Defecating On My Sofa!

[Mari88]

hi
Up until a month ago my cat used the litter box catit for all her toilet needs then one day I left her at my mums for a week and since then she urinates in the box but is defecating on my spare sofa.
What can I do? How do I stop it?

 

[margd]

Since you've been home for a few weeks, she's probably going there now out of habit and possibly because she can still smell it. How are you cleaning the sofa? If you don't eliminate every trace of odor with an enzymatic cleaner like Nature's Miracle (to name just one) she may be going back there because sensitive cat noses can still smell these things, even if ours can't. Once you have the sofa completely clean, you'll need to make it difficult, if not impossible for her to get on the sofa for long enough that the habit is broken.

There are many different ways to make the sofa out of bounds. You can just shut the door, put stuff on the sofa so she can't get up on it or move the sofa so it's not accessible. If you opt for putting something on the sofa to block her access, you may find something around the house, like chairs, to prevent that. Some people wrap the area with aluminum foil. There are also covers you can buy that are not terribly expensive, considering a sofa is at stake. This is the kind of thing I mean - if you do a search at amazon, you'll get an idea of what's on the market.

If you decide to block her egress to the sofa, put a second litter box next to it. Once she is using it on a regular basis, you can gradually move it closer and closer to the place where you want it to stay. Don't touch the existing one - you don't want to upset things any more than they are already. Actually, the rule of thumb with litter boxes is "one box for each cat and one for the house" so you should have more than one anyway. This article gives some additional information on litter box issues that might be useful: How To Solve Litterbox Problems In Cats: The Ultimate Guide

Another approach that sometimes works to stop cats from defecating on the sofa is to feed them there. Cats generally don't like to eat near where they relieve themselves so putting the food dish on The Spot might solve the problem. It's not successful in many cases, but certainly worth a try.

Did your cat display any litter box avoidance at your mum's house? It's true that initially she may have only been marking her territory but I'm wondering if there was anything about the set-up at your mum's house that she might have liked and decided to continue when she got home. Many cats prefer to urinate in one box and defecate in another so if she was able to do that at your mum's but not at home, that could be one explanation.

A final point: when a cat suddenly breaks litter box training, it can be due to an underlying health issue. In this case, your absence was probably the trigger but just in case, keep an eye on her and check for changes in eating and sleeping habits, loss of weight, vomiting, and/or any other changes such as diarrhea or constipation. A visit to the vet is then in order.