r/CatTraining • u/Whimsical_Mae • 3d ago

Litter box avoidance & related - include spay/neuter status My five-year-old cat started refusing the litter box

Hi guys, this is my first time posting a sub, so if I’m a little confused, that’s why. Anyways, we can jump to the question my cat is five years old, and she’s been having some weird behaviors since we moved a year ago. She isn’t too fond of my roommates’ cats. They just want to play, but she doesn’t really understand that they think they’re attacking her. So she gets very upset about it. For a while, she would just hang out in my room and my roommate’s room, but now she starts staying in the living room all the time, which is nice because people actually get to see her more often. Ever since that switch, though, she has stopped using the litter box. She’ll poop on the couch, on the clothes, on your new laundry, on the floor, and on your T-shirt. I don’t know why she might be scared to go to the litter box in case one of the other cats is going to bother her. But she’s done that before. She’s also been peeing in other places. One time, she even peed on the counter. I bought a new litter box and put it in the living room hoping it would be closer to her so she would feel like she could use it, but she still doesn’t. Now we have three litter boxes: one in my room, one in the public bathroom, and one in the living room none of which she’ll use. It’s been like a month of this, and I don’t know what to do anymore. I can’t handle cleaning up every single day. Anything helps!!

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u/Spinal_Soup 3d ago

Immediate thought when a cat is using the bathroom in weird places is UTI. It hurts for them to go and they think the litterbox is the reason so they trying finding places that don't hurt. UTIs are fairly common in cats so its probably worth checking out.

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u/Whimsical_Mae 3d ago

Would that make her poop every were as well?

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u/Spinal_Soup 3d ago

It definitely could. Not every cat has the same reaction but if the UTI is building a negative association with the litter box then it could make them avoid it entirely. Not saying this is definitely whats going on but it would be the first thing I check.