Feliway and the litter box.

Hey there. Tonight, while cleaning and sweeping the litter box area (four cats, two boxes), an idea flashed in my head.

I have a medium-sized fireplace at home, and my cats love to sleep in the sofa that I place several feet from the flames. However, by next morning, my cats are using the warm bed of ashes as a litter box, stinking up the whole place, and spreading the ash that sticks to their paws all over the furniture. Every winter it's the same problem.

The water pistol is not having any effect on these guys. Also, I've been looking for a metal mesh to keep the area off-limits, but I haven't had any luck yet.

Anyway, back to the idea. While cleaning and sweeping, I got to thinking that the litter spot may be a bit stressfull (too much traffic), instead of being the sanctuary it should be, and this is why my cats look for an alternative, mainly the fireplace.

I have a spray bottle of Feliway. Maybe if I place a couple of spritzes around the area every day, the cats will be happier in there, and use the litter box because they prefer it? Any suggestions?

By the way, I use Tidy Cat with the blue crystals, which worked perfectly well... until they discovered "that other spot".

By the way, even though it has a fireplace, it's a small house and space really is an issue: a small bathroom, kitchen-living room (where their food and water is), one bedroom occupied by me, and a second bedroom (which is used as a storage area, and here is where the litter boxes are). That's it.

Therefore, another litter box is not really an option, as there's no more space to put it in.

There are two solutions - one is to make the fireplace inaccessible and the other is to make the litterbox more attractive. The Feliway spray wouldn't hurt and might help, and you could also try using the 'Cat Attract" litter. I would seriously look into trying to make the area where their litter boxes are feel 'safer' for them. How is it that the spare bedroom has so much traffic? Can you perhaps situate the boxes into the closet in the spare room so that they aren't 'front and centre'. I would really suggest that you try and find room for a third box. With 4 cats, you should actually have 4 or 5 boxes. I appreciate your concerns about space - I have the same difficulty here with half the house being an open concept area. I have 5 cats with 3 boxes in the spare room closet, one in the laundry area that has to be moved whenever I do laundry (fortunately, the cats don't seem to mind), and one in the bathroom. When I used to live in a very small one bedroom apartment with 6 cats, I had 2 boxes in the bathroom and 2 in the bedroom and 1 in the living room that I took out when company came over. They were cleaned twice a day. I would suggest putting another box either in your own bedroom or at least for the winter months, putting a closed box in the living room itself, perhaps behind a piece of furniture. You want to make it more attractive for them to use the boxes than to use the fireplace.

Good luck

Kathryn

one thing that helped me get Winston pee in the right place was putting a tissue with his pee in the litter box. The very next day he was using it (the way it was intended)

You may want to try that?