This is going to take alot of explaining, but my 1 and a half year old cat jasmine has been urinating outside of the litterbox since we got her.
I live in a small house with a ground floor and basement, so there is not enough room for litterboxes. We have always let our cats go outside, where they did the majority of the peeing and pooping, but after more of our indoor-outdoor cats died than lived, we decided our next cat would be indoors only. We currently have one indoor-outdoor (sophie) and one indoor only (jasmine)
It started in November of 2019 when we purchased this 3 month old kitten from PetSmart. (DONT do this, adopt from a humane shelter instead, she arrived home and began to poop blood... I noticed that their cats are often sick anyways)
We made the mistake of keeping her and the litterbox in my room, and eventually, when the kitten was free to go to the whole house, moving the litterbox downstairs. She retaliated by peeing in my bedroom for a while. Overall, she had loads of issues peeing downstairs, to which we got a second litterbox and had one in the laundry room and one in the guest room. (both were downstairs)
This worked out fine, except for the fact that she would track litter everywhere and the guestroom (which I use for my computer) smelled rancid. Then by spring/summer of 2020, she began marking upstairs. By this point, we were experimenting with leash training, we did a lot wrong so I can understand why she may have been stressed at this time. She did do pretty well just exploring the back-yard, and begged to go outside often. Her marking the living room carpet upstairs was completely unavoidable by all efforts. My mother did NOT want a litterbox upstairs/in kitchen, but we convinced her to put one in the living room.
This worked out... okay. Litter was tracking everywhere, and as soon as you walked in our house, it smelled HORRIBLE. Since our house is small, it's unavoidable. Winter 2020: 2 litterboxes, one downstairs and one in our living room.
Fast forward to now: We put out litter matsback then, to now find out that she has been peeing on them the entire time. We switch to a completely new litterbox and litter. I contimplated doing a gradual switch from litter to pellets, but she actually used the new pellet litterbox instantly. Everything was fine. We put down some pee-pads and moved the old traditional litterbox we had upstairs previously downstairs to replace the one there.
This is where things go crazy. Now that it was warm enough to go outside, we let her out on leash. She craves the extra attention, and I try my best to give it to her. Playing with her daily and taking her out daily, sometimes multiple times a day. She begins to pee outside the litterbox. Behind our TV, and on the litter pads. Its bad.
She is afraid of plastic bags, so I immediately stuff our TV area with plastic bags to avoid pee getting in electrical cords. My dad takes my cat sophie to the vet for an unrelated reason, and while he's there, he asks for advice on Jasmine. He gives us some options, and right now we are changing pee pads as soon as she urinates on them, and spraying feliway twice a day. We can't afford to spray it every 4-5 hours. And we cant risk taking away the pee pads to see if she only wants to pee on those.
However, because we sprayed feliway spray around the new litterbox upstairs, she is begining to stop pooping in it, and only pooping downstairs. You think she would stop peeing as well? No. She keeps peeing outside of it, exactly where we spray.
I am currently running an experiment right this moment. I am putting a pee pad downstairs to see if she urinates on it. I hope that it is just the pads.
One cat needs more than one litterbox, so it's not like we can block off that area. We are at a loss. Do we risk letting my baby outside, unleashed, to pee and releive stress? She is a huge wimp, afraid of everything that moves, but extremely energetic and adventurous. She is oddly bad at balancing on things too like fences. She's never been past our yard before. What if she gets hit? People speed on my road. I've had 2 cats disappear, one get hit. I dont want to let her out and loose her, but she's destroying the house. What if we let her out and she just keeps marking anyway? I worry for the future: If it's this bad now, what will she do when I move to collage and my parents are work all day? (i'm currently a Junior, so i have a little bit of time left)
I live in a small house with a ground floor and basement, so there is not enough room for litterboxes. We have always let our cats go outside, where they did the majority of the peeing and pooping, but after more of our indoor-outdoor cats died than lived, we decided our next cat would be indoors only. We currently have one indoor-outdoor (sophie) and one indoor only (jasmine)
It started in November of 2019 when we purchased this 3 month old kitten from PetSmart. (DONT do this, adopt from a humane shelter instead, she arrived home and began to poop blood... I noticed that their cats are often sick anyways)
We made the mistake of keeping her and the litterbox in my room, and eventually, when the kitten was free to go to the whole house, moving the litterbox downstairs. She retaliated by peeing in my bedroom for a while. Overall, she had loads of issues peeing downstairs, to which we got a second litterbox and had one in the laundry room and one in the guest room. (both were downstairs)
This worked out fine, except for the fact that she would track litter everywhere and the guestroom (which I use for my computer) smelled rancid. Then by spring/summer of 2020, she began marking upstairs. By this point, we were experimenting with leash training, we did a lot wrong so I can understand why she may have been stressed at this time. She did do pretty well just exploring the back-yard, and begged to go outside often. Her marking the living room carpet upstairs was completely unavoidable by all efforts. My mother did NOT want a litterbox upstairs/in kitchen, but we convinced her to put one in the living room.
This worked out... okay. Litter was tracking everywhere, and as soon as you walked in our house, it smelled HORRIBLE. Since our house is small, it's unavoidable. Winter 2020: 2 litterboxes, one downstairs and one in our living room.
Fast forward to now: We put out litter matsback then, to now find out that she has been peeing on them the entire time. We switch to a completely new litterbox and litter. I contimplated doing a gradual switch from litter to pellets, but she actually used the new pellet litterbox instantly. Everything was fine. We put down some pee-pads and moved the old traditional litterbox we had upstairs previously downstairs to replace the one there.
This is where things go crazy. Now that it was warm enough to go outside, we let her out on leash. She craves the extra attention, and I try my best to give it to her. Playing with her daily and taking her out daily, sometimes multiple times a day. She begins to pee outside the litterbox. Behind our TV, and on the litter pads. Its bad.
She is afraid of plastic bags, so I immediately stuff our TV area with plastic bags to avoid pee getting in electrical cords. My dad takes my cat sophie to the vet for an unrelated reason, and while he's there, he asks for advice on Jasmine. He gives us some options, and right now we are changing pee pads as soon as she urinates on them, and spraying feliway twice a day. We can't afford to spray it every 4-5 hours. And we cant risk taking away the pee pads to see if she only wants to pee on those.
However, because we sprayed feliway spray around the new litterbox upstairs, she is begining to stop pooping in it, and only pooping downstairs. You think she would stop peeing as well? No. She keeps peeing outside of it, exactly where we spray.
I am currently running an experiment right this moment. I am putting a pee pad downstairs to see if she urinates on it. I hope that it is just the pads.
One cat needs more than one litterbox, so it's not like we can block off that area. We are at a loss. Do we risk letting my baby outside, unleashed, to pee and releive stress? She is a huge wimp, afraid of everything that moves, but extremely energetic and adventurous. She is oddly bad at balancing on things too like fences. She's never been past our yard before. What if she gets hit? People speed on my road. I've had 2 cats disappear, one get hit. I dont want to let her out and loose her, but she's destroying the house. What if we let her out and she just keeps marking anyway? I worry for the future: If it's this bad now, what will she do when I move to collage and my parents are work all day? (i'm currently a Junior, so i have a little bit of time left)