Cats advice needed

[fivecandles]

We inherited a cat about a year ago and generally she's been fine. She used to go outside to poo and wee through the cat flap but in rain and cold weather she pood in corners in our upstairs bedrooms so we put in a litter tray. She now uses the litter tray all the time and won't go outside to do it. Thing is, we're about to move house and really have had enough of the litter tray. Is there any way to get her to go outside to do her business again (once we move) or have we had it now? Thanks for suggestions in advance.

If your current/new place has a garden associated with it, you could try putting a heap of cat litter somewhere you don't mind her using for a toilet and every time she heads for her litter tray, pick her up and put her there, she should get the idea eventually and then you can start to reduce and remove the litter.

Our cat also lost the habit of going outside this winter (he hates the snow), but eventually got it back again as the weather has got better.

On a slightly different note, if she will continue to be an outside cat at your new house, she will need to be "introduced" gradually to the neighbourhood cats. The cat home where ours came from suggested keeping him in for the first 2-3 weeks, but moving his poo outside and leaving it in prominent positions. This warns other cats that there is another cat around, and also gives your cat a sense that the territory already belongs to them in part.

Hope this helps!
Good luck

Thanks for that. In general she's quite lazy and spends most of her time inside. She's quite little and gets horribly picked on by bigger cats when she goes out.

If she's being picked on by the neighbourhood cats, that could also explain her reluctance to go outside, poor thing!

You could try the poo trick in your present place too, to give her some kind of respite I suppose.

Are the bigger cats strays or do they belong to someone? My sister's cats were being bullied by a big stray tom, the local cat home loaned them a (non-lethal) trap, which worked eventually, though it took some time. The stray tom was then taken to the cat home, no idea what happened to him however. Might be worth a try if it is strays causing the problem...