Poo on the floor, pee in my bed!

Hello All!

I'm new to the forum, this is my first post!

I'm the proud mommy of my two furbabies, Lucy and Milo. Lucy is a 14 month old spayed female, and Milo is a 9 week old neutered male.

The reason I'm posting is because Lucy has been having litterbox problems. She has never had them in the past (the only time she ever went outside of a litterbox was right after she was spayed and still at the vet...she was too scared to come out of her carrier and peed in it). But recently, she's having issues. About 2 weeks ago, there were 2 separate episodes where she pooped all over the floor...not just one pile, but multiple spots in different places. And it was quite runny, so I thought perhaps she had diarrhea and the urgency was part of the problem. The first episode was about a week after Milo came to live with us.

I added a second litterbox, which seemed to help for awhile, but just yesterday she pooped on the floor again (solild poop this time), and last night she peed A LOT on my bed while I was sleeping in it. Nice surprise to move your feet and feel a huge wet spot.

I took her to the vet today, and the vet did a good physical exam and checked her urine, and said everything looked good, no blood in the urine, no infection, etc. So we've determined that it is indeed behavioral.

So I got some of the Cat Attract kitty litter, 2 new litter boxes, and set them up this afternoon. I put Milo in the other room so Lucy could check out the new litter without disturbance, and she got in and peed in the box pretty quickly. I got especially excited when I heard her digging a few minutes later and saw her in the pooping posture!!! Sure enough, she started to poo, but then she jumped with all fours straight into the air and out of the box mid-poo, as if something had scared her, and proceeded to finish her poo on the floor, kind of walking and squatting all at the same time.

Soooooo I'm kind of at a loss about what exactly to do. I bought a bottle of Feliway, and I have three nice big clean litterboxes with Cat Attract litter in them...

She isn't acting upset in any other way...she gets along well with the new kitty, they run and play and wrestle and appear to be having fun playing...???

Any suggestions??

UPDATE: She has peed in the litterbox, but when I got home today after being gone for about 5 hours, she had pooped all over the floor again....in my bedroom, in the living room, etc. Getting frustrated...

Anyone have suggestions, tips, encouragement?

Toss the litter pans out, buy three new ones and set them up again. The reason? She sounds like she has been ambushed in the litter pan, therefore she will avoid using the pan for that reason. You want to be sure that the pan is in a private area, but there is an easy escape route for her should Milo ambush her.

Thanks for the reply, Hissy!

I do have three litter pans set up...2 brand new, one is the one that Lucy has always used. They're in three different, private places, all with good escape routes. I figured maybe she had been ambushed in the pan...Milo is quite a playful little guy, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is what happened.

I'm also trying to giver her "breaks" from him so that she has quiet and privacy for awhile and can use the box without him watching or pouncing. She's in my bedroom right now with her bed, food, water and a clean box in the adjacent bathroom, and Milo's out here with me.

Is there hope that she will get over this, or will I just have to separate them when I leave the house forever? I'm kinda sad to consider that, because one of the reasons I adopted Milo was to keep her company and help her not be so bored when I'm away.

Keep the pans in the same room, not close together though. Cats are most vulnerable when they are eliminating. Often, Alpha cats use this time to their advantage and ambush the goer. This can and does create litter pan avoidance like you are posting about. It could also be possible that you are either using scented litter (which most cats dislike) or not cleaning these pans out to your cat's satisfaction.

OK, I'll keep working on it. About the litter, it's supposed to be attractive to cats (has some sort of chlorophyll herbal something or other in it), in fact it has a 100% money back guarantee! ha. Here's the website: http://www.preciouscat.com/WebPages/catattract.html
And I've been scooping it MULTIPLE times a day... as soon as I see ANYTHING in it, I scoop.

It's a bit more expensive ($11.99 at Petsmart for 20lbs), but if it ends up working, I'll gladly pay.

Do you think I should isolate Lucy with her box for several days until she consistently goes in it, and then let her out into the house again?

Does she seem to be in any pain when she is pooing? Since it seemed to have started after she got spayed is there any chance that her bowels were hurt in some way during the spay and it either hurts to poo or else there is a weird "squeezing" feeling coming from that area when she is going that could cause her to leap around and poo on the move.... I don't know....sounds unlikely,but you never know....
Good luck!

Hi Smokie!

Actually, she was spayed about 9 months ago, and this only started about 3 weeks ago. The peeing in her carrier incident did happen right after she was spayed, but that was a long time ago. She hadn't had any problems since then until now.

But I was thinking along those same lines, about it possibly hurting her to poo...like maybe she has a little kitty hemorrhoid or something? Because when she leaped out of the box mid-poo the other day, it was as if something had scared her (perhaps a stinging sensation in her rear?)

She did it again last night while I was sleeping, and when I cleaned it up, I noticed some mucus and blood in it. So I scooped it up and took it to the vet, since she didn't have a stool test the other day when I took her in. The stool tested negative for parasites, bacteria, etc. and the vet said that sometimes stress alone can give cats bloody diarrhea or just blood in their normal stool...often they never find out why a cat has a bout of it.

So, I'm just trying to give her lots of love and attention, and periodic breaks from Milo so she can use the box in peace. She IS peeing in the box, which makes me happy. Poop is way easier to clean up than pee. I might as well buy stock in OxyClean for all the carpet cleaner I've used! LOL!

About 15 minutes ago, in Lucy's daily pile o' poop on the floor, I found some worms! From what I looked up online, it seems as though they are tapeworm segments (proglottids). I dug through and got 2 of them and put them in a plastic baggie in the fridge...they're going to the vet tomorrow!!!

Yep, it's a tapeworm. I got a Praziquantel pill and managed to get Lucy to swallow it without TOO much trouble. So hopefully, once this worm dies and the intestinal inflammation goes away, maybe she'll decide that the litterbox is a good place to poo after all. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Hopefully! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

Thanks, Sims2Fan!

PS: I love playing the Sims!

Hi there.

I just want to let you know that everything will get better. I also have a cat who is about a year old and she had the same situation where she would kind of drag her butt on stuff after she pooped. I took her to the vet and they said that she had worms but that they didn't know what kind. They gave her a generic pill (drontal feline) that was made to kill several types.

That same night after she pooped I noticed that there was something sticking out of her bum. So I grabbed some toilet paper and grabbed it and started to pull it out while holding her down with the other hand. After pulling a few inches of it out I realized that it was the (tape) worm, so I kept pulling it out grabbing more and more toilet paper (thank goodness it was dead). After a couple of feet it broke and then I pulled out the remaining piece. (She was meowing the whole time but in the end appeared relieved)

In hind sight I wonder if I could have harmed her by pulling it out but since it was dead it was no longer holding on to the intestinal walls. So, I guess just be *very* gentle and slow if you decide to help her pass the worm, if it doesn't want to come out, don't make it. Hopefully hers won't be so long.

After that Bootsie's poo problems stopped completely.

I also got her a friend after that. He is about six months old. They fought a lot in the beginning but now they just play rough (no growling or hissing anymore . They also recently started sleeping together and bathing each other (I would post a picture but haven't figured out the avatar thing yet). So they just needed a little time. (I also got the feliway diffuser but have noticed no observable effect, kindof a waste of my $40)

I remember well the stress you're going through. It does get better. Anyways, good luck and good spirits.

Ahh, thank you so much, Furbum! It's great to know that your very similar story had a happy ending!!! The pill they gave me was that same one you got...Praziquantel, which is brand named Droncit and Drontal.

That's pretty crazy that you actually ended up helping to pass the worm!! I can imagine your surprise when it just kept going, and going, and going, and going....what do you do with a several foot long tapeworm after it comes out??!?!?!

The vet said that often the drug kills the worm and that the cat's body digests the dead worm before it can make it out...hopefully this will happen for Lucy and I won't have to worry about helping the worm out!

I also got a Feliway diffuser (before I found the worm, when I thought her problem was completely stress-related) on Ebay for a bit cheaper, so we'll see how that helps when it gets here. It seems as though some folks love them, but some folks think they were a waste of $$. Guess it just depends on the kitty!

Again, thanks so much for the encouragement...I hope my story ends as well as yours!

I"m glad to hear that it was just worms and not something more serious. Even though worms are groudy;')
Hopefully everything will get back to normal as soon as the worms go away
Good luck

Smokie, thanks! I'm glad too. I was hoping that if she was sick, it wasn't anything too serious, and actually, I'm kinda glad in a way that there was something more going on than just her being stressed out and upset, because it gives me more hope that I'll actually be able to get her back to pooping in the litterbox again.

When I scooped a few minutes ago, I found a poo in one of the litterboxes that seems a bit too big to be Milo's...I think Lucy may have gone in the box!! She went on the floor just yesterday, but it seems like she may have gone in the box since then. I sure hope so!

OK, so now I'm sure that the poo in the box was Lucy's, because she did it again last night before we went to bed!!!! That's 2 times in a row! I'm so excited. I hope she keeps it up!!!

She's going for the record....she did it a third time!!! GOOOO LUCY!!!

Peeing on you in the bed sounds to me like she is jealous of Milo and is being territorial (i.e., marking you and the bed as hers, so telling Milo to stay away). The only cat I ever had that had elimination problems did exactly the same thing once. He was particularly attached to me and we concluded after a long time that he suffered separation anxiety when I went to work (he would pee right in front of the door). Have you let Milo sleep in the bed with you? If so, I would stop. Instead, set up a kitty bed for him on a nearby chair. We had to do this once because my alpha male Reno would "bathe" his new kitty, Rocky, off the bed. We called the bed-chair the Rocky annex. We moved shortly after, and got a bigger bed, and after that Reno started letting Rocky sleep on the bed with us, although he still gets ornery sometimes and "bathes" him off the bed.

As for the pooing on the floor, hopefully it is just the tapeworm. But if it doesn't stop, it could also be territorial, or the squatting and walking suggests Lucy might be constipated (stress from a new kitten can do that as well as cause diarrhea). Try putting some Laxatone or Petromalt on her front paws a couple of times a day. It could also be separation anxiety and jealousy. Female cats tend to be more indirect when they are bothered by a new cat. Just be sure to give Lucy a lot of attention when you are home. I would even ignore Milo when Lucy is around until she seems to have accepted him. Also, if the elimination problems occur primarily while you are out, consider quarantining Milo in a separate room when you leave. If the elimination problems stop, gradually allow them to spend more and more time together in the home when you are out. As a last resort, kitty tranquilizers may ease Lucy's anxiety, allowing her to bond with Milo.

I know the frustration of having a cat reject the companion you bring home for them. My Lexi hated Minsheng, the kitten I got for her, from day one. But they learned to tolerate each other (and even to share my lap simultaneously), and she mourned Minsheng when he died at 14 years of age. Although it's best when cats get along, being grumpy enemies can also be stimulating for a cat, as long as they don't threaten real harm or stress each other out.

Thanks for the reply, Rockreno!

I thought that perhaps the peeing on my bed was more territorial and stress-related. She hasn't done it since then, and she hadn't peed on the floor or anywhere else beside her litterbox before then, so hopefully it was a one-time thing.

As far as the pooping goes, her past 3 poops in a row have all been in the box...which I think is a great sign considering the fact that during her "floor pooping streak" she wasn't using the box to poop AT ALL (every single poop was on the floor). Keeping my fingers crossed!

I am definitely making sure to give her plenty of love and attention, to make sure she knows that she's still top cat around here. They seem to be getting along really well...Lucy never growls or hisses (she only hissed a few times right at the beginning, but hasn't hissed at him since about day 3 of his living here) and he only meows when she wrestles a little too rough (but he obviously isn't upset by it, because he jumps back on her a few seconds later, hehe!) I've never felt uncomfortable with how their playing goes...it always seems very much like play and not like true confrontation.

Thanks for the good advice...hopefully she'll continue to go in the box and I won't have to use the advice!