Any help or advice urgently needed please! We rescued our cats a couple of years ago from a guy who hadn’t spayed his cats and was overwhelmed by kittens. They came unable to use the litter tray. We had a newborn baby and a three year old and, in hindsight, it was a really silly decision to take them on. However, the guy was struggling to even give them away for free and we’d just lost our much loved cat and had a free, large house. I was on maternity leave so thought I could tackle it.
The last 2 years have been a struggle in terms of using the litter tray but they mostly seemed to be getting it right- until this summer. We went away for 10 days and had a cat sitter visit each day. When we got back we realised that the cats had started urinating on the bathroom floor. One cat in particular is weeing outside of the tray and then I think occasionally the other is following suit. This has now sporadically continued. Every week or so I now have to mop up wee, disinfect and steam the floor. my husband began shutting the bathroom door in an attempt to stop this, which at first seemed to work. However, we realised last week that he had weed on the carpet outside of the door.
In the last couple of weeks, this now seems to have ramped up and he is weeing in completely random places. He does seem to be choosing tiled/laminated places for the most part- for example, he weed on the lid of a plastic box in my daughters room and in several of the fireplaces- on the tiles. However, previously he has also weed on our children’s bed sheets, towels and my eldest ds’ book bag.
They have 3 trays at the very end of our double garage- our house is large so we are very far away from them in general. We do try to clean them every other day but if I’m being honest- with 2 very young kids- it can sometimes go a bit longer. However, he has weed in inappropriate places even when the trays are clean. It’s very cold in the garage in winter and they are far away from the rest of the house so I do also wonder if he is just being lazy!
I’ve just come home today and he has weed in the main fireplace. My husband is literally at his wits end. He didn’t really want them in the first place as he was still very much grieving the loss of our first cat. He is very seriously talking about rehoming them if something doesn’t change. I just can’t live with the idea of our cats being in a cage in some shelter somewhere, abandoned. I couldn’t live with myself. The boy who is weeing everywhere is surely unlikely to find a home if they know he isn’t litter trained? He is such a cuddly, lovely cat and amazing with the kids otherwise.
Please any advice would be so appreciated. This is causing so much division in my marriage and is honestly coming between me and my husband. I’ve just booked a vet appointment for tomorrow afternoon- but in the meantime has anyone got any advice? I’ve just cleaned and put out 4 trays for them. We did use felliway plug ins while we were away (when they started weeing on the bathroom floor!)