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- Feb 9, 2015
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Hi everyone! I'm new here 
We have two furbabies, Rosie & Sammie. They were adopted from the same litter at a shelter, get along beautifully and are best of friends. From day 1 they were used to sharing a litter box and never minded it, and we never seemed to have had a problem with one of the cats peeing outside the box until sometime last year.
We use disposable cardboard box litter boxes and World's Best Cat Litter. We scoop at twice once a day and change the box/litter completely once every 2-3 weeks. I know it is best to have 3 litter boxes (2+1) for my two cats, but my husband and I share a very small home (a bit larger than apartment size) and there aren't many places in the house where it would not be a tripping hazard for us, or a place where they're not allowed/would not get hurt or into trouble (e.g. we have a small basement used for storage but this is where we have shelves of stuff in boxes and loose (like cleaning products and canned food) and we don't want them wandering around boxes of stuff where they could tip over/knock things off the shelves and hurt themselves--and no, we can't get rid of the shelves or our stuff unfortunately).
Their litter box is in the ground floor bath - it has lots of privacy but gives good view of stairways. The only other place where we could even consider putting a litter box is beside the fridge, but that kind of grosses me out because it's in the kitchen and I do not want litter dust/feces germs around the place where I prepare and store food. Also, if we place a box there, if this pee problem continues we risk having pee leak under the fridge and moving the fridge out twice a week just to clean pee is not really an option. We are moving next year and hope to move to a house where the cats can have their own large room/basement to spend the day and have multiple boxes, but for now, we need to work with the small space that we have and unfortunately, would need to deal with the single box.
Rosie seems to use the box just fine, and we have figured out that it is Sammie who is the culprit for periodically peeing outside of the box. She goes #2 in the box no problem and we've never had an issue with her going #2 outside the box, but sometimes (I would say 1-2 times per week) we would find either a bit of pee splatter outside of the box, or in the case from this morning, an entire puddle of pee where it looked like she didn't even hit the box at all.
We don't know what it is... it seems to happen anytime from first thing in the morning before getting fed, to just after getting fed, or we'll come home to it in the afternoon after work. There does not seem to be a correlation of when the last scooping was (today the box was JUST scooped), when the box was just changed, etc. They were just at the vet in January and both cats got a clean bill of health. They get fed twice a day on a commercial raw food diet. They get the occasional canned food once a week as a treat. These are some possibilities that I've come up with:
- she gets spooked by the slightest of sounds or a sneak attack by Rosie (we often see one cat run up to the other while they are doing their business)
- she just gets lazy and doesn't realize she's missing the box once in awhile
- she doesn't like to pee and poo in the same box? (However this puzzles us since there are days when there is nothing outside the box)
- we put too much litter in the box? (puzzling also since it's not every day she pees outside the box)
The box is big enough for them and one of the largest I can find that fits in the space. I am considering either changing the box out completely every week, or switching back to a plastic litter box in case the cardboard is absorbing the pee smell and it turns her off (again, confusing since she has peed outside the box when it was freshly scooped). Another piece of information, the box is located beside the wash basin in the bathroom and sometimes we find splatters (not puddles) of pee there. Not sure how it gets there but maybe she is looking for another place to pee?? Or she jumps up mid-pee to finish there?
I'd just like some ideas as to what to do (besides add another two boxes, this will be something that unfortunately will have to wait until we have more space), or what your experiences are with your cats. Do they have the occasional accidents, is this something that's just of being a cat guardian (e.g., cleaning up after the little furballs once in awhile)?
We have two furbabies, Rosie & Sammie. They were adopted from the same litter at a shelter, get along beautifully and are best of friends. From day 1 they were used to sharing a litter box and never minded it, and we never seemed to have had a problem with one of the cats peeing outside the box until sometime last year.
We use disposable cardboard box litter boxes and World's Best Cat Litter. We scoop at twice once a day and change the box/litter completely once every 2-3 weeks. I know it is best to have 3 litter boxes (2+1) for my two cats, but my husband and I share a very small home (a bit larger than apartment size) and there aren't many places in the house where it would not be a tripping hazard for us, or a place where they're not allowed/would not get hurt or into trouble (e.g. we have a small basement used for storage but this is where we have shelves of stuff in boxes and loose (like cleaning products and canned food) and we don't want them wandering around boxes of stuff where they could tip over/knock things off the shelves and hurt themselves--and no, we can't get rid of the shelves or our stuff unfortunately).
Their litter box is in the ground floor bath - it has lots of privacy but gives good view of stairways. The only other place where we could even consider putting a litter box is beside the fridge, but that kind of grosses me out because it's in the kitchen and I do not want litter dust/feces germs around the place where I prepare and store food. Also, if we place a box there, if this pee problem continues we risk having pee leak under the fridge and moving the fridge out twice a week just to clean pee is not really an option. We are moving next year and hope to move to a house where the cats can have their own large room/basement to spend the day and have multiple boxes, but for now, we need to work with the small space that we have and unfortunately, would need to deal with the single box.
Rosie seems to use the box just fine, and we have figured out that it is Sammie who is the culprit for periodically peeing outside of the box. She goes #2 in the box no problem and we've never had an issue with her going #2 outside the box, but sometimes (I would say 1-2 times per week) we would find either a bit of pee splatter outside of the box, or in the case from this morning, an entire puddle of pee where it looked like she didn't even hit the box at all.
We don't know what it is... it seems to happen anytime from first thing in the morning before getting fed, to just after getting fed, or we'll come home to it in the afternoon after work. There does not seem to be a correlation of when the last scooping was (today the box was JUST scooped), when the box was just changed, etc. They were just at the vet in January and both cats got a clean bill of health. They get fed twice a day on a commercial raw food diet. They get the occasional canned food once a week as a treat. These are some possibilities that I've come up with:
- she gets spooked by the slightest of sounds or a sneak attack by Rosie (we often see one cat run up to the other while they are doing their business)
- she just gets lazy and doesn't realize she's missing the box once in awhile
- she doesn't like to pee and poo in the same box? (However this puzzles us since there are days when there is nothing outside the box)
- we put too much litter in the box? (puzzling also since it's not every day she pees outside the box)
The box is big enough for them and one of the largest I can find that fits in the space. I am considering either changing the box out completely every week, or switching back to a plastic litter box in case the cardboard is absorbing the pee smell and it turns her off (again, confusing since she has peed outside the box when it was freshly scooped). Another piece of information, the box is located beside the wash basin in the bathroom and sometimes we find splatters (not puddles) of pee there. Not sure how it gets there but maybe she is looking for another place to pee?? Or she jumps up mid-pee to finish there?
I'd just like some ideas as to what to do (besides add another two boxes, this will be something that unfortunately will have to wait until we have more space), or what your experiences are with your cats. Do they have the occasional accidents, is this something that's just of being a cat guardian (e.g., cleaning up after the little furballs once in awhile)?
