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Deeply engrossed in my book the other night, a familiar feline voice tickled my ears drums and I vaguely thought that Dee Dee had rather a lot to say without paying much attention.
Eventually I put my book down and turned the light off.
Only then did it occur to me that perhaps Dee Dee’s conversation was unusual.
.
Maybe I should investigate.
It didn’t take long to follow the sound to a kitchen cupboard. I opened the door and out shot an indignant cat.
“I wos taking inventory!” she said.
“And the man shut the door!”
She went off downstairs muttering:
“Did he not even miss me?”
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She had a point, I thought!
We each have only three heads to count at night now.
With such reduced numbers you might expect that the chaos we live in would have diminished.
Half the number of cats, half the mess?
This might have come to be, had another little grey cat not invited himself to join us.
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Grant has a theory which I am reluctant to accept despite a preponderance of evidence.
So I’ll pose the question to anyone out there who owns a grey cat:
Does your little darling pee outside its box?
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Grant insists that it’s a grey cat thing and every grey cat that ever lived with us has challenged us in this way.
Six out of six is weighty evidence.
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Why would anyone put up with it?
Well consider the alternatives.
Surrender the cat to a shelter.
Have the cat euthanised.
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When cats have litter box issues, there are usually attributable reasons.
Sometimes it’s a matter of the box itself. Some cats don’t like covered boxes. Or scented litter. Maybe the box is badly situated.
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Sometimes there are health issues.
Sweet Abe had a bad heart which took him in the middle of one sad night.
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Abe’s heart condition may not have had anything to do with his litter box habits.
A large part of the problem I am sure was our multiple-cat existence.
They say that you should have a litter box for every cat, plus one and we always had an abundance of boxes of varying types, using different kinds of litter.
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Willow doesn’t like any type of litter which she demonstrated by perching precariously on the edge of the box.
This prompted me to line a couple of boxes with paper towel which some of the other cats also favoured.
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Sophia is shy, not grey.
She had accidents when one of the others bullied her so we tried to place her box in a safe place.
Try working that out.
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Panther was also not grey.
When his kidneys began to fail, I was using boxes of piddle pads to contain his accidents, but even before this he had been inclined to indicate annoyance with anointment!
Despite his small demeanor, he was the Main Man and fearless. His accidents were protests.
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When we realised that Little Man was part of that club, we wondered if it was what caused him to be out wandering around looking for alternate accommodations.
He has no health issues and is certainly not traumatised.
He just has bad habits.
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Cat whisperers claim they can cure such habits.
Maybe sometimes they can, depending on the cause.
But if you can’t change the behaviour, you contain it as best you can.
Spend a lot of time cleaning and washing.
And sometimes pulling your hair out.
🙂
Thank you, Carolyn, for this interesting saga of grey cats peeing outside the box. As I never had a grey cat living with me, I cannot offer any advice, except that once you accept the responsibility for someone’s life, you cannot send them away. Not that you would do such a thing.
Joanna
Your dedication to finding solutions for such problems always impresses me. When I had a cat she always used her litter tray, but the 1970s cat litter seemed to me to be finer and less granular, more like sand, and I changed it a couple of times a day.
Best wishes, Pete.
I don’t have advice (or an answer) for you. I’m just wondering: If you had a litter box for each cat, would each cat then go to his/her own box every time? And who could ever guess that Little Man has bad habits 😊.