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help - cats peeing on the carpet
Hi, I've never posted on here before but have a situation that I am at my wits end in trying to deal with. Just a little info about the situation, I am really hoping that some of you might have some suggestions that will help.
We have three shelter adopted cats. We use two litter boxes that are scooped daily and fully dumped/cleaned regularly. One of our cats (one of the more physically disabled ones) has started peeing on the carpet in the room with the litter boxes. My DH steamcleaned the carpets with a solution meant to remove pet odors (including urine) and before the carpet was even dry there were already two spots where the cats had peed. We will be steamcleaning the carpets again b/c of this.
We have now moved to a 3 litter box system, which will still be scooped daily. Honestly, this situation has been going on for months and we are unsure how to correct this behavior. We know that Gilda, who has vision problems, has peed in that area on several occasions as we have caught her and directed her towards the litter box. We do not know if either of the other two cats have done so but we have never seen them do anything other than use the litter box.
FWIW, this just started happening not long after we moved into a new house we just bought. In the apartment we previously lived in the litter box (we only had one but it was automatic) was in the bathroom on tile floor. None of our current bathrooms have the space needed to accommodate the litter boxes.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions. TIA!
~~PGAL/PAL Welcome~~
Re: help - cats peeing on the carpet
First, rule of thumb is to have 1 litter box more than the number of cats. So in your case, 4 litter boxes.
Secondly, you have not mentioned the vet in your post. Have you taken the cat to the vet bc of this? If not, do it. Cats often start peeing in the wrong place to tell you something is wrong.
Third, randomly, my cat started doing this a couple years ago. After running tests to make sure there were no other issues hiding, they put my cat on "cat prozac". I cant remember the real name, but thats what the vet nicknamed it. He was only on it for maybe 2 weeks or so, but the vet said it would "reset" him, and sure enough it did.
I highly recommend checking out the book Cat vs. Cat from the library. I'm reading it now and it has a ton of great suggestions for issues like this.
A few things...
Do you have the same littlerbox she used to use still around? Is there any way you can add another box and put it in a different room? There may be new territory lines drawn in this house that you aren't aware of. Are the boxes covered or not? Sometimes cats feel threatened by a covered box, with only one escape route. Even if it worked before, there might have been an incident with another cat that turned her off to the litterbox. The book talks about how sometimes cats peeing in the middle of the floor is because then they can see all around them. They are at their most vulnerable when going to the bathroom so having a clear view of everything makes them feel safer.
Anyway, I won't try to condense the whole book here, but there are some other great tips to try and things to think about, particularly when you have more than one cat.
5 cats. 1 baby.