Cat pooing on couch and want to start letting her out, help help help.

[Confuzzeled]

My cat is a rescue cat, she never showed any interest in going outside until we moved in August. Now she wants to go out and we've been letting her into the garden when we're there. So far she's got stuck in next doors garden and the garden 2 doors down. She's not very bright and I'm scared she'll get lost.

If we don't go out into the garden with her she's started to poop on the couch. Her litter is clean and she'd never done this before.

How do you introduce your cat to the outside world, do I just let her out and hope she comes back?

And how can I stop her pooping on the couch?

Traditional thing is to put butter on their paws when you let them out. I can't remember what this is supposed to do but I do it anyway, no probs so far.

Pooing - I think you just have to respond immediately and throw her out the minute you catch her / keep her out of that room unless you're in it. You could try feliway which is supposed to calm cats down. However I have an evil weeing cat and haven't managed to solve that...

I always let mine out before feeding them, so you have a reasonable chance of getting them back in by rattling biscuits etc.

As for soiling, make sure you are getting any smells out with a solution of biological washing powder/liquid, and don't use ammonia based cleaners as these exacerbate the smell of wee to cats and can attract them back to the same place. Also don't use Jeyes fluid/dettol/ anything that goes cloudy in water as it contains phenols which are highly toxic to cats.

Hopefully she'll stop the pooing once she goes out...

I now have a cat sitting here licking her paws like she's in heaven

I left the kitchen door open so she was only outside on her own for about ten minutes. I want to get a cat flap fitted but she should learn to use the door as well.

I was using detol to clean the poo off. It's just one spot on the couch and she never sits there normally. I won't use that again.

Thanks for your reply's.

Maybe the butter on their paws thing is so they sit down to lick the butter off instead of immediately scarpering!

I just let her out again and watched her. She jumped up onto our fence, walked along to the shed and then tried to put her front paws on next doors shed. She ended up with front paws on next doors shed and back paws on our shed and couldn't move from there. She meowed for me but I couldn't reach her so she fell off into next doors garden.She was then stuck in the garden and meowed until my neighbour opened her door and put her over the fence. I'm worried about her because she's not very bright.