HELP Kitten urinating on bed.

Hello,

My family is strained from the stress of our kitten. A little background history to start.

Mellody is a Bombay/Tabby mix. Born August 28, 2015 we brought her home October 9, 2015. (we had no choice). She is a 3.5lb small black cat, but is terrorizing our home. She "lives" in my teenagers room: litter, food, water etc. We have a trap door for her on the bedroom door so she can roam, but the dog doesn't get into the bedroom and eat her food etc. Her and the dog LOVE each other btw.

When we brought her home we were not sure if she would be litter trained so I purchased Kitten Attract litter. Then, mid October I changed her litter to a cheaper brand seeing as how she was perfectly trained! A few weeks afterward, she urinated on my daughters bed. We thought to take her to the vet for checkup. She had blood in her urine and was given antibiotics. After 2 weeks it wasn't working so she was given another antibiotic, which cleared the symptoms up. (The vet still is not sure what it actually was as all her samples came back normal: blood levels, urine levels except for presence of blood.)

She was cleared of all medical issues, and still urinated on the bed.

I then clued in to the litter and purchased her kitten attract immediately. She began to use her litter more often, but still urinates on my daughters bed however.

Troubleshooting:

1.  I have cleaned the bed and linen with baking soda and peroxide, creating a "paste", letting it dry, vacuum it up, then launder if possible.

2.  I have incorporated vinegar.

3.  I have used Natures miracle, spray, let dry, spray, let dry and launder if possible.

4.  I have used essential oils: orange, tea tree oil etc this does not phase her.

5.  I have purchased "no stay" from petsmart, this does not phase her.

6.  I have changed bedding to give different "texture" or "feel", still urinates.

7.  I have covered the bed in a tarp for 4 weeks to get her to "forget" about the bed, we removed it last Wednesday, she urinated last night.

8.  My daughter cleans her litter box 2ce a day to keep it "clean".

9.  We have placed her food dish on the bed, she urinated beside it.

We are at our witts end, we don't want to give her up but we are almost there. We have a baby on the way and it will be too much to handle if this continues.

She has toys, we have changed them around every couple weeks to keep her interest. We play with her for about 1 hour a day when we are home.

On top of above, she wont stay off counters/tables. We have tried double tape, water bottle, firm voice commands, "no stay" spray, and tin can with coins. She can climb the furniture and everywhere else in the house, just the table and counters is a NO. She continues to do this even after minutes, mere seconds after shaking tin can she will jump back up again.

Please help, we really don't like her, but love her.

She may have been experiencing pain or discomfort while urinating in her litter box, and now she's apprehensive about that box because she thinks it had something to do with her symptoms. I'd recommend getting an entirely new box (or two) that looks different from her old one, and placing it somewhere new, preferably one by your daughters bed and one somewhere else. This way she can't have any negative associations with it yet. Hopefully she'll be interested in it, try it, and think wow I feel great here, and that will be that. That will only work if her medical issues are completely resolved, which hopefully they are. Urinary issues are often helped tremendously by more water in the cat's diet, so the more you can incorporate wet food, the better her urinary health will be.

It may be that the habit of going on the bed is so ingrained at this point that you'll need to do a bit more than just provide more litter boxes. In which case, I'd recommend actually placing a new litter box on the bed during the day where she's going. Make sure it has low sides so it's easy to get into, and you can put something underneath it if you're worried about litter tracking everywhere. I'd leave it like this for several days, and then slowly start moving the box to the edge of the bed. If she starts going outside the box again, put the box back at the start and wait even longer before moving it. When she's consistent, move it to the floor. At this point you can put the tarp back on the bed just to really reinforce this new habit of going in the box. Then you can slowly move the box day by day to where you'd prefer it to be located.

When all of this is said and done, you can cut back on the number of litter boxes you have at this point, but 2 is the recommended number for a single cat, or one on each level of your home, just to give her options if something happens and one box isn't cleaned to her liking one day or she has another negative experience in one, she'll have something else to choose from and she won't get back into the habit of going on your furniture. (Because as you know, once that happens, it takes a while to correct!)

I'm afraid I don't have much advice for the counter issue, though. It might be something she grows out of. Since negative reinforcement hasn't worked, you might try the opposite, which is giving her a command to sit in a certain spot or perform a certain action that requires her to be off the table. This will take some work and patience on your part, but it could be very useful for the rest of your cats life if you can say, "get on your spot!" and she'll run over to a designated spot, sit down, and wait for a treat or toy. It's going to be the easiest to learn while she is still a kitten. I'd start off by rewarding her whenever you see her sitting or laying in a certain place she likes to be, and then start giving the command with the reward, keeping the same tone of voice each time, then giving the command when she is near the spot, etc. Here are some links with some options on how to train with positive reinforcement:

http://www.clickertraining.com/node/3273 

http://www.greatplainsspca.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/positive-reinforce.pdf

Have there been any changes to your household recently? Any new people move in or out?

Any changes in your daughter's schedule meaning if she was home all the time but then gone for a few days?

Sometimes they get upset when seeing a stray cat outside. Is there anyway to see if she sees an animal in her yard and is making her territorial?

Jackson galaxy has helped people who have the same thing as this. Maybe researxh his site and see what he recommends.

Sounds like it was started from the bladder issues.
Has there been any changes that you can think of? Different work hours or something like this?

I am stumped and don't have anything else to add. So frustrating. Oh what about play time? Sometimes my cats chase each other if I don't play with them enough. Its like a child we have to run that energy out

Thank you so much Molly and Foxxy for your replies....

Molly

Well as for more litter boxes our home is 800 sq feet. We could add another litter box to my daughters room, that's the only place. Otherwise we would have the litter box under our table or beside our couch. I could buy a small open box and put it on the bed for a few days and then move it slowly to other side of the room. The smell is horrendous in my daughters small room, that's the only fear I have. Once I have moved the small litter box to the original litter box location, do I remove the small litter box and hope she uses the original?

The litter box she has now is a hooded one,  to keep the smell down in my daughters room. We had first purchased an open box then my daughters room literally smelled like the litter box so we purchased a hooded box. I could try and find a different hooded box and see if the box is different it may change her behaviour. (along with the second box on the bed)

I will try and train her "to your spot" and see if the treat will work. Thank you for the links!!!

Foxxy

There have been many changes.

My daughter who "owns" the kitten was home for Christmas break for 2 weeks, then went back to school.

During Christmas break my daughter and her boyfriend were here for a week visit.We knew she was a little stressed over this and tried to be calm and give her more attention.

Middle of January my husband hurt himself at work and was on bed rest for 2 weeks to heal. He has since returned to work (this week being his first week back)

My daughter who "owns" the kitten has been home this whole week for exams.

I don't see any animals or strays around our home, ever. We see dogs on leashes going for walks once in awhile, but we have a dog she adores.

I totally understand that it hurt for her pee in her box. But this has been 3 months now, she has used her box for the 4 weeks we had the tarp on. Why wouldn't she "see" it doesn't hurt anymore?

My daughter plays with her when she gets home from school, and myself or my husband will play with her a little in the evening as well.

She has LOTS of toys. We have tried putting a few away for a few weeks then taking them out and putting something else away. We have tried "homemade" toys as well: tin foil balls, plastic jars with bells inside, and any other "idea" we can think of.

Thank you again for your help!!!

I will buy another box today and start. I hope it doesn't take long, this is my daughters BED lol. I will try and incorporate more playtime. I understand she probably needs a playmate but that's not an option. I will also look up those links and try to "train" her

I hope this works, we love her and are distraught at the thought of giving her away. But the arriving baby comes before the kitten, unfortunately.

My cats HATE The covered box= there is some new litter out that is supposed to be no scooping for 30 days=amazon has it=would this be an option? U still need to scoop the poop. And if your cat is like mine=one of them holy cow stinks the house up.

I think all the changes are why she is peeing on the bed-glad no other animals scaring her. I know I have one who grooms her fur off whenever she is home without us for a long time meaning I leave for work at 6am and don't come home until after 6-7 some nights. She has seperational anxiety due to her previous owners threw her outside when the main owner died. Nice family. So I think she is always checking on us to make sure we are home. I don't know if this could be why=the tarp on the bed sounds like a good idea. And a litterbox on top of it. The peeing sounds like she misses you guys when you are not home.

Actually, if she ends up preferring the new box, I'd retire the original for a while. You might be able to switch them out later when she gets bigger and these memories are distant for her, but for now I'd err on the safe side.

Her waste really should not smell that bad! What's the brand of litter you're using? But the biggest factor in smell is what she's eating. The more carbs in the food, the stinkier the poop. Wet food tends to have fewer fillers than dry, so that might be a good option.

She's been able to use the litter box without pain for a while, yes, but she's probably still uneasy about it. Cats are cautious and she doesn't know if the litter box will start hurting her again, so when her bed spot was available, she chose that instead to be safe.

Yes she stinks when she goes. I can always tell when my daughter has scooped. We use kitten attract litter. How can you not scoop for 30 days, that seems "unhygienic "..????

She is eating "good natured" its the only food we could find without by-products. And is as close to natural food as possible.

She urinates when we are home. She crawls under the blankets to pee. So thats why I thought she didn't mind the dome litter box.

I bought another box today so I will take the tarp off the bed, make the bed and then put the litter box on the bed. So when I get to the original box I should put the boxes beside eachother and see which one?