Refuses to pee in litter box, overnight destructive behavior.

[monkeyup2nogood]

November 2012 we adopted Blossom from a rescue. She had been previously returned by the previous adopter after 6 months. (Has me wondering) From the beginning has been great, she's active, playful, loving, very vocal trilling all the time. Several months ago she started peeing (not spraying) in front of the litter boxes so we took her in and she was treated for a UTI. The peeing never stopped and she now pees on a pee pee pad in front of the box. She poops in the box no problem. We have 3 separated boxes. We haven't been able to correct this except deal with it using the pads. Shes been demanding from day one. Our cats are on a feeding schedule 3 times a day (small meals) because one of our others tends to gorge and puke if left out all day. At every feeding Blossom runs all around trilling and loud meowing. It's actually amusing how crazy she gets. Over the last 8 months she has gotten progressively demanding and destructive with wanting to be feed between 1-3 in the morning. She will find ANYTHING she can knock over or mess with until we get up and feed her. At this point we just get up an feed her. (I feel like she trained us) Now instead of making noise and tinkering with stuff she's climbing on things and knocking pictures off the wall. So we decided to try leaving the food out all day. We have a large serving tray on the floor with the food spread out. I read online to try using a tray instead of bowls to help with gorging. It works! She's still doing what she can to wake us up... Blossom appears to be bored. She decided this morning to chew the corner of the area rug and my flip flops. I'm afraid the furniture could be next... We have 3 other cats. 2 older and a kitten about 9 months old. The two youngest always keep each other busy. However I notice the youngest is becoming much more calm than Blossom. I don't know what to do. I can't get up in the middle of the night to play. She's not leaving any signs of destruction while we are away at work so it does not appear to be separation issues... We play with them before bed, they have toys everywhere... What is going on with her???

 

[tulosai]

Hi 

 I am sorry no one responded to this until now.

Regarding the peeing, I see how frustrating and annoying that must be, and I know the pee pads are somewhat pricey but given what you describe I personally would probably just proceed with keeping them there and count that as better than her peeing everywhere- at least she confines it to one place.  I will say, that with how many cats you have, I do think you have too few boxes and if you do want to do something other than the pee pads, the first and obvious step would be to add more.  The 'conventional wisdom' around here is # of cats+ 1 = minimum number of boxes so with 4 cats you should ideally have 5 boxes.

 Once that is done you can try different types of litter (or even putting pads in one of the boxes and seeing if maybe she likes the texture of the pads to pee on and that's all that's going on), different types of boxes, and a whole host of other things.  However, if I were you, as I say above, I'd personally probably just take the path of least resistance and keep the pads in place. You should also make sure you are scooping regularly- at LEAST once a day but ideally twice.  Some cats are very fastidious about it.  Some also just hate to pee where thy poop and that might be what's going on  here.

Regarding the waking you up at night thing, I am not going to sugar coat it- she has trained you, you are right.  Unfortunately, the only possible solution is to ignore her until she understands that no matter what she does you're not getting up.  As a first step, since it doesn't appear you do, I'd close your bedroom door.  Then put in earplugs and just ignore her. When she realizes she Will get no reaction, she will stop. However, this might take a long time at this point due to the fact that she is used to being able to get her way. As regards her destroying things in retaliation, I'd just kitten proof everything as best I could, and then just wait for her to get the idea that she's being trained now.

I hope this is helpful at all.  If you have any more questions please ask- we are a friendly bunch!

 

[murr7maggiom]

Jackson Galaxy addresses the issue of cats waking you up at night on his web site and Facebook today. Tulisai gave you very good advice.

Let us know how it goes.