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- Jan 13, 2022
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We recently adopted a kitten that's 6 months old, and already have an almost 4 year old cat.
While normally I wouldn't have an issue with cats sharing litter boxes, I'm questioning whether I should allow it due to my older male cat's previous health issues. He's had issues in the past with FLUTD and when it happened, he continuously tried to use the litterbox, to minimal success and lots of cries of pain. His pees were about the size of golf balls or smaller, as we caught it quite early. Since then I've been very diligent with cleaning his litterbox, checking the size of his pees, how often he urinated, checking his stomach for tenderness, checking for any leakage... There haven't been any reoccurances of the issue, but my vet has made it very clear it may happen again.
Due to his health issues, I've taken to becoming very aware of my kitten's urination habits as well (and where my adult cat seems to only pee 2-4 times a day depending on time of year, water intake, etc.) Our kitten pees almost every time she drinks water, at least 4 times a day, and each pee is only about the size of a golf ball. She doesn't seem to be in any pain, and she is quite small, so I'm fairly certain it's normal for her.
All of that being said, because her pees average around the size of his pees when he was having issues with FLUTD, I worry about them sharing litterboxes because it would make it almost impossible to know if his health problems are acting up (in my mind at least). I'm just wondering if I should discourage them from sharing litterboxes, and how I would even go about that, or if I should just let them do as they desire in regards to them?
Any insights or advice would be appreciated, as googling only offers ways to make sharing them easier.
While normally I wouldn't have an issue with cats sharing litter boxes, I'm questioning whether I should allow it due to my older male cat's previous health issues. He's had issues in the past with FLUTD and when it happened, he continuously tried to use the litterbox, to minimal success and lots of cries of pain. His pees were about the size of golf balls or smaller, as we caught it quite early. Since then I've been very diligent with cleaning his litterbox, checking the size of his pees, how often he urinated, checking his stomach for tenderness, checking for any leakage... There haven't been any reoccurances of the issue, but my vet has made it very clear it may happen again.
Due to his health issues, I've taken to becoming very aware of my kitten's urination habits as well (and where my adult cat seems to only pee 2-4 times a day depending on time of year, water intake, etc.) Our kitten pees almost every time she drinks water, at least 4 times a day, and each pee is only about the size of a golf ball. She doesn't seem to be in any pain, and she is quite small, so I'm fairly certain it's normal for her.
All of that being said, because her pees average around the size of his pees when he was having issues with FLUTD, I worry about them sharing litterboxes because it would make it almost impossible to know if his health problems are acting up (in my mind at least). I'm just wondering if I should discourage them from sharing litterboxes, and how I would even go about that, or if I should just let them do as they desire in regards to them?
Any insights or advice would be appreciated, as googling only offers ways to make sharing them easier.