Kitten missing the litter tray

We've had Smudge for about 3 weeks now, and she'd be about 7 weeks of age. When we first got her she was pretty good with the litter tray, but would occasionally miss - more that her bottom would be hanging over the edge of the tray, or she'd need to go, and if I was cleaning out the tray, she'd try and go in the spot where the tray used to be. She got good at it really fast, and has been given free reign on the house for nearly a week now, and has been great.

Three morning ago, she was on our bed for a while and had been there a while snuggling and playing with DH, when she sat on the edge of the bed, and I realised she had a big wet patch underneath her. When she needs to go, and she's not quite in her litter tray, she normally circles around a few times sniffing and looking for the tray, and I pop her in and she's fine. She didn't do it this time though, and made a big mess on the doona.

Then just now, she was in our spare room near the litter tray, and was sniffing around the tray, then I peaked back in, and she was about half a metre away from the litter tray squatting next to her cat carrier. She'd done a poo and was halfway through doing a wee!

I quickly put her in the tray and she walked back to where she'd just gone, so put her and her tray back in her cage, and kept her there for a few minutes.

I haven't noticed that she's gone anywhere else - the wees are smelly enough to notice, and I'd certainly notice a poo, but it is possible....

I changed her litter tray, and put an extra one upstairs - the extra one is a bit small for her now (it's a big dog water bowl, and was perfect when we first got her!), so now she has 3 around the house as well as our cats' 2 litter trays.

Any idea why she might start going elsewhere (there's been no big changes at home, or where her trays are), or anything else I can do to make sure there's no more little accidents?

Thanks

She's still a little baby so what I would recommend you do is to buy a few inexpensive aluminum pans (put some litter in the bottom) and put them in the places where she has already gone to the bathroom.

Katie

Thanks Katie, I'll do that on our next Safeway trip.

She also might not like the feel of the litter you are using. Ours don't like the bigger granules, so we use the really small clumping litters.

She's been using this same litter absolutely fine for a little over 3 weeks from when she first got to the shelter to now without a problem. She has used the tray fine in between, just had these 2 incidents within a couple of days of each other.