there's problems with the cats.

[labelleizzy]

To begin with, my big tabby Otter has now manifested with Diabetes. we're having to control his food portions, no more free feeding, and on top of doing sub-q fluids to support his potassium levels we started four days ago giving him twice daily insulin injections.

I'm okay with needles, I've had enough of them in my life even aside from the tattoos.
Jeff is surprisingly okay with them considering he hasn't had to do needle stuff to himself ever.

But Tribble, my calico. She's peeing and pooping outside of the box. Tonight was the second time in a week that ONE of them peed the guest bed.

Jeff's convinced that it's her who's doing all the peeing. but I think that now we know Otter has Diabetes that he might have had occasions of muscle weakness and maybe some of the puddles have been his. The only reason that's important is that he, Jeff, has said now on three occasions that if we (or I) can't solve the cats peeing and pooping outside the box and in various places around the house that she'll have to go, or be sequestered, or something.

That would be intolerable to me, and if I wasn't trying to write this and get it out of my head to where I can problemsolve, I feel like I would be frozen from some combination of all the feelings that thinking about that wants me to feel.

If I'm writing, I can hold on to the feelings and keep myself cerebral instead of what? exploding? imploding? borrowing trouble anyway.

Problemsolving can do some damn thing to help.

my current theory that something makes her feel unsafe in the litterbox which is why she poops in corners of the room. the peeing i do not know.

* one thing I'm going to do to collect information is get with my Facebook cat owners/peeps and ask to have conversation with any who have experience with cats doing this.

* another thing I'm doing is getting with a cat behaviorist who I think will have a variety of things of advice to say. I fuckin hope so, it's going to be expensive, but at least she's local and won't charge me to travel.

* a third thing I'm going to do is some yoga. my body is tense and hurts. And get in the hot tub too, because my therapist had to cancel our massages this time.

It would be real easy to spiral about how lucky I am how privileged and stuff. I'm trying to not. Obviously... but yeah. This is overwhelming and I'm not good at this kind of project-management, where I'm emotionally involved.

okay. that;s all i have for right now.

writing is going okay just it's interrupted tonight. which, dammit, I almost had a handle on the current chapter.

Comments

[staranise]

Oh no! ♥ I hope you figure things out.

You can get disposable litterboxes; those might help if you want to experiment with what more of them around the house will do.

[noahgibbs]

I was thinking something similar. I don't know cats well, but maybe there's a chance that a cat is having trouble with a *specific* litterbox or its position, and a different box in a different place might be better?

[cjsmith]

Aw man. That's heartbreaking. I hate that kind of thing. Enormous internet-hug offered. :(

[noelfigart]

I'm so sorry. I hope you can get it straightened out. I'm a cat owner, but not enough of an expert here to be any real help and you're doing everything I would have thought of. I know this is upsetting.

Min did that

[laurabellel]

Min did this for a while. We think that it was stress because it started when Will started moving. We ended up putting her on kitty Prozac for it for about 4 years; we just took her off of it this fall.

The first thing to do is to take her to the vet and make sure that she's healthy and not in pain. That can be the issue.

You also have to thoroughly clean all the areas that have cat pee/poop. Like with the enzyme cleaners. If it can be washed in the washer on hot, wash it on the sanitize settings and use enzyme cleaners in the wash. We have areas of carpet that Max peed on when he was having bladder stone issues that we just keep covered at all times because they just go back to that area over and over. We also can't leave anything soft crumpled up on the floor because Min will poop on it; neatly folded stuff seems to be safe. Hampers of laundry also can't be left where the cats can get to them.

Make sure the litter boxes are clean--like scoop daily. They shouldn't smell much after they've been scooped.

In purely practical considerations--make sure there are waterproof mattress protectors on all beds. The smell is really hard to get out.

If we hadn't been able to get it sort of under control, we would have had to rehome Min. That level of gross/actual health risk isn't acceptable to us. Having to keep a tidier house is an acceptable price; having to not have furniture wouldn't be.

[tshuma]

Hey bella. *hugs* on offer if you want them. You know we've been there.

We do put vinyl mattress covers over the fully made beds with a flannel sheet or comforter on top purely to absorb. They tend to last 6 months to a year, depending on how careful we are. Even aside from the peeing behavior, which we haven't seen on our beds since we settled into the new house, with multiple cats the odds that one will hjork a hairball on the bed just when we've been out all night at a concert and would like to sleep in a non-wet bed is high enough it's worth the daily labor to make and then cover the bed every time.

Most of the time when the cat pees or poops outside the box, it's something to do with the environment. Either the cleanliness of the box, or her health has changed such that getting into or out of it is hard (stiffening joints), or she's been made to feel unsafe while in the box.

In our most recent case, it was that our youngest elderly girl was starting to get crystals in her urinary tract that made her hurt whenever she tried to use the box, so she associated it with pain. Getting her on a diet that changed the PH in her bladder fixed that, along with a bunch of praise and encouragement whenever she made for one of the boxes, even if she was still not producing anything at first.

I second the notion of a small number of disposable litter boxes to stuff into places near where you've been finding evidence of them transgressing. It will definitely help you figure out if there's a better spot for one additional box. The thing is, in a multi-cat household it is always possible, even after years of co-sharing, for one of the cats to decide they don't like the smell of the other cat in the box. If Otter's only been becoming diabetic in the last year or so, I guarantee his output has changed in smell, and Tribble might be associating that with disease.

As for enzymatic cleaners, we tend to prefer Odormute, where you soak fabric objects in it for a while before washing them. You can use any of the enzymatic cleaners. I know Kev & Rachel swear by Anti IckyPoo. I can't bring myself to buy it because the name just wigs me out, but it's at least as effective as ours. Just hitting a spot with bleach or other standard household cleaners isn't enough to remove the odors -- a cat will always know, and once the smell is there it simply becomes another indicator that this is an appropriate place to do that.

Like Laura and Mark, our cat taught us to keep pieces of paper and soft clothing off the floor and tidied away. Laundry baskets with laundry in them were fine -- empty laundry baskets were not. It's an unpleasant guessing game, but it's one of the only ways your poor kitty has to tell you something is wrong.

*hugs* for the stuff with Jeff, too.