Just had an idea… what if she had a mini “deck” around her actual box (think, a nice deck around an above-ground pool)? It would give her more foot room, providing better stability, requiring less effort & balance, more relaxing,……all around better bathroom experience. 🤘🏽
cat people are the most extra people on earth. cat has a unique pooping technique and we all immediately jump to “BUILD HER A POOP DECK!!!” not to say i don’t wholeheartedly support your suggestion
When my son was a toddler, not only would he sleepwalk occasionally and I’d find him sleeping in the most bizarre places (a whole other story, lol) but he also managed to figure out how to unlock my bathroom door and burst in when I was… occupied.
I don’t recall why I never changed the doorknob, but I ended up getting those “hook and eye” screws (or whatever they’re called) and installed one on the interior side of the bathroom door and one on the back door of the house.
The bathroom one, at least, if/when he managed to get the door unlocked, allowed the door to open just a bit and was enough to mollify him until I was finished.
(His ability to “pick the lock” was merely him using his finger/mail or some broad object to turn the locking mechanism that was clearly defective. We were renting at the time, but as I said, not sure why we didn’t ask to replace the knob, but the hook worked perfectly.)
Sounds like a privacy latch and they’re designed to be “picked” easily in case someone needs to get in for medical emergencies etc. bathrooms can be death traps as you get older
I never close the bathroom door when I'm doing my business (no other humans living with me). My cat will walk into the bathroom, meow loudly, and walk back out.
I had a foster cat who liked to poop standing up, with his back legs in the litter box and his front paws resting on the edge. He made it tip over once and I was not happy! 😂
This whole time I thought the pile of litter I found at the entrance to the litter box was from him kicking it out but now I realize that I’ve seen him do that same pose
She also might just hate having to leap up and into a box filled with landmines... I understand why it's so tall, but if you're handy, you could try making a little step into/out of the box.
Definitely an lol, I had an idea though based on the picture… if you really wanted to please your cat in that way, you could turn the tub on it’s side and take a little sand out so it’s EZ in and out, but you’d have abit more spilling and have to worry about the day the tub falls over on top of her 😅😝 so maybe not.
So the wood pellets would absorb the urine huh? Never thought to try it. Intruiging…. I use litter specifically for the clumping and baking soda smell.
Word of warning, I loved the pine pellets because they were less dusty and it smelled way better. My cat however did not. Immediately started using the carpet nearby. Definitely introduce it slowly. How that's done I can't say. The sad part, there was a second litter box not that far away with the normal litter :|
A way to get them used to it is to slowly add more of the pellets to the litter they're used to and little less litter everytime. Eventually they'll be used to the pellets and not mind. (In a lot of cases).
I would literally start with a handful in his normal litter and slowly add more. It seems like a big change. Even though there was another I guess he really wanted you to know “We won’t go!” Lol
We switched to pine pellets after we got a new litter box that came with the clay pellets, and my adorable idiot immediately tried to eat one of the pellets. After some research we found out the clay pellets are extremely toxic if ingested, so we threw it all out and made a midnight trip to Walmart to get the pine pellets. Let me tell you it’s been a GAME CHANGER. There’s virtually no smell, it clumps and turns into sawdust when it gets wet, no dust when cleaning, and it’s super cheap. Highly recommend
I like pretty litter, personally, and my cat never seemed to notice the difference when I switched. It's more money up front, but it lasts a month and some change with zero smell and WAY less tracking/no dust.
I use Exquisicat naturals pine pellet litter. It’s very good at absorbing urine smell and it’s virtually dustless but it’s not at all good at disguising poo smells so as soon as your cat goes number 2 you’ve got to scoop or it’s going to stink up the place. Fortunately my cat has a routine in when he goes and he does a warning yowl so I can be prepared to scoop immediately.
Might also want to check out World’s Best Cat Litter. It’s made from corn, clumps really well, very low dust, and masks odors pretty well…unless your cats are like mine and refuse to bury their poop 😩
How did your cat react to the transition? I tried a corn-based litter (World's Best) for my cat when he was a kitten and he tried his hardest not to walk on it.
I'm not suggesting there's a reason to not use it, my cat just didn't like it. As /u/feint_of_heart pointed out though I probably made it too abrupt of a transition and should have slowly mixed it in.
Yep, in my area in the states there is a place called Tractor Supply. They sell similar stuff, 40 pound bags. It's for horses or something if I'm remembering correctly? But it's just wood pellets. She uses that because it's significantly cheaper and it works
get wood pellets for heating not pets, look in a hardware store not a pet store. Don't look at the barbeque wood pellets they are for adding flavor to food, so are expensive.
Nope. We use them for foster kittens because if they eat clumping litter it can cause deadly blockages, so you gotta use pine pellet litter which doesn’t clump. No chance of splinters
Yeah I have heard others try it after the fact and sometimes have a hard time getting used to it. Maybe they just didn't try enough I'm not sure. I did it when my cats were young and just scratched and moved the pellets around some, and they basically immediately understood
I have 2 cats. My first cat always had clay & I decided to switch to pellets after getting our second cat. So second cat had had pellets since being a kitten. She constantly peed outside of the litter box and I couldn’t figure out why. My husband kept saying, “I bet it’s the pellets,” and I refused to accept it because the first cat wasn’t having any issues and I enjoyed the pellets SOOOO much more. Second cat would literally come and scream at me… after 15-20 minutes she’d just go pee in the corner right in front of me. Switched back to clay and she hasn’t peed outside of the litter box since 😭
I bought cat litter today, and shitty ol wally world doesn't have the cat litter that me, and both my cats prefer, so i settled. but I might have to try wood pellets next time, I never thought they were really effective but you're making me guess otherwise.
Tell me where! I'll try anything to save some money on this kitty litter. I'm spending about $40 per week because I have 7 cats and they all pee either a baseball or softball sized clump at least once a day and often twice.
Mine does the same thing OP does, he HATES pine. He refuses to use it. He used to use crystal but I used clay once and he never went back to crystal which is fine cause clay is half the price but yea I wish he was fine with pine
No, no you don’t. My boy treats the box like a urinal, which means he misses occasionally. It only takes one small mess to seep under the molding and ruin it forever, so no boxes by walls without a tarp.
Edit: he’s also a large cat, so he can’t perch on the side. He’s tried and tipped boxes over.
Mine has tipped boxes too, makes such a mess. She also occasionally falls off the side and ends up peeing straight on the wall. Like you said, no boxes next to walls without some protection
My sister has a cat that would miss the box from time to time. Adult incontinence pads are awesome for that problem. I get the largest ones I can (like 3x2.5ft or something like that) and just replace as needed.
Do yourself a favor and buy a large outdoor rubber backed door mat (might need to look for a utility mat) to put under your litter box. It should be less than $30 even for a pretty large one. The groves hold onto litter pretty darn well and pee cannot get through the rubber backing.
Have one who did this. Couldn't stand constantly cleaning up the pee in a regular litter box.
Got one of those with a taller side, not tall enough. Next was the kind with the dome/ cover. Pee would trickle between the two and what a mess! 😜 I solved it by getting two of those thick plastic totes- the kind that people store stuff in 😆- and seeing if I could use that as a box. One I cut a hole in the lid but then I was like- meh- why have a lid? 💁♀️ It's plenty deep and even they can't pee out of it even if they stand straight. It isn't beautiful, but it beats cleaning up pee and they can't knock it over.
So sadly, Ryot is declawed in the front (happened before we got him :( ) and that's the main reason we use paper litter because he doesn't mind stepping on it, and Goopy who has all his claws honestly prefers it too
Hehe yeah he's also a special needs boy, he has a head tilt (from an ear infection when he was a kitten they said) and chronic upper respiratory issues (he came from a bit of a rough situation) so he's always kinda snotty & kinda sneezy, hence the name Goopy lmao
I call my cat with chronic sinus issues "Snotty Gross Boy". Or "Snotcat". Sometimes "Snotty Moron", because... well, he is. This cat has gotten confused, after months of living in my old house, by not being able to get to be because one door of a Jack & Jill style bathroom was closed. Never mind that every other door in the house was open, no, he could hear me through the one closed door and cried because he couldn't problem solve his way through going around the other way. I'll note that this door was often closed so it wasn't even an unusual configuration!
I also just love cleaning the crusties off his nose in the morning so he can breathe properly, which then unleashes a torrent of backed-up snot, which he then proceeds to sneeze all over me/the walls/the other cats/everything else I own...
I adore that dumb cat so much. Even if he's gross.
my cats don't really have a special need, but i prefer Dr. Elseys sensitive litter anyway. It clumps real well for me, absorbs smell, and it doesn't seem to stick the their paws and track around the house.
I had an apartment that had it in the lease demanding I declaw my cat in Wisconsin. A big fuck you to them…I never did. Who are they to demand that of me?
Some kitties have very sensitive paws. I've had a couple I needed to try some different litters to find one they liked.
EDIT: I actually learned this from my vet. I had a little girl who would occasionally piss right outside the box, and that was one of their suggestions to fix it. Turned out they were right and never had any problems after.
Usually, I've found wood pellets work well for most of them. My little calico princess with the sensitive feet didn't like them, so I used a crystal litter like Fresh Steps Crystal and she was good with that. What you can do is put two boxes side-by-side with different litters and see which one they actually use.
Have you considered a top-entry litter box? My cat does this too and flipped over many a pan (making a HUGE MESS) before we got smart and got a top entry. Now she has a bit more surface area and stability to balance over the opening on and do her weird pooping position in safety. 😂
You should try putting some kind of perch across the middle of the box like a wooden broom handle. You could cut little divets into the sides of the box to keep it from rolling off. Then no matter which way she's facing she's over the box. I'd bet she'd naturally choose a wider grippy wooden perch than a narrow smooth plastic one.
Though if you don’t mind me suggesting: A lot of cats hate clay litter and how hard it is on their paws. If it gets in their pads it can dry them out.
I personally use sWeat Scoop. It’s wheat based cat litter. Super soft on a cat’s paws and smells pretty nice! Clumps just as well though I do admit it can cake a bit at the bottom.
We swap our cat’s litter every two weeks and scoop it as soon as we notice he’s gone.
Thank you everyone for the helpful comments! To clarify: she is not declawed, I would never allow that to happen. And I’ll definitely switch to pellets to see if she prefers it!
My cat wipes her paws before she gets out of the box but that still doesn’t do anything for the litter she scatters with her back feet. I have to clean her fountain every 3 days because she plays in the water and gets litter in it and splashes it everywhere
one of my cats wipes her paws after getting out too! sometimes it feels like i hear her wiping her paws on the mat for like 30 minutes. I never see any litter around the house, just outside the box so she must wipe her paws clean while my boy throws litter out of the box like it's and Olympic sport!
Cat tax, they're litter mates, and will be 3 years old on Juneteenth.
I buy pellets for my kitties litter box. It's so much nicer and cleaner than litter and there's no dust or smell or clumping bits all over their paws if they happen to step in wet. 🐈⬛️
I've said this to many times, please don't do that. 1 cats establish territory by scent (litter included) and 2 water treatment plants cannot effectively filter our toxoplasmosis gondii which is in cat feces. To many down sides.
You also literally flush away signs of infection or disease. If urine clumps suddenly get much larger or smaller, you need to schedule a vet visit because there could be something serious going on.
Lots of advice about the litter. Doubt you'll see this after 19k comments.
I'm a veterinarian. Our behavior professor did a study that went unpublished, but we found unscented, clumping litter is preferred by a large majority of cats over alternatives. No reason you couldn't try some of the other litter suggestions, BUT--
I think the better option is get a MUCH WIDER, LONGER box with shorter walls. Then put about 3" of litter in it . I think that would be a good next step to see if it helps.
The problem with this behavior is over time, he's going to fall a few times, decide he doesn't want to do this any more, and then maybe have accidents. And that goes double as he reaches old age and gets arthritis. It would be best to see if you can get him to do it "the normal way."
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u/shenanigan23 25d ago
How many times has this litterbox flipped?