Morning TCS! I'll try to keep this brief but we've been having an exhaustive battle with litterboxes and I'm running out of ideas.
After trying SO many different things our current set up is 5 cats, 6 automatic boxes. We've got 2 littermaids in a covered cabinet, 3 littermaids outside of a covered cabinet and a litter robot. We previously only had 1 littermaid and 2 litter robots so this is a large increase in the quantity of boxes, but we've still got one cat peeing and pooping outside the box.
I've purchased a pet door that we've talked about installing in the living room to give the cats a second entrance/exit to access the litterboxes but we're hesitant to do this as 1) we aren't sure it will help and 2) it will create a space for heat and smells to come into the main room from the garage so it's less than ideal.
This particular cat will pee and poop consistently on the rug by the back door, so it seems they are ok with going in the same spot over and over. As an experiment I put a litterbox in the tiny guest bathroom's bath tub to see if they could be retrained to use a box in a different spot. This seems to work, until the door gets closed and they are unable to access the box at which time we find a pile on the rug again.
Should we try adding the pet door to give them a different way to access the boxes or is that unlikely to work? I've been wracking my brain about adding a second litterbox location but with 2 adults and 2 kids our 1 story house is pretty full. We were just about to add a litterbox to our patio with access through a window until we temporarily set a box out there and found the sweet smelling lavender litter swarmed by wasps. That put the brakes on that creative approach.
I'm willing to run some more experiments but the only way to test whether the second entrance/exit will work is to put a big old hole in our living room wall. We're willing to do that if it resolves the issue but we aren't 100% that it's the solution.
Any suggestions/advice?
TIA!
~Heidi
After trying SO many different things our current set up is 5 cats, 6 automatic boxes. We've got 2 littermaids in a covered cabinet, 3 littermaids outside of a covered cabinet and a litter robot. We previously only had 1 littermaid and 2 litter robots so this is a large increase in the quantity of boxes, but we've still got one cat peeing and pooping outside the box.
I've purchased a pet door that we've talked about installing in the living room to give the cats a second entrance/exit to access the litterboxes but we're hesitant to do this as 1) we aren't sure it will help and 2) it will create a space for heat and smells to come into the main room from the garage so it's less than ideal.
This particular cat will pee and poop consistently on the rug by the back door, so it seems they are ok with going in the same spot over and over. As an experiment I put a litterbox in the tiny guest bathroom's bath tub to see if they could be retrained to use a box in a different spot. This seems to work, until the door gets closed and they are unable to access the box at which time we find a pile on the rug again.
Should we try adding the pet door to give them a different way to access the boxes or is that unlikely to work? I've been wracking my brain about adding a second litterbox location but with 2 adults and 2 kids our 1 story house is pretty full. We were just about to add a litterbox to our patio with access through a window until we temporarily set a box out there and found the sweet smelling lavender litter swarmed by wasps. That put the brakes on that creative approach.
I'm willing to run some more experiments but the only way to test whether the second entrance/exit will work is to put a big old hole in our living room wall. We're willing to do that if it resolves the issue but we aren't 100% that it's the solution.
Any suggestions/advice?
TIA!
~Heidi
RIP sweet boy. 
