend to eat it and become sick.

golondrina said:

Is the kitten making a mess with both litter boxes now? He shouldn't have access to the clumping litter since young kittens tend to eat it and become sick.

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That’s the problem, I gave him anti-clumping litter so he wouldn’t ingest clumped litter but I can’t keep him confined to the bathroom 24/7 because he gets bored, so I’ve been letting him out to play in the living room and because the adult cat’s litter box is in the living room, he goes to it and I can never catch him beforehand. By the time I realize he’s in there he’s already done, or he’s in the middle of using it. I don’t really know what to do about that so any tips would be great.

At eight weeks, he probably won't eat the litter. My kittens used clumping litter at that age, and it wasn't a problem. I've heard the same from many others on this site.

I think he just needs time to get used to the new setup.