Another kitten peeing the bed question

Hi!  I need some help, and I apologize if I give way too much information here, but I'm afraid of leaving out anything that might be relevant.  I got a new kitten mid-May - she was 8 weeks old at the time.  She's an only cat - last year, I lost my forever one-in-a-lifetime cat to kidney failure at 19 years of age.  Obviously, she never met him - almost a year passed between his passing and her coming to live with us - but she seeks out places that he loved and where his scent might linger a bit.

Like most cats and kittens, she just needed to be shown where the litter box was and she was on board with what it was for.  I started her out in one nearly empty room - a rug, some bookshelves, her litter box, some stairs so she could climb up to look out the window, a cat bed, a little tent thing for her to hide in,some toys, her food - for the first several days.

Then I slowly introduced her to my room, which was connected by a sliding door to her room, for a few hours at a time.  This went well for about two days, until one afternoon she was playing on the floor around my bed and then suddenly started crying and running around frantically.  I stupidly thought she was looking for me, picked her up and reassured her that she wasn't alone, and sat her on the bed next to me.  She looked around in distress, cried little bit more while I petted her, and then squatted down and peed.  Obviously she wasn't looking for me - she was looking for her litter box, just one room away but hard to remember for a little kitten, and I pretty much told her, Here on the bed is okay!

I showed her her litter box again, and got a second one to put in my room.  She used them well and seemed to prefer them, but a few days later she was playing on the bed and then squatted in the corner and went again.  Litter boxes are better, but the bed's always an option! she seemed to think.

Again I showed her the boxes, again I cleaned everything with Nature's Miracle and OxiClean.  I got a thick, water resistant blanket that covered the whole bed, started feeding her up on the bed, kept an eagle eye out for any time she looked like she was about to squat.  For a month, we had no problems at all, at which point I stopped putting the thick blanket on the bed.  After I took it off, she seemed a bit more prone to paw around and start to squat, but would immediately remember the litter box and go there instead.

We've had an upheaval in the past week - I started painting "her" room on Sunday, and will be finished tomorrow.  In the interim, I'm keeping her out, and will probably continue to do so until this weekend to make sure any fumes have dissipated.  For a few days prior to painting, I moved her things, litter box included, into another room across the hall (she seems to assign different purposes to all the rooms - her room is for playing, my room is for cuddling, the room across the hall is her secret alone time room - but she likes them all and will seek them all out) but kept the door to her room open so she could see that not only were her things in the new room, but they were also not in the old room.  She seemed a little miffed, but also had no problem finding the litter box and the food in the new room.

SO ANYWAY, this morning, while I was brushing my teeth before work, she peed all over my bed.  She's not sick - she's been seeing the vet every three weeks while we get her shots, and after losing my last cat to chronic illness, I'm a bit of a cat hypochondriac and have gone over all of her quirks ad nauseum with our vet.  She just seems to believe that the bed is, if not a preferable spot, at least a viable spot to go to the bathroom if necessary.  How can I convince her that it's not, without locking her out of my room (the cuddle room) or making her avoid the bed altogether?  My last cat, even as his kidney disease progressed, found peeing outside of the litter box to be horrible and undignified, and so I have very little experience in dealing with this.

Hi!

How often do you scoop the boxes? Might there be any correlation between when she does this and how clean the boxes are?

Have you tried using cat attract litter?

Have you tried adding even more boxes- one per room?

Honestly, if it persists, and if you are sure you've thoroughly cleaned it and her being attracted to it due to the smell is not the reason,then your best option might be to simply make the bedroom unavailable to her. I know this isn't what you want but sometimes we have to do what works rather than what we want.

It is worth noting that cats hate and react badly to changes, and she might have just peed on the bed this time because she's distressed at what you are doing to her territory.

Good luck.  Hopefully others will chime in soon!

Thanks for the response! I appreciate it.

The litter boxes get cleaned twice a day, but this happened in the morning before I had cleaned it, and that might have had something to do with it. I also thought it might be possible that she was getting too big for the kitten litter boxes I had, so I've gotten her larger ones. She's almost exactly as long as her old ones. So she has 4 boxes to choose from for the time being - two old and two new.

She didn't seem to have a problem with the old litter, but I put Blue Buffalo litter with cat-attracting herbs in one of the boxes. I picked it up before I saw your recommendation, but I'm guessing they work on the same principle? She immediately leapt in it and started playing around, but it was a day before she wanted to use it as intended She seems to prefer it now, and I've noticed that the box smells much fresher immediately after she uses it than it did with her old litter. I also picked up soft mats to put under the boxes - I have hardwood floors, and I thought that maybe she'd like something softer to paw at.

We've had one accident since my original post, and since I made the changes above, so I've drenched the entire area in Nature's Miracle and bought new sheets and pillows.

To be honest, I'm not the most obsessively neat person alive, so she's had her fair share of laundry baskets full of clothes and the odd pile on the floor to choose from, or unfolded throws on couches, but she's only interested in using the bed when she's not using the litter boxes, and she strongly prefers her litter boxes. So I think she believes that the bed is an appropriate place to go. I agree that if we can't solve this, I'll have to make my room off limits, but she's not even 4 months old yet. I can't help but believe that it's not too late to convince her.

And I agree that the situation with her room is not ideal, and she's unhappy about it. She should have that room back by the end of the weekend, so maybe that might be all she needs. We've got another vet appointment this Wednesday, and I'll talk it over with him then, too.

Thanks again for your input - I really appreciate it.