Litter Retraining?

[Fuiseog]

Hi all,

I hope someone might be able to offer some advice. We have two beautiful and adored kittens/cats (they are just over a year old so we are probably in denial insisting they are still kittens but they're definitely not all grown up yet!). We got them from a rescue in December last year and they came to us already litter trained.

Apart from one or two mishaps throughout the year - usually our fault and much earlier when they were still little - they have always used the litter. In fact, I think I can count on one hand the amount of times we've had an "incident".

That brings me to a few days ago. We were watching TV in the adjoining room when a sudden, tell tale scratching sound followed by the waft of pee - you know the smell! - told us one of them had peed somewhere unusual. I was really quite upset when we realised that our boy kitten had peed in a bouncy chair we have sitting in the corner of the kitchen waiting for the arrival of our daughter! We are due our first baby in a few months. I was quite unreasonably devastated that it got peed on before she even got to use it. Anyway, emotional reaction aside, my husband realised straight away that it was his fault as he had accidentally closed the door to the utility room where we keep the litter tray, so we assumed that the poor little guy had tried to get in, failed, and looked for an alternative surface. The kitten was reminded of the litter tray, the floor was bleached heavily and the seat fabric for the bouncy chair was put in the machine for a very very very long cycle. All sorted - we thought. A reminder not to close the door again, till we manage to get some kind of cat-flap or alternative in place!

Yesterday, after a few days of "airing" the fabric from the seat (I just wasn't organised enough to put it back on midweek really), I got the fabric back on the frame and set it back in the corner. Unfortunately, this morning my husband went downstairs only to find the same kitten had just peed in the chair again!!! We know it was him as he was still pawing at the floor, trying to scratch/cover it. This time, the door to his litter was open, the litter had been freshly cleaned before bed last night, and there were no circumstances we could think of to cause this.

Can anyone advise us about what we should do, and why he has suddenly adopted the bouncy chair as a litter tray?! Obviously we need to nip this in the bud as we can't have him peeing on the baby stuff. Or the baby. Is it because he had done it once and he now has an association? In which case, how do I break that? Is it because I pushed it back in the same corner? I've seen online that if a cat suddenly develops new litter habits, to take them to the vet just in case, so we will book him in this week. I'm hoping for some wisdom in the mean time if any of you have any experience or knowledge that you can share.

Thanks in advance!

Also apologies, because I seem to have managed to describe a situation that could have taken three sentences more in the style of a novella.

Update: He has now just been witnessed peeing in the litter, so we know he does remember it exists too.

I seem to have managed to describe a situation that could have taken three sentences more in the style of a novella.

Made me You'll never be accused of drip-feeding!

All my cats have been outdoors and adult, so no direct experience of this. I would definitely remove the bouncy chair, though, and put it out of sight/reach of the cat. They are so much creatures of habit and you need to make his newly found peeing place unavailable before the habit becomes ingrained. It sounds like he was put out the first time by being unable to get to the litter tray, then associated the chair with peeing.
Hopefully someone more experienced with litter training problems will be along, but good luck and also congratulations on your baby!

Bleach smells of ammonia (like cat pee!) so it's not a good cleaning product in this instance. You can buy enzymatic cleaners that really get the cat pee smell off from Amazon, pet shops etc. So I would definitely do that to ensure the smell is definitely gone and he doesn't associate that spot with peeing.

Some cats do seem to pee on things on the floor that are soft and vaguely "tray" shaped. One of my girls will do this - for example if a cat bed or a small rug is left on the floor. Otherwise she uses her litter tray perfectly if there's nowhere else that attracts her.

Try the cleaning and then put the chair somewhere else.
If you have two cats, I would also strongly recommend more than one litter tray. Even if they were happy to share as kittens, they are now reaching social maturity and may not want to share anymore. The gold standard is one tray per cat +1 extra, spread out across the house (so one upstairs, two downstairs etc.).