That dark corner is not your litterbox!

May 10, 2017 7:21 AM

The lovely and talented Kokopelli has gotten into a bad habit of crapping along the periphery of small rooms/alcoves in the basement. Is this indicative of something particular, and what do I do about it? He has lots of litterboxes.

So my silent struggle with my kitty's bad habits started about a year ago and I thought I had it licked by cleaning and then obstructing access to the spaces he liked to use. There's an alcove by my water heater which he was using; I closed the door, put a litterbox outside the door, obstructed a couple of the alternative accesses, and tha seemed to help (he used the litterbox and it appears to have become his favorite since I put some of the Cat-Attract additive in there). A month or so ago I noticed a lot of catshit around the periphery of a small room I use for storing beer; annoyed, but that room has a door and I just shut it. Today I noticed the same issue around the periphery of another small room, which doesn't have a door (and shares a wall with the beer storage, should thaat be significant), and I'm starting to think that there's a larger behavioral problem that needs addressing.

What he does is pretty consistent: he places piles at about 4-inch intervals around the wall of the room, typically the areas furthest from the door. This only appears to happen in the basement, and specifically in smaller subdivided areas of the basement. He doesn't seem to be urinating inappropriately at all. He has 6 litterboxes: a standard pan on the second floor, a sifting pan (which is new and he hasn't warmed to yet) and a covered box (that he doesn't much use) on the ground floor, and three in the basement (two large plastic totes full of litter, one traditional pan which he uses a lot). I clean boxes fairly frequently but I miss days occasionally. He's occasionally made anxious mews at me that I can't decipher; about 10% of his anxious mews seem to be wanting food and 70% are wanting to go for a walk outside, leaving about 20% of the time that he seems happy and content if I give him some affection or play but that may or may not be what he's asking for specifically.

posted by jackbishop to Pets & Animals (8 answers total)

When my then 12-year-old cat entered the final stages of his life, he started pooping outside the litterbox, on a different floor from where the litterbox was. He continued to walk downstairs to pee in the box, but he would not poop in it. This made absolutely no sense, and when I asked the vet about it, he kinda shrugged and said "cats are weird."

My cat had kidney disease, but I don't think this behavior was related to that disease. I think it was a switch that flipped in his brain when he started his final decline, rather than something specifically related to that disease. We resolved the problem by getting a litterbox and putting it in the place he was pooping, and for the rest of his life he pooped upstairs in that box and peed downstairs in the other box.

So you might try moving one of his litterboxes to the spot in the basement where he's now pooping. You might also want to take him to the vet if he has not been in a while, just to get a general assessment of his health.

He's a beautiful boy. I love orange cats!
posted by OrangeDisk at 7:35 AM on May 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Potentially useful additional info on general health assessment: He's about 2 years old and had a vet visit in November for vaccine boosters and general wellness; that vet visit went smoothly with no reported problems (although I didn't bring a stool sample; didn't know I was supposed to)
posted by jackbishop at 7:45 AM on May 10, 2017

Maybe you stated this and I just missed it, but have you tried putting a litter box in the first room he was using? Maybe he just really wants to use a small alcove (more privacy?) and putting a box (or two) in that room would solve the issue?
posted by cooker girl at 7:58 AM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

You could try moving one of his boxes to the place he's currently pooping. Maybe, for reasons only known to him, he likes those spots a lot.
posted by INFJ at 8:01 AM on May 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yes, try moving a litterbox to the area he's pooping-- a cat I sit for would always poop in a downstairs hallway, dark and little-visited, but putting a litterbox down there solved the problem (she used the box instead of the carpet).
posted by The otter lady at 9:11 AM on May 10, 2017

Are you just using the Cat Attract additive? I've switched to the Cat Attract litter to combat my mad pooper, Lily. It works better, but I have to block her access to certain spaces. If you have lots of room, it might be a territorial thing?
posted by feste at 1:33 PM on May 10, 2017

They put one of our cats on prozac for this. It sounds ridiculous, but it worked.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 7:05 PM on May 10, 2017

When my cat did this, it was because he didn't like the litter I was using. Not sure if it was the deodorizing scent or the texture, but when I switched to a brand of cedar shavings, he started going in the right place.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 6:45 AM on May 11, 2017