# Adopted New cat pooping outside litter tray



## Sally sith (Dec 19, 2016)

I adopted a female cat on Saturday from a local cat rescue she was fostered for couple months before I got her. I lost my 18 year old cat a month ago and think she can smell her scent. She is adorable but she will wee in the litter tray I have two down but on Sunday and today is pooping on a small mat near my front door. I can't put the litter tray near the door because if she gets used to it there I will have a problem with access in and out the door no room to have a litter tray there. Any advice on how to tackle this problem I've never encountered this with any of my previous cats. Thank you.


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

I think you may be right, your new cat can smell your old cat's scent in the house, as she only passed away a month ago. 

Once your house smells of the new cat's scent I am sure she will feel happier. I would stroke her neck and cheeks with a soft cloth and then rub the cloth on to furniture, doors etc at the heiight a cat would reach with their head when rubbing to scent mark. Do this every day for a few days until the old scent of your other cat has been covered. Then your new cat will be able to tell your other cat has not been back. 

It is good you are providing two trays as most cats prefer to pee in one and poo in the other. It is best really if each tray can be located in a separate room, so there are two separate areas for toiletiing. Also if they are covered trays I would remove the lids in case the cat prefers open trays. 

Provide a clumping litter that's soft on paws and nice to dig a hole in. A fine granule litter such as Cats Best Oko Plus is good and economical to use. 

The fact the poo is being displayed in a prominent position on the door mat does suggest it is being done as scent marking though ("middening" it is called). It might be an idea to clean the lower part of the door thoroughly, inside and out, with an enzyme cleaner such as UrineOff in case a passing cat has sprayed the door outside.


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## Sally sith (Dec 19, 2016)

Thank you for that the middening I've just looked that up and explains a lot why she might be pooping in the hallway near the door. She does rub her face on everything doors furniture. I've just purchased a diffuser from zooplus to help her relax. She hasn't pooped yet today so I will see where she goes now I've moved the mat.


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## SM1887 (Jun 6, 2017)

Hi,

so it seems we have a middening problem.

First some history:
In October 2013 (or 2014?) we got two cats. We never had cats before, these were the first pets in our family (1 kid, then 9 or 10). The cats were from a shelter, a mum about a year old (Loki) and her daughter (Fluffy) about half a year old.
It seems both had been abused in their previous home, so we were probably not the ideal new owner..
At the beginning there were some issues with pooing and peeing, but we put them down to them needing time to adjust to the new place. And so it was, mostly - things improved considerably:
Occassionally Fluffy left a mark in my office (I am working from home), but apart from that litter trays were used by both cats - most of the time we had three trays, filled with World's Best.
Loki is a sedentiary cat, she likes to come for some petting, sleeps in my bed and is easily scared but doesn't normally hide. Other than that she is a bit boring  she is fine, there are no problems with her. We had her spayed shortly after she arrived.
Fluffy was slightly more active (when not hiding), but also a total scarety cat. Always hiding somewhere, only coming out when everything was quiet. She'd come to me for petting and cuddling when I was in bed (and snuggle up to my shoulder/head, e.g.), but run as soon as I tried to get up.
Last year we decided to rearrange the flat - my office would become the kid's room and the bed room would be rearranged to accommodate my office.
Fluffy didn't take this so well - at the beginning it seemed ok, but soon she started to pee all over the place. In the process she pretty much destroyed my bed, 2 couches and it seems the carpet of the former office/now boy's room. The latter suffered most, she basically used it as one big loo.
After a year and getting her spayed we were at our wit's end gave her away to cats protection (a bit more than a month ago now).

The current situation:
We got a new kitten, Shadow (3/4 or 7/8 Maince Coon plus Rag Doll, Loki and Fluffy are unspecified mixes)) she is now in her third week with us (and in her 15th week of age). She is brilliant - adventurous, curious, full of activity. Bouncing around, following us around, chasing our shadows etc - a wonderful kitten.
She is starting to get along with Loki as well - Loki is still hissing at her when she comes to play, but we got them to eat together and we haven't had a fight yet, so integration seems to be progressing OK.
Both cats are fine using litterboxes in the house (3, bed room, living room, hall way in between) and generally no accidents happen. Shadow's stool is loose, but we put that down to the new environment and new food (it hardens when she only gets dry kitten food).
There are two cat trees, plenty of toys and the doors between bed room and living room generally open (unless the wife cooks, because Shadow is a little too curious when it comes to food ). Originally the door to the boy's room was always open as well.

The only problem:
As soon as she gets into the boy's room Shadow leaves a dump.
We removed the furniture and used a wet carpet cleaner - which brought the old pee smell out all right (that wasn't the intention, but ah well...). So we used the respective cat cleaners to address (soak) the smelly spots.
So today the wife comes home, takes look at the cleaned boy's room, Shadow gets in unnoticed, we leave and close the door - hear her meowing a short moment later, and let her out -- and notice a familiar and not all that welcome smell. And the respective big dump behind the door.
Maybe that was due to the locked door, but we had her accidentelly locked in another room before without accident (there's one more room where the cats are only allowed in temporarily.

So, what are our options now?

Feliway in the boy's room? We are currently using it in the bed room/office to help the cats get acquainted with each other.
Rip out the carpet? We're renting, so not really and option... OTOH our deposit is f****d anyway.


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

Hello @SM1887 and welcome. 

As you have written about Fluffy in your post I would like to comment briefly. I am dismayed to hear when you adopted Fluffy at 6 months old she was not spayed! That is very bad practice of a Rescue and I am amazed at it.  At the very least you would be required to sign a form agreeing to get her spayed a.s.a.p. yourself. Which I assume you were not asked to do..

Assuming your vet investigated and ruled out a UTI or cystitis as the cause of Fluffy's chronic urine soiling the chances are it was caused by territorial issues and competition for resources between Fluffy and her mum. This competition would have been compounded by Fluffy not being spayed until a year old, i.e. not until after sexual maturity. Cats who start spraying or soiling at sexual maturity for scent marking do not always cease when they are neutered particularly if the soiling or spraying has become an ingrained habit.

Many mother cats do not want their grown-up offspring around once the offspring reach sexual maturity, so that may too have been a factor in Fluffy's nervousness and it is possible that her mum may have been subtly blocking her from using the trays sometimes.

In addition Fluffy was a anxious, timid cat and when you altered her environment and moved litter trays from their usual spots it could been enough to trigger behavioural changes such as house soiling. It may have been possible to resolve these issues with the help of a Cat Behaviourist.

With regard to Shadow, cats often avoid the litter tray if their stools are loose. It is a hygiene issue for them. Litter trays are valued resources to cats and they do not want to use them if they have a sore tummy, a loose bowel etc. because instinctively they know they could later reinfect themselves from contaminated litter.

Shadow needs to have firm, formed stools which leave no sticky residue when they are picked up off the floor. The answer is not to feed her dry food as this will just mask the problem. Feeding dry food means that she will be incapable of drinking enough water to rehydrate the food and therefore she will develop chronic low level dehydration. This will affect the bowel (as well as being potentially harmful to the bladder and kidneys).

Cats need a huge amount of fluids each day. Wet cat food contains around 80% moisture and there is a reason for that. It is based on the amount of moisture in a mouse.

So the middening needs addressing first from a diet POV. She needs a good quality wet food diet, preferably low in carbs and high in protein. If she still has loose stools on such a diet then you need to get stool samples from 3 days checked by the vet or the lab for parasites, infections or viruses. It is not normal for a healthy kitten to have loose stools on a suitable wet food diet.

Incidentally, has Shadow been wormed since you got her? if not you need Panacur paste for her.

The other thing is Shadow soiled the floor in a locked room where there was no litter tray. Many cats detest being shut in a room, and it is possible that Shadow became upset, panicked and voided her bowels, as cats sometimes do when frightened.

But you also mentioned that when you shampooed the carpet in the boys room there was a stench of cat urine. If you could smell it when the carpet was wet the cats will have been able to smell urine 24/7 whether the carpet was wet or dry. A cat's sense of smell is a thousand times more sensitive than ours! So unless you can be 100% sure you have got rid of all urine smell from the carpet, Shadow will continue to regard it as a giant litter tray. So that is a reason why she might have pooed in there, on other occasions. She is only a kitten after all.

I appreciate you are renting but when a carpet becomes so urine stained that it smells bad all the time (as your carpet does to Shadow) it is time to bin the carpet because with the best shampoo in the world you will not get rid of the smell, especially if the carpet is foam backed, or if there is underlay.

After removing the carpet give the floorboards a scrubbing with something like Bio Tex Stain Remover (powerful stuff with a pleasant scent). Then replace the carpet with laminated floor and cheap rugs.(not more carpet!)

If the carpet is that badly stained the landlord will throw it out anyway when you move and will keep your deposit. So you have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain by taking up the carpet, if it stops Shadow middening in the room.

So the approach is basically twofold - resolve Shadow's loose stool issues (but not with dry food) and remove the stained carpet in the boys room. I appreciate these are not easy straightforward options but they are your best options for achieving a good result.

I can give you further advice on diet if you would like. 

I would also add an extra litter tray just in case there are times when Loki is blocking Shadow from the trays. You would not necessarily notice as it would be very subtle. Make it an open tray not a covered one. If you use covered trays ensure the door flaps are removed permanently as cats do not like to be completely enclosed when they toilet. You mention you provide Worlds Best, and that is a good litter which most cats like. 

The other important matter is to have Shadow spayed within the next month. She can be spayed anytime from 4 months old. In view of your previous experience with Fluffy being spayed late (and the soiling it may have exacerbated) I would not leave Shadow's spay any later than 5 months. If your regular vet wants to wait until 6 months, look for another vet to do the op. There are plenty of vets in the UK who will spay before 6 mths. Spaying around 4 months is recommended by the experts (e.g. RCVS and also Icat Care)

I hope you have kept Shadow quarantined from Loki in case Shadow has brought with her a bowel infection. Loki is I assume vaccinated but it will not protect her against contagious bowel infections such as Campylobacteriosis or Giardiasis, neither of which are uncommon in Rescues. Newcomers should always be quarantined when they arrive in your home, when you have resident cats, as you never know what they may bring with them.

Please let us know how things go with Shadow. Photos would be nice too.


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## SM1887 (Jun 6, 2017)

Hi!

Many thanks for your reply! 



chillminx said:


> Hello @SM1887 and welcome.
> 
> As you have written about Fluffy in your post I would like to comment briefly. I am dismayed to hear when you adopted Fluffy at 6 months old she was not spayed! That is very bad practice of a Rescue and I am amazed at it.  At the very least you would be required to sign a form agreeing to get her spayed a.s.a.p. yourself. Which I assume you were not asked to do..
> 
> ...


Regarding Fluffy: We went to the vet and asked about this and were told to talk to a cat behaviourist, but at that time it was too late and we all had lost too much patience. The general advice was 'something must be stressing her', but nobody knew what. I hope she'll be better in her new home. 
I am not convinced it was spraying, the amount and sometimes the location (under my blanket, left for all day in the summer sun, yummy :-O) didn't really fit. We have 3-4 litter trays, and Loki isn't moving much, so I am not sure how she would prevent her from using one of them.

Regarding Loki: Both cats came unspayed and quite thin. I do not know the full story behind them - they were kinda a surprise by the wife. We spayed Loki quickly, but Fluffy only recently, which may have exacerbated the problem.



chillminx said:


> With regard to Shadow, cats often avoid the litter tray if their stools are loose. It is a hygiene issue for them. Litter trays are valued resources to cats and they do not want to use them if they have a sore tummy, a loose bowel etc. because instinctively they know they could later reinfect themselves from contaminated litter.
> 
> Shadow needs to have firm, formed stools which leave no sticky residue when they are picked up off the floor. The answer is not to feed her dry food as this will just mask the problem. Feeding dry food means that she will be incapable of drinking enough water to rehydrate the food and therefore she will develop chronic low level dehydration. This will affect the bowel (as well as being potentially harmful to the bladder and kidneys).
> 
> ...


The idea at the moment was to give her dry food until her poo dries up, then slowly introduce wet food again. The thought being that it would allow her digestive tract to recover. It doesn't seem to work all that well, though. She's now 2.5 weeks with us and hadn't had one solid. I think we'll visit the vet next Monday again unless things improve.

Previously our cats were on a wet food only diet (Bozita - I just loved the idea to give them Reindeer to eat in December), we recently (some months ago) added some random dry food for variety. On the vet's advice we got a dry food (MiPetFood, Chicken and Rice, Kitten), and gave only that for a week - with limited success. Vet's reasoning was that the kitten should get kitten food and might not be able to digest the other food all that well. Solidity improved, but not all that much.

However, she was happy to use the litter boxes no matter how fluid things were. She usually doesn't cover, though.

She was sold to us as dewormed.



chillminx said:


> The other thing is Shadow soiled the floor in a locked room where there was no litter tray. Many cats detest being shut in a room, and it is possible that Shadow became upset, panicked and voided her bowels, as cats sometimes do when frightened.


Yes, there were incidents where one could find an obvious reason, but we are talking about a total of about 10 now, even when nobody is around, all doors open etc. 



chillminx said:


> But you also mentioned that when you shampooed the carpet in the boys room there was a stench of cat urine. If you could smell it when the carpet was wet the cats will have been able to smell urine 24/7 whether the carpet was wet or dry. A cat's sense of smell is a thousand times more sensitive than ours! So unless you can be 100% sure you have got rid of all urine smell from the carpet, Shadow will continue to regard it as a giant litter tray. So that is a reason why she might have pooed in there, on other occasions. She is only a kitten after all.
> 
> I appreciate you are renting but when a carpet becomes so urine stained that it smells bad all the time (as your carpet does to Shadow) it is time to bin the carpet because with the best shampoo in the world you will not get rid of the smell, especially if the carpet is foam backed, or if there is underlay.
> 
> After removing the carpet give the floorboards a scrubbing with something like Bio Tex Stain Remover (powerful stuff with a pleasant scent). Then replace the carpet with laminated floor and cheap rugs.(not more carpet!)


I think in hindsight maybe we should rename Fluffy. "The £2000 cat" or something like that... Well, a good part is our fault. 



chillminx said:


> If the carpet is that badly stained the landlord will throw it out anyway when you move and will keep your deposit. So you have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain by taking up the carpet, if it stops Shadow middening in the room.
> 
> So the approach is basically twofold - resolve Shadow's loose stool issues (but not with dry food) and remove the stained carpet in the boys room. I appreciate these are not easy straightforward options but they are your best options for achieving a good result.
> 
> I can give you further advice on diet if you would like.


Thanks for all the advice!



chillminx said:


> I would also add an extra litter tray just in case there are times when Loki is blocking Shadow from the trays. You would not necessarily notice as it would be very subtle. Make it an open tray not a covered one. If you use covered trays ensure the door flaps are removed permanently as cats do not like to be completely enclosed when they toilet. You mention you provide Worlds Best, and that is a good litter which most cats like.


Heh. To my innocent eyes the kitten Shadow has the run of the house. If she enters the room Loki goes hiding/adds a good distance. Ok, this is getting better now, and Shadow often tries to play with Loki, who then hisses and flees. 
They are both currently confined to the bed room (we also found poo in the living room hidden away, but that may have been old...) and have no issues sharing the one litter box there is (there's also one of those toilet training things as a second option, but they prefer the litter box).
Still, what would be the signs to look out for if Loki tried to block the litter box?



chillminx said:


> The other important matter is to have Shadow spayed within the next month. She can be spayed anytime from 4 months old. In view of your previous experience with Fluffy being spayed late (and the soiling it may have exacerbated) I would not leave Shadow's spay any later than 5 months. If your regular vet wants to wait until 6 months, look for another vet to do the op. There are plenty of vets in the UK who will spay before 6 mths. Spaying around 4 months is recommended by the experts (e.g. RCVS and also Icat Care)


Yes, we don't want to repeat the mistake with Fluffy.



chillminx said:


> I hope you have kept Shadow quarantined from Loki in case Shadow has brought with her a bowel infection. Loki is I assume vaccinated but it will not protect her against contagious bowel infections such as Campylobacteriosis or Giardiasis, neither of which are uncommon in Rescues. Newcomers should always be quarantined when they arrive in your home, when you have resident cats, as you never know what they may bring with them.
> 
> Please let us know how things go with Shadow. Photos would be nice too.


Shadow is not a rescue, she is a normally bought kitten. She has two more cats and a kid and a baby in the old household (and a dog, too? not sure). She was sold because the baby was too rough with her - pity, because the older kid really liked the kitten. The old cats didn't show any issues. When she arrived we kept them apart for a bit.


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

@SM1887

I hear what you say but the fact is Shadow has a loose stool and that is definitely not normal for a healthy kitten. Dry food masks the problem does not resolve it.

Loose stools can lead to kitty avoiding the tray.

As it has not cleared up by now I advise you to talk to the vet about having stool samples tested for Giardia, Campylobacter, E-coli overgrowth, T.Foetus, etc. I am afraid it is pointless to keep trying one diet after another because it is not working.

You need to get to the root cause of the diarrhoea. Otherwise it is just using a sticking plaster. :Banghead . I cannot understand the reluctance of some vets to investigate causes of diarrhoea.

It is quite possible Shadow had soiling problems at her previous home. The kitten may even have come from the breeder's with a loose bowel issue. Also the reason the woman gave for rehoming Shadow
( "because the baby was too rough with her") is not necessarily the real reason for rehoming. People are not always truthful in such matters I am afraid. After all a baby can easily be trained to be gentle with pets.

Statistically the major reason for rehoming cats in the UK is house soiling. People know if they tell potential adopters their kitten or cat is house soiling no-one will want them. So they fib.

Sold to you as "wormed" may or may not mean she has had the right treatment. I would ask the vet about having some Panacur paste for Shadow.

I am even more astonished to hear that Loki as well as Fluffy came to you unspayed!  Are you sure it was a Rescue you got them from and not a hoarder ?


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

@SM1887

Sorry, I meant to add that it's advisable to keep Shadow in one room at present, until you are sure you have resolved her soiling issues. She should have all she needs (food, water, 2 litter trays, toys etc) in her room. (The room should not be a small room like a bathroom).

She is more likely to use the trays if she is confined to one room, though I am not promising she will use them when she has a loose stool. But at least it will be easier to keep track of whereabouts she is pooing.


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## SM1887 (Jun 6, 2017)

Hi,

Shadow is fine - full of energy, eats a lot (more than the much larger Loki) and she also seems to have gained weight (from ca 1.1 to ca 1.4kg in the 2 weeks she is here), she has visibly grown. She behaves as if the diarrhoea was not there.

We let her out to use the three rooms as before, for a simple reason: Too much energy, she won't let you sleep when she can only play in your bed room.  No more accidents so far that we found, toi toi toi!

The previous owner seemed sincere.

Monday will be another vet visit if her diarrhoea doesn't get better, and we'll ask about 'Giardia, Campylobacter, E-coli overgrowth, T.Foetus, etc'. Thanks!


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## SM1887 (Jun 6, 2017)

As photos were asked for:










Shadow was wreaking havoc on my desk chasing single q-tips while I was working - time for a photo. 










That is both cats eating together for the very first time.










Chair monster attacking long hair.


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## chillminx (Nov 22, 2010)

Thanks for the photos. She is a very cute kitten!


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## SM1887 (Jun 6, 2017)

Quick update:

No more accidents. We opened the door to the kid's bed room a few times for hours on end and she came and went in without leaving gifts. Not sure why this changed. Maybe she is just a bright little kitty? 

Stool is also better, it seems to depend on what food we give her. Vet gave us 2 probes to fill, but so far there wasn't much opportunity to do so.

So all looking good.

Thanks for the help, sorry about my panic!


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