Don’t know what to do with cat

[Bellavida99]

Our cat is 13 and still seems young and healthy. She’s always been jumpy and nervous so even if she’s sitting on your lap if you breathe or move a muscle she flies off and is jumpy if you’ve got coat or shoes on. Not sure if that’s relevant but even though we’re cat lovers and have had her 12 years she’s still like a cat we’ve only just got. She prefers going to the toilet outside which works well 90% of the time when we’re around to let her out. We haven’t got cat flap as she never used it at previous house due to her nervousness so didn’t get one at this house. Due to her pooing behind sofa in the night a few times she’s now in the utility room at night but it’s cosy with bed she loves food drink armchair and 2 litter trays. She keeps ignoring the litter trays and going behind the show rack and up the wall. We’ve moved furniture around and got 2 types of litter tray with pellets in one and gritty litter in the other. We put trays wherever she last poooed but she won’t use them. This is recent. Also when she does a poo she also is sick which suggests to me she gets really stressed when she needs a poo. We went to vet but was useless only suggested Feliway which we have in that room and said nothing wrong with her. Any ideas? She is probably semi feral but does like us on her own terms. I can’t bring myself to put her outside at night. We already put her out 9-11pm every night hoping she’ll go to the toilet then.

Get a cat flap

She didn’t use one for 5 years she’s far too jumpy that’s why we haven’t got one now. She’s like a slinky feather we can’t really get hold of her to train her and pop her through it like with normal cats.

Could you try putting her in a different room overnight, one that she hasn't previously pooed in (the bathroom?), along with her bed, food, water and litter tray. Since cats tend to go back to the same spot for toileting, you could maybe even put a bit of her poo (from behind the shoe rack) into her litter tray to make her think "this must be where I go to the toilet".

Alternatively....my cat tends to poo very soon after a meal. If yours is similar, could you try giving her her last meal of the day at about 7pm, then put her outside for a couple of hours - hopefully she would toilet during that time. Then tempt her in at bedtime with a couple of Dreamies (hopefully that wouldn't be enough to make her want to poo again) and with a bit of luck there's be no mess overnight.

This sounds the same as my cat. Had him for 5 years and he is still so nervous and jumpy. He also got into a habit of pooing in the same spot despite every effort to try and make him stop.

The only thing that worked for us was getting rid of the litter and filling the tray with soil from outside. Then every few days we would add a bit more litter and use less soil until eventually we were back to 100% litter and no soil and we haven’t had any problems since. It’s like he seemed to forget that the litter tray was his toilet but using the soil got him back into the habit of using it

Thanks for your message. Our house is quite open plan and the downstairs shower room is small and upstairs bathroom would be tricky with us having a wee in the night! But I hadn’t really thought about her eating times. If we gave her tea at 5pm and literally just a few dreamies or a very small handful of biscuits at bedtime that might help. She has tea about 6pm now but we leave a bowl of biscuits overnight. Maybe I could give her a slightly bigger breakfast but not the overnight food thank you.

Thanks that might be a great suggestion and we’ve got a small pile of dry topsoil covered in the garden I could use so I’ll definitely give this a go thank you.