Our 12y.o. spayed female, Sassy, began going outside the box ~5 months ago. We don't really know an instigating circumstance.
We have been at this house for 19 months (approx. 14 months when this started), and had not had a problem before. We have a 13 y.o. neutered male, Striker, as her full-time housemate. We have had them both as indoor cats since adopting them as kittens.
We have (2) XL covered boxes, covered despite conventional wisdom because Sassy is a "stander" when she goes, and she ALWAYS goes against/over the side like an ass-backward graffiti artist. Boxes are located in an open basement storage room with nightlights for each pan. Other items in room are an unused weight bench, unused punching bag and some boxes of storage stuff. The floor is painted concrete. There is a furnace outlet providing heat to the room. For the first 14 months, the boxes were side-by-side, each with its own Cats Rule Perfect Litter Mat (something we have used for about 5 years). The boxes are cleaned 2-3x/day.
When this started, we decided to make a litter change, because this had worked in the past. We kept some old litter to mix. Didn't help. We separated the boxes by 10 feet or so, in the same basement room.
Her occurrences got worse, although she would sometimes use either box for both, or one for feces, then unload urine on the litter mat, against the outside of the box (which, in case you didn't know tends to flood the urine under the box in the mat grooves).
We are in the process of relocating, and this is NOT making us feel good about having this happen in a new house or rental townhouse (undecided).
We have scrubbed the boxes multiple times, tried to change back to the litter we started with, changed both boxes to Cat Attract litter and moved one box to the downstairs bathroom with more privacy (showed Sassy, not Striker, yet Striker ended up being the only one to use the box there), and have now moved that box back into the original room.
Striker is unfazed by all this commotion and will go wherever he finds a box.
Sassy has taken to marking walls and leaving puddles of urine right in the middle of the concrete floor. She HAD been at least using the box for her diarrhea, until this evening when she left it on the mat in front of one box and urinated on the outside of the other box, on the floor (that mat was still hanging to dry from this morning).
We are cleaning with some brand of enzyme cleaner, along with disinfectant wipes, and have washed the litter mats multiple times. We even put down brand new mats and within (1) day, Sassy had defecated on one and urinated on the other.
I took her to the vet (3) weeks ago. Bloodwork and a full-body image scan revealed a perfectly healthy feline. Vet relieved her anal glands, suggested she may have had a slight problem with them and gave her a shot of medicine that he said would remain at a "therapeutic level" for approx. 2 weeks. Its been (3) and I believe the medicine is behind the diarrhea, but that still doesn't solve the larger problem. Vet could offer no other explanations or resolutions.
We have even taped aluminum foil to the bottoms of the walls after cleaning. Small relief that this is the ONLY room in the house where this is occurring.
Love my cats, but really, really sick of cleaning up cat bodily fluids (Striker is a puker these days, but that is a whole other thread).
Cat Attract has not attracted Sassy. Really don't know what to do as we begin to plan the future. Sad. Depressed. Frustrated.
Sorry for the length; not sure how to convey all of that in a shorter fashion.
We have been at this house for 19 months (approx. 14 months when this started), and had not had a problem before. We have a 13 y.o. neutered male, Striker, as her full-time housemate. We have had them both as indoor cats since adopting them as kittens.
We have (2) XL covered boxes, covered despite conventional wisdom because Sassy is a "stander" when she goes, and she ALWAYS goes against/over the side like an ass-backward graffiti artist. Boxes are located in an open basement storage room with nightlights for each pan. Other items in room are an unused weight bench, unused punching bag and some boxes of storage stuff. The floor is painted concrete. There is a furnace outlet providing heat to the room. For the first 14 months, the boxes were side-by-side, each with its own Cats Rule Perfect Litter Mat (something we have used for about 5 years). The boxes are cleaned 2-3x/day.
When this started, we decided to make a litter change, because this had worked in the past. We kept some old litter to mix. Didn't help. We separated the boxes by 10 feet or so, in the same basement room.
Her occurrences got worse, although she would sometimes use either box for both, or one for feces, then unload urine on the litter mat, against the outside of the box (which, in case you didn't know tends to flood the urine under the box in the mat grooves).
We are in the process of relocating, and this is NOT making us feel good about having this happen in a new house or rental townhouse (undecided).
We have scrubbed the boxes multiple times, tried to change back to the litter we started with, changed both boxes to Cat Attract litter and moved one box to the downstairs bathroom with more privacy (showed Sassy, not Striker, yet Striker ended up being the only one to use the box there), and have now moved that box back into the original room.
Striker is unfazed by all this commotion and will go wherever he finds a box.
Sassy has taken to marking walls and leaving puddles of urine right in the middle of the concrete floor. She HAD been at least using the box for her diarrhea, until this evening when she left it on the mat in front of one box and urinated on the outside of the other box, on the floor (that mat was still hanging to dry from this morning).
We are cleaning with some brand of enzyme cleaner, along with disinfectant wipes, and have washed the litter mats multiple times. We even put down brand new mats and within (1) day, Sassy had defecated on one and urinated on the other.
I took her to the vet (3) weeks ago. Bloodwork and a full-body image scan revealed a perfectly healthy feline. Vet relieved her anal glands, suggested she may have had a slight problem with them and gave her a shot of medicine that he said would remain at a "therapeutic level" for approx. 2 weeks. Its been (3) and I believe the medicine is behind the diarrhea, but that still doesn't solve the larger problem. Vet could offer no other explanations or resolutions.
We have even taped aluminum foil to the bottoms of the walls after cleaning. Small relief that this is the ONLY room in the house where this is occurring.
Love my cats, but really, really sick of cleaning up cat bodily fluids (Striker is a puker these days, but that is a whole other thread).
Cat Attract has not attracted Sassy. Really don't know what to do as we begin to plan the future. Sad. Depressed. Frustrated.
Sorry for the length; not sure how to convey all of that in a shorter fashion.