One of the hardest things to teach your pet cat can be how to properly and reliably use the litterbox. This problem is so common, in fact, that there are specialized training programs out there for the sole purpose of training (or in some cases retraining) cats to urinate where they should. Training a young kitten to use the litter box is very easy – especially if your kitten was adopted at an early age and didn’t spend that much time with their mother. Young ones usually learn the ropes of using the litterbox in less than a week, and once they do, they almost never stop.
The most important thing when trying to train your young kitten is consistency: Always make sure that the litterbox is in the same place, that it looks the same (don’t swap them out until at least 1 month after they learn the ropes), and that you use the same clumping litter constantly. Any changes can confuse the cat and deter it from using the litterbox again. After a few weeks of learning and practicing, your kitten should be so comfortable and accustomed to the box that it will simply not wish to do it anywhere else. At this point you can feel free to relocate the litterbox to another room if you wish, as long as you spend a bit of time showing the cat where it moved to.
Unfortunately, while teaching month-old kittens is simple, retraining adult cats to use the litterbox can be a daunting task. If your cat has stopped using the box for some reason, you need to go through the list and rule out any problems it might be having. First of all, check for any medical problems – this means a visit to the local vet’s office and a check-up. Some conditions such as bladder infections can cause the cat to feel an overwhelming need to urinate at all times, making it hard to tell when to go to the litterbox and when it’s just a false alarm. If this is the case, retraining might not even be necessary – diagnosing and treating the cat properly will solve all problems.
If, however, the problem is not a medical condition, then you need to monitor and watch your cat’s behavior. If you see it spray furniture and surfaces in the house then you’re dealing with a clear case of urine marking. Unneutered cats will mark their territory quite actively, spraying foul smelling urine across the entire house. It’s quite hard to miss, in fact – and you should have your cat neutered at the age of 6 months anyway – so this is unlikely to be the cause of its litterbox problems. Other possible causes can be fights between multiple cats in the same household. If you have more than one cat, always, always have one litterbox for each of them. Cats do not share when it comes to this.
Retraining adult cats is not simple: First of all, find a room in the house which you can spare for a few weeks and clean it out of anything you don’t want soiled. Confine the cat to that room only, giving it a litterbox on one end of the room and food and water in the other. Check frequently and clean out the litterbox if need be, while actively encouraging the feline to use it. In extreme cases, covering the entire floor of the room in litter will force the cat to use it and get used to it. Once they get the hand of things again, and see how easy and convenient the litterbox is, they will continue to use it on their own in the future.
