How to persuade cat to poo outside?

[Waterbearer5]

I have a cat with access to a back garden who goes out multiple times a day and night yet comes back to poo in the litter box in the living room. The garden is mostly grass and though we have a couple of neighbourhood cats that visit regularly, she doesn't seem bullied by them (they sit together but at a distance)
We had put the litter in the living room 6 months ago because our home is tiny and the living room was where we initially 'incubated' her when we first got her. It's so annoying watching her come back from the garden straight to the litter box. We have a second litterbox in the bathroom which she wont use. When she poos despite a clean diet and different litter materials all promising minimal smell, it stinks the whole room even opening windows takes 20 minutes or more for the smell to go away.
I'm worried about accidents if I remove the living room litter tray.
Before I go and spend money on an outdoor litter box I thought I'd see if anyone's got advice or tips to help stop her poo in the house and use the garden. I know when it's rainy or if she's ill it's a different case but she's absolutely fine and the weather is dry now yet she still prefers to poo in the living room. She used to have her food bowls in the living room on a diffetent corner and it didn't stop her enjoying a poo or her food.

Teach him to use the toilet and not the outside becuase it will start to destroy neighbours gardens who will be wepp Peed off.
There is a litter box you can put onto the toilet and each week as the cat gets used to it you remove an inner ring until the outer ring is left and they just got directly in the toilet.

Ours does this - although we don’t have a tray in the living room. It bemused me at first because our previous cat would have rather burst than used the tray (even in awful weather she would go out) but this boy just likes an inside bathroom. He had started doing the occasional outside poo at the end of last year but then we had weeks of snow and he reverted. Maybe in summer he will start going outside more.

Can you move the tray out of the living room? When we adopted our boy in April last year we did the same with having everything in there - although he wasn’t really confined to one room - but after a week or so we relocated food and litter to the kitchen and he found the tray just fine. (We also have a tray in hall and one in the utility room) He has water bowls in the living room and kitchen.

A lot of cats will only want to use an indoor litter tray because it’s a safe space for them - outdoors they’re exposed and may not feel comfortable. I think you can move the litter tray gradually to a different area in the house by moving it a foot or so everyday but I don’t know if you’re ever going to get them to just go outside if they’re the sort of cat who likes an indoor poop space (mine is the same).

Our old cat refused to use a tray unless she was locked in , and even then she'd sit cross legged till she could go out ( if she had a vet appointment after work , we had to keep her indoors )

She liked a freshly dug over patch of soil. so if you want your cat to use the garden , then an outdoor "patch" or a box of soil/compost . Add some of her litter so it smells like her toilet .

Our current pair use their trays apart from once the Male used one of my plant pots . Perched on the top , eyeballing me "Yes ....And ?"

We don’t have a litter box. Our cat always toilets outside, he doesn’t have a choice.

*her

Cat faeces should not be put down the toilet as our sewerage systems cannot remove some common parasites etc found in cat poo. Most water boards are clear about the risks.

OP, cats have toileting preferences and yours clearly prefers to poo indoors, you could slowly move the tray to a more desirable place, inch by inch.

The word 'persuade' rarely works when it comes to cats...they tend to do whatever they want )

Keep the cat shitting inside. NDNs cat have chosen a corner of our garden as their toilet.
If I dropped my over the fence for a shit there would be uproar.

I did this with one of my cats I rescued.

I started moving the litter box about a foot each time. I gradually had it by the back door. By then the weather was fine so I could leave the back door open and move the litter box just outside the back door.

The two reasons cats may prefer an indoor litter box is wet/cold (frozen ground) weather, or getting jumped by other cats when they are in the middle of toileting. Perhaps keep the litter box outside for a while in a sheltered spot, and maybe by the end of summer it won’t be needed.

If the bathroom litter box is never used by the cat, you could perhaps put that out in the garden to help the cat associate the garden with toileting, or to be safe get a third tray for outside.

Some cats are very fastidious about litter trays, and won’t use them if they’ve not been cleaned even after one use. I’m assuming that because of the smell you are cleaning out the living room litter box immediately.

My last cat definitely didn’t like the wet weather. I used to resurrect my litter tray for him during very wet spells in winter. But this was only when he was much older.

This. We only had a litter box when we first got our cat when they have to stay in for a couple of weeks. He is 17 now.

Do you not keep your cat in at night? We do as we worry about him getting run over / bringing birds etc inside - it’s easier to hunt at night. We shut the cat flap from about 5-6pm until the next day. I’d worry they’d go somewhere in the house at night or if they were unwell without a litter tray- once they start going in a specific spot it’s really difficult to stop them doing it.

Agree.

Last year I put in 2 new flower beds for cut flowers. Every cat in the vicinity are using it as their toilet, really annoying. When I had a cat he used his litter tray instead of outside and I always clean up after my dog.

A persons choice of pet should not have a detrimental impact on their neighbours.

My cat did exactly this! I tried gradually moving the litter tray but she would just poo oh the floor where it used to be. In the end I bought another litter tray exactly like the one she used inside and put it in the back garden under a table so it still felt quite sheltered and safe. She started using that one and then graduated to just pooing in the garden instead. We still have the one inside just in case, but apart from the occasional wee, she very rarely uses it now.

We may have been lucky but he’s never caught a bird. He does catch and kill the occasional mouse or rat and I don’t have a problem with that. He’s considerate enough not to bring the dead rodents into the house. Instead he plays with their corpses in the back garden until we bag the remains and bin them. By killing mice and rats he’s actually helping the local bird population as rodents are competing with birds for a lot of the same food sources.

Our cat flap is open all the time so comes and goes as he wants.

Some never will. My last female cat was clearly too delicate and special to have fresh air touching her behind, whereas the remaining cat, despite having access to trays from kitten hood, has always preferred to use a specific, slightly sheltered spot in the garden where he can see anything approaching at all times.

My DH dug a corner of the garden, we added sand too and put cats litter on top. We placed the cat there several times a day, we removed the litter tray from the house. The cat started to go there on his own. Every week DH just adds more sand and digs it in.

I shut cats in from 8-9pm onwards until 7am in the morning. Never had any accidents.

Silly answer
Have a rational conversation with your cat - explain why it would be much nicer if they went to the toilet outside
Simpler answer
Make a litter tray outside with loose sand and a bit of soil in a tray- like you put tomato bags in.
Then gradually move inside litter trays outside

Make sure it is not difficult or scary for them to go out

My 2yo cat refuses to use our garden (we have fencing so he can't get out), but older cats could go outside buy typically preferred the tray as well.

I wouldn't be encouraging them to go outside. It's good they use the tray, at least you know they are not annoying neighbours by pooping in their flower bed 😆. You can move the tray, they will find it

Thanks everyone.
I suppose it's a silverlining that this cat poos in the litter since a few have reported disturbing neighbours.
Unfortunately my home is too small and full to relocate the litter into another area. I don't have a utility room or a second bathroom. My hallway barely fits our coats and shoes.

I think I will try to make the garden more attractive for her by digging out and turning the soil in a small area and scattering some of her used litter there.
Let's hope !!🙏🤞

I have the same problem (although it doesn’t smell - have you tried the wood pellet cat litters and high meat content food?). I’m hoping that when (if!) the better weather arrives they might decide that alfresco toileting is more appealing. One of mine is incredibly lazy though so I doubt he’ll ever change his habits, even if his sister does.

Might you be able to move the living room litter tray very gradually (just a little bit each day, as other people have suggested) until it gets to the bathroom? You mentioned that your cat won't use the bathroom tray at the moment, and it sounds as though using the bathroom tray would at least be better than using the living room tray.

Also: smell is very important to cats. Putting a bit of your cat's used cat litter (and/or one of their turds) in a location will encourage your cat to use that location as a toilet. (This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to stop a cat from weeing repeatedly on a carpet once they've done it once - the smell lingers and it signifies "toilet place" to the cat.) So it may be worth doing this to encourage your cat to use the garden, or the bathroom tray, or both.

Location: cats generally like to have a toilet place right on the edge of their territory (or preferably just outside it - which is why so many of them use neighbours' gardens). So pick somewhere right at the edge of your property, a place where they won't feel too exposed and visible. Dig the earth over and add some used litter. Maybe some sand or gravel as well, if that might give the cat "litter tray" vibes. (No doubt your cat would like it even better if you did this in next door's garden, but I fear it might not be popular with your neighbours!)

I'm of a firm opinion that cats do whatever they like!
Ours used to always toilet outside, apart from when we were on holiday and a family member came in to feed her. We couldn't believe it when he said he was emptying the litter tray because we never had to!
Fast forward and she's much older now. She doesn't go outside much in this miserable weather but quite often, she'll venture out for a couple of minutes and come straight in and go straight to her litter tray for a poo!
We sometimes have quite an aggressive visiting cat into the garden that seems to terrorise other cats around here, so I'm just assuming ours wants to poo in peace!

@MixedBananas animal poo should never go down the toilet as our sewage system isn't designed to safely get rid of the bacteria it contains.

Also, training a cat to use a human toilet forces them to go completely against their instincts (burying their poo) and can make them anxious, which in turn leads to behavioural issues.