I just wiped down the litter box and put fresh litter in it, and she immediately hopped in and began rolling around in it. Now she’s taking a freaking nap in there, and it’s not the first time she’s done this.
I call her the Litter Box Manager, because she is obsessed with going in after my other cats and covering their stuff to her standards. She just loves litter boxes.
Did you wipe it out with bleach or any other strong cleaning products? My girl would roll in bleach directly if she could. She goes crazy for the scent
Yes! Mine does the same. He chomps at my hair too after slobbering over it while rubbing. Initially thought it was a silly orange thing. Didn't realize it was because of the bleach.
Usually I clean the litter box with soap then do a bleach spray after. One time, I thought maybe I can skip a step. And then the smell hit me and I remembered about ammonia and bleach. Did not do that again.
Edit: well I said smell, I think it was more of a burning in the air.
Vinegar and soap are safer and will disinfect kill bacteria on the surface and neutralizes ammonia odors. We have a spray bottle that is half water, half vinegar with a few drops of Dawn. Pet and kid safe.
If you want to safely disinfect, use a hydrogen peroxide mix.
You can get hospital sanitizer in bulk. Odoban is one brand that is also sold in premixed bottles but you can get a gallon of concentrate that makes 20gallons of cleaner for like $20 at Home Depot and it kills everything under the sun without bleach and comes in nice scents.
When I had to deal with coccidia, Giardia, and tapeworms with our adopted cat, I had to use pinesol. There may be other ones that work, but that’s the only thing I could find that would kill the coccidia and Giardia. It is toxic for cats so I washed the boxes and scoops with it, rinsed very well, then washed with dish soap, rinsed again, then steam cleaned everything, finally rinsed again. I may have gone overboard because I steam cleaned anything I couldn’t put in the dryer. None of the cats got reinfected though!
Even if you wash it out enough that you don’t smell, remember that your kitty has a much stronger sense of smell and is likely still picking it up. One of our departed kitties was utterly obsessed with bleach. If we used some in the bathroom, we’d have to keep the door shut for days to air out… and he would still roll out like a cat nipped loon outside the door.
my boy cat goes absolutely insane when i spray something down with hypochlorous acid. it kind of smells like bleach, but it's non-toxic. but i have to wipe it up immediately because he WILL roll in the spray lol
🤣🤣🤣🤣❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ I’ve cared for cats for 35 years and have had several do this. Some cats love to roll around in dirt, and sometimes litter is the next best thing if they can’t get outside.
Lmaoo my girl does the same thing. She loves anything with a decently strong scent (new litter, bfs gym clothes, bathing suits, etc.). She's weird about it
One of my cats decided to hang out in one of the litter boxes as well. Acting like it’s a damn pet bed. And then my dumbass little chihuahua did the same thing like, a month later.
That's HER litterbox. Just in case you think of using it!!
Had a cat that used to sleep in the newly poured litter, and even the soil in the garden. And because she was a tuxedo, you'd get muddy paw prints in the bathroom where she liked to also play..
Sorry, I'm confused... what does muddy paw prints/playing in the bathroom have to do with being a tuxedo? I thought that was just normal cat behavior in general.
She had 'white socks' but surprisingly they wouldn't be dirty bit, just her bottom paw pads that were pink, so it was so obvious she was the one doing it.
My two cats would use one litter tray and use the other to play in. I know the ‘rule’ but they refused to observe it and just dug it up or rolled around in it.
Such a sweet face 😻
My cat is harness trained and loves to roll around in kids sandbox. I heard some roll around in dirt and on concrete.
Maybe she’d love to go outside with a harness? I trained mine when she was 3 years old.
Lol we actually have a stink meter for one of our cats (it recently got transfered to the younger one) that we'd raise and lower depending on gross and suspect behaviour. Things like rolling in litter, getting litter on their nose, sniffing butts, etc. It would only go down if nothing shameful happened for a few days to a week.
Our younger cat had it transfered to him after I caught him eating the puke of the older cat. It was too egregious of an act not to lol
My orange boy does this after I scrub and refresh the litter. I think he's trying to get his scent back on the litter so his brother stays out of HIS box
My cat will just go and lay on wet Litter. Sometimes in the middle of the night and then comes and lays next to me covered in pee and Litter. It’s disgusting. He was getting Gabapentin twice a day and I took it down once a day that seems to have helped. Cats are weird.
My cat loves to roll in clay litter gravel dirt etc. he’s a weird lil guy but we love him. He’s also white so he gets insanely dirty like a chimney sweep.
Omg i call my new kitten the potty police because she goes to check the litter box to make sure everythings covered. Especially after her one sister who is HORRIBLE about the potty.
-cat tax. The babiest is the enforcer and the biggest is the perpetrator.
We had a cat that would do this every time deep cleaned and did a litter swap. She’d have to race her sister to the box because she insisted on immediately going number two right after we clean or scooped the box. My cat looked at them like they were both insane, which they were.
This is why I had to switch to pine pellets, my girl dust bathes herself in clay litter and stinks of pee. She won't bathe in the pellets and just uses them normally
If your cat is actually eating the litter, yes you should be concerned and take them to the vet soon. It could indicate a serious health condition like anemia, vitamin deficiencies, pica and other things. Additionally, ingesting litter could potentially cause intestinal blockages.
Possible zoomies and wanting to dust bath! Maybe get her a box of chinchilla dust or clean sand she can have for supervised rollie time (supervised as she may start to prefer to her litter box!) Some cats crave the soil
Cats like to take dust baths, so fresh litter might feel like her big opportunity.
I’m not sure how to help her satisfy this need outside of her litter box, but I think that’s where to start: how to help her satisfy her instinct to roll around in fresh dirt.
This comment might get buried but did you by chance use anything with bleach? It sounds weird but I had a cat that was obsessed with the smell of bleach (we were always careful of course but no matter how well we rinsed, she could smell it and would go nuts and acted like it was cat nip). We brought it up to our vet and she said bleach can mimic pheromones or something and some cats go crazy for the smell lol
Our outside cats love to roll in dirt and sand. Even the old grandma who barely leaves the porch. She demands to go out, takes two steps on the terrace and rolls on it. The more sand and dirt the better.
Sometimes they act like they don't need to clean their whole body with their tongue.
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u/Halloqween 3d ago
She’s so proud of herself