Kitty Tinkle

November 26, 2019 8:18 AM

We have a 15-year-old cat who has recently forgotten how to use her litter box.

Our cat is an indoor-only rescue who's lived with us for many years. She's been in mostly good health all along, although she may have some sort of environmental allergy that showed up after we moved from SoCal to Oregon. (We've been here more than 10 years now; her current problem is not due to a recent move.)

For the past 2-3 months, she's stopped peeing in her litterbox. Litterboxes, since one of the first things we did was get her a couple of other alternatives (size, shape, cover, litter).

She still poops in her main box (and pees there too on those occasions) but the other couple of times a day she pees, she goes to a random-ish place (sometimes in the middle of a room, more often near a corner, wall or step), posts up, and just lets loose. When she's done, she runs a few steps away and then saunters back to her bed, her bowl, or wherever else she's going.

We've taken her to the vet 5-6 times this year, trying to figure this out, but would prefer not to go back (the vet wasn't making any progress, but started shaming us for not going along with her "Money is no object! More lab tests! Try another new drug!" approach to our cat's health.)

We would really like to be able to stop wiping up cat pee, plus there's always the spots that you don't find immediately, and the general cringey thought that maybe the house smells more like piss than you notice when you live there.

Information that may be relevant:

* Cat may have a bit of arthritis. She still jumps up on the bathroom counter and demands to be watered from the faucet, but she doesn't run much and walks a bit stiffly at first after she stands up from a nap.
* Cat is skinny (7.5lbs) and has lost a little weight (down from 8). She used to free-feed kibble, but we've been giving her all the wet food she will eat (she still gets kibble, too). She's a picky eater.
* Her fur is much thinner than when she was young. She's had periods when she would lick off patches here & there, but she never got to bald / bleeding / infected. Now, her fur is mostly just thin.
* She had a patch of acne on her chin recently, and an apparent infection on her front paws, but a round of antibiotics cleared it all up. Her chin is mostly clear, and her paws look good -- might be a little damp, but it could be sweat or from licking?
* She occasionally throws up, but most often from scarf-and-barf kibble or a glob of fur she's groomed off.
* She currently has two, low-sided, not-covered, litter boxes that are cleaned regularly. One has her old style of litter (sawdust pellets); the other has a clumping sand. She poops in the sawdust pellets.

Our next move is to try Cat Attractant on one of the litter boxes.

Anything else we might try? Causes we haven't thought of? Something to investigate with a different vet? (We're willing to spend money if we can make progress, but can't afford unlimited shots-in-the-dark.)

posted by spacewrench to Pets & Animals (15 answers total)

Yeah, try Cat Attract.

But. She's 15. What you're experiencing is part of having a geriatric cat. There may not be a solution.
posted by kindall at 8:37 AM on November 26, 2019 [6 favorites]

If she had a recent infection in her paws, there may be some lingering tenderness or soreness that the litter aggravates. I know for declawed cats, sometimes cat litter can be very painful- while I'm not experienced with paw infections, it may be a similar issue. Or maybe it hurt for a while, and so now she can't be bothered to go scratch in a litter box just to pee.

Cat attract is absolute magic. I would try that, and maybe a softer litter. A friend who had a foster with front paw issues used a breeze system with rounded, washable balls had some success with it.

Good luck! I'm sorry you and your cat are going through this. It sounds like you're doing all you can, and I can't imagine how frustrating it must be.
posted by Torosaurus at 8:40 AM on November 26, 2019

I adopted a declawed cat who has litter box problems like you describe and who is very picky about things in general. I found that using paper low dust rodent bedding over a pee pad in a low-side box works when she goes on a litter strike (and those strikes seem to correlate with weather changes.) I use Carefresh. It is much easier for me to just replace that every day than it is to deal with cat pee on rugs/carpets/bedding etc.
posted by apex_ at 8:45 AM on November 26, 2019

My old cat started to pee outside of her litter box, but she was doing it in the same place each time - right in the middle of the bathroom floor. I bought a new litter box and put it right in the spot she was peeing. It was very inconvenient while it was there, but she peed in it. Eventually, I moved it to a less inconvenient spot and she followed it. She hasn't peed outside the box since.

I don't know what made her pee outside the litter box in the first place, but once she did it was like she got ... mentally stuck.

I wonder if there's something similar even if your cat is peeing in different spots - like putting a litter box in the middle of the living room where she's peed before. Definitely try to identify any issues she has with the litter box of course, but it sounds like you're already in that process.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:45 AM on November 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

When my friend's cat did this, the vet recommended Feliway to reduce the anxiety. She also recommended not to clean the pee-areas with either bleach or ammonia, as cats will re-mark areas that smell of ammonia for obvious reasons, but some cats will also have a reaction to bleach.

So yeah, my first suggestion is to try Feliway. If it is anxiety related, this should help a lot.

And yeah, I'd change vets potentially.... go with your gut on this. I don't think a vet should shame a client unless it's obvious the client is mistreating their pet, which you obviously aren't. If you feel like they are pushing stuff on you, they probably are. You have way more to gain and less to lose by getting a second opinion. If they also recommend more tests, etc, then you can go from there and decide if you want to get those done.

Nthing softer litter too, we use walnut litter now and my cat absolutely loves it. It's very soft.
posted by Dimes at 8:46 AM on November 26, 2019

So I have no idea if this is the thing in cats, but I know antibiotics are well-known for causing yeast infections in human females. I wonder if the same is true for cats? Pain/irritation in the nether area is often cited as a cause of going potty outside the box.

My cat got diarrhea from her antibiotic last year, so we gave her a probiotic treat to help get her system back to normal. Might be worth a try.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:33 AM on November 26, 2019

I'm just going to say the thing that is hard and ugly and sad and uncomfortable: it's okay to decide that this is the thing that means a senior cat is ready for euthanasia. You don't have to live in a pee-filled home.

(My bona fides: I am a cat person, I have multiple rescue cats, I always provide a forever home, etc.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:00 AM on November 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, everybody. (@BlahLaLa, you ever want to mark "Best Answer" and flag it too? :-/)

I've never had a cat this old before -- my super cool high-school cat lived out her last days while I was at college, so I don't know how she ended up. (I like to think she continued on as Boss of the Neighborhood and Destroyer of Birds Who Ignore Cats with Bells on their Collars until she got hauled away to Valhalla by a giant eagle, but who knows?)

Fingers crossed with Cat Attract, or that at least it's possible to clean a pee-scented house without burning it down and rebuilding. I'd hate to have my best/only asset wrecked when I'm staring down my own cat-food-scented retirement.
posted by spacewrench at 10:41 AM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I swear by this stuff:

Just Rite Cleaning Products

It's a mom-and-pop company that's very old-school (you have to order products on the phone), but these products work extremely well. I had a kitten with a urinary infection, and another cat who was scared by a dog and expressed his anal glands--these products made it like those things had never happened. They also have a shelf life of 5 years.
posted by Autumnheart at 10:50 AM on November 26, 2019 [3 favorites]

I assume your vet has looked for kidney trouble? Not that there's much one can to to help if that's the case, aside from fluid injections, with hotly debated efficacy, in an attempt to prolong life.

As others have said, this seems to be just part of living with an old cat. Lots of paper towels and some incense isn't ideal, but it works. Clorox brand pet urine remover is pretty good on hard surfaces and wood floors.
posted by eotvos at 10:52 AM on November 26, 2019

Did the vet recommend an ultrasound? Our 20 year old man had the same symptoms and the vet couldn't figure it out. Every test came back fine. They told us that as a last ditch we could try an ultrasound. We did and they found a huge tumor in his bladder. We made him comfy until it was time to put him to sleep two weeks later.
posted by @homer at 11:09 AM on November 26, 2019

I would have her thyroid checked. She may just need meds.
posted by crw at 11:33 AM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Additional difficult answer - this behavior preceded a rapid downturn in my old cat’s health (extreme weight loss, bleeding from the mouth) which led to the decision to put him to sleep as he was clearly suffering (the vet believed it was a cancer of some form - we didn’t investigate too deeply at that point). Good thoughts to you and your kitty.
posted by stefnet at 1:46 PM on November 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

my (less old but still strange) cat just had the opposite problem - peeing in the litter box okay, but refusing to poop in there. We tried a few different things (all the types of litter! do you know they make a tofu based litter? he didn't care!) but what ended up working was to sequester him with the litter box for a bit, using Cat Attract litter.

I picked a room that he wasn't pooping in, and then I put him there with TWO litter boxes of Cat Attract (also, new litter boxes) and checked on him as much as I could. If he had used one of them, I praised him relentlessly and gave him a treat, and then I cleaned it right away.

I let him out after a week and he pooped on the floor in the laundry room right away so he had to have round two, which was 9 days. He's been back out since then and only pooped on the floor once and I take the blame for that one because I let his box get dirty I think.
posted by euphoria066 at 3:44 PM on November 26, 2019

Third-ing that this is a known consequence of Old Cat Syndrome (OCS). Mine made it to 20, and my vet had long since gotten used to my “test by treating or not at all” policy (put in place after he cost me thousands at around 15, only to be diagnosed with OCS plus “touchy stomach”).

Sometimes as they age they just forget where to go sometimes, or have urgency that doesn’t allow them to get to the box. Blahlala has the right of it - it’s valid to have this be part of your decision process. They don’t always tell you it’s time with an easy-to-read, catastrophic event. For mine, it was all guesswork based on the severity of his arthritis, which crept up over the years, and the extent to which his meds’ side effects made things worse.

Best of luck! I hope the Catattract works!
posted by invincible summer at 9:26 AM on November 27, 2019