Cat still pooping on floor...long

[sarahr627]

A few weeks ago I posted about my male cat who suddenly will not poop in his litterbox. For those that don't remember that post here is a rundown. I have two cats, one male and one female, who both have always been really good with the litterbox. We had fostered a kitten for a while and about two months in that is when my male cat started using the floor as his restroom. They have been on the same food their entire life and same litter. I did try to get different styles of litterboxes, but my female cat hates the covered one so we have stuck with the extra large, generic box. We got rid of the foster kitten and the problem kept going on. He has been checked by a vet and they said he is healthy, but something must be bothering him. He is indoor mostly, but goes out in the evenings to "explore". He is spoiled beyond belief and gets a lot of love and affection, yet he still will not use his litterbox. We have cleaned the floor over and over and in fact when we clean it really good is when he seems to poop the most...it's weird! Lately he has even peed in areas too which wasn't occurring before. There are a couple "anti-marking" sprays we have tried which seem to work ok, but he just poops next to the area we spray and I hate the smell of them so I don't want to saturate my basement with them. Thanks to a post the last time I was on, we switched one litterbox to the pine litter. We have seen him pee in it, not poop, and when he exits the box we hug him and give him praise yet randomly he still pees on the floor. At this point I'm just not sure. We clean the litterboxes like crazy and we have three of them!!! I'm not sure if I should just buy a bigger rug to put under the boxes and surrounding area and just clean that frequently? Overall he is just stinkin up our basement. We used to have the litterboxes only in our laundry room down there, but when he started pooping on the carpet, two have moved to the general area he goes which happens to be in the bar/entertaing area! I worry about moving a litterbox upstairs for fear of making him think it's ok to poop upstairs too. HELP!!!!! Oh and we can't block them off from the basement unfortunately due to the fact that if we put up a gate they are smart and can jump over the banister down the stairs. It's just not set up to block off. Darn!!!

[Owned_By_Two]

I assume you've ruled out any medical issues and the current litter boxes are in a quiet area that they can go without being startled when they are urinating/defecating. The laundry room can be a scary place. Also, you don't want to be moving the locations of the litter boxes unless you absolutely have to.

Since this all started with the introduction of the foster cat, it's pretty safe to say that the cat started with this bad behavior as a form of acting out. Even though the foster cat is gone, I think your cat has now developed a bad habit. I've read that when this sort of thing happens, it's best to "retrain" the cat by keeping it in an enclosed area with it's litter box, just like you would train a kitten. It may take a day or two. Then after he goes in the box consistently, when you let him out of the room make sure you show him the location where the box will be from now on.