Senior Cat And Litter Avoidance

[dmw]

We have a 15 year old cat and she now will not use the litter box. She is obviously old and has a thyroid problem (she get medications twice a day for this). The vet says she is otherwise healthy. We did have four cats, thought we are now down to two with the other two passing from natural causes. The most recent loss was more than six months ago. We have three litter boxes (two upstairs and one downstairs and we have not changed the litter type that we have been using for years (unscented).

The only change in routines is that we had been keeping the cats in our full basement area, but about two months ago we started allowing both of them to come and stay upstairs. They would stay downstairs until we came home and then she would cry at the top of the stairs until we let her up. Then we would put her back down stairs when we went to bed (and she would cry for a while then).

It is not a problem of having trouble getting into the litter box as she will jump up onto a table and pee on the table. And until this week she was going back downstairs and doing her business downstairs (though not in the litter box).

We hate the idea of having to put them back downstairs, but since she now has started using the entire available upstairs as her personal litter box, then we are out of ideas. So, we are long for any help that one of you might be able to provide. Thanks!

 

[Max's Human]

I don't even know how to start this conversation but I'll tell you about something that I read today there was an article that I read regarding cat dementia and that's one of the first signs of cat dementia is that they don't use their litter box so you may want to have your veterinarian check for that because it seems to happen at the age of 15 or older and generally it was an article that I got from a Siamese rescue group and of course it put me in tears because they say the animals start wandering around like they don't recognize their home and they seem to get lost and they cry out at random moments.

 

[Max's Human]

The other thing that the article mentioned that if your doctor said it was free and clear that was not a problem with dementia you may want to look into different types of litter there are some cats just don't like certain types of litter when they get older I don't know if it's their sense of smell or if it's just like like us old people would change what we like to do I don't know but you might try that because I had at one point for cats and one of my cats refuse to use the same letter as the other three and so I was getting him Pine pellets course he'd rolling them all the time when they were clean but he did to use that particular box so that makes you feel any better I certainly hope that helps

 

[catlover73]

Is there a mix between covered and uncovered litter boxes in your household? The reason I am asking this is because if one of the other cats spooked your 15 year old in a litter box that was covered she may have developed a fear of being cornered. If you only have covered litter boxes try adding an uncovered litter box in the worst problem area and see if anything changes. The only other thing I can think of to try is setting up a new litter box with a product called cat attract litter upstairs to see if that helps.