Who gives a crap?

Sometimes life is improved by mundane day-to-day changes that are of absolutely no interest to those not affected by them.  Let me tell you about one such change!

Our male kitten, Toru, has had a rough few months.  Sometime around Christmas he stopped jumping like a normal cat and we assumed he had seriously hurt one of his legs.  He struggled to get up on the couch, dragging himself up with just his front paws in a really pathetic way and he was eager to play but wanted to lie down while doing it.  It looked like a problem with one of his back legs.  We took him to the vet, tried some pain meds and enforced rest.  It didn’t seem to help so we even had an x-ray of his back legs and hips, but everything was normal.  We decided to just accept the mystery.

Around this time we bought a second self cleaning litter box on craigslist and hooked it up in the basement.  Three cats have a lot of outputs.  We had to set up a third litter box in the room Toru was confined to and all the cats much prefer to use the labor intensive and smelly traditional box. 

We gave up on confinement but then had a trouble with Emo pooping in the basement.  Finally we found a good schedule for the two automatic boxes to clean themselves at different times and Emo got back on board, but Toru rebelled.  We actually would see him go in to the litter box in the basement and then step back out to go to the bathroom on the floor.  We we not happy but figured that part of it was that he was in pain.

Now a few months later, he has gotten a bit better and does jump and play standing up.   The bad bathroom habit continued for a long time, but now I’m so excited that we’ve gone over a week with no one pooping outside of the litter box. 

This site was very helpful http://www.catexpert.co.uk/cats/how-to-clean-up-cat-pee-or-poo/.  It has lots of possible causes and potential solutions.  We started small by cleaning up with Dumb Cat cleaner, because if they smell anything they’ll just stick with their old habit.  Then I think the magic trick was putting some food in the problem corner of the basement.  It has worked like a charm!

Not having a basement [corner] full of poop is such a treat.