My Cats Are Doing Their Business Elsewhere!!

[confused010110]

Okay, so this might be a little long, but its the only way i can tell you all whats going on- Me and my husband moved into our house in Oct. 2009. I have a cat that moved with us that is about 8 years old and he is a grumpy but he has his moments :) and once we moved and brought him to the new house, I decided to get a couple more cats, and although he wasnt too thrilled about it at first, he has adjusted. And before I had been able to get my two new cats fixed, the one had been peeing in one particular spot, which now i have not seen him do in such a long time since he was fixed in jan., and they are all fixed now. But, within this last month, my older cat has been pooping in one particular spot, and he does this everyday. I have caught him in the act a few times and then he will not do it for a day but then he goes right back to doing it. And my littlest cat decided to pee all over my husbands bibs that had been left in the enterance way since winter. He had decided to wash them and he said they were soaked so i guess the little one has been doing it for a while because I have seen him go over there a lot, just never really noticed what he was doing i guess. But, I dont really know how to make them stop. My old cat has done this before when I lived with my parents, and we decided to get him groomed and he stopped, and he gets groomed once a year around this time of year, but i havent had the money to do it lately so we were just waiting until we could afford it to get him groomed, but is this why he is pooping in the living room all the time? is he trying to tell me that he wants to get groomed? and i dont know about the little one...i dont know what to do, i have tried spraying in the areas so they dont go back over there but it doesnt work. My other little one i dont think has been doing anything, but then again, i havent caught him so who knows, but if anybody could give me any advice or tips to make it stop i would appreciate it!! :)

[confused010110]

thanks for the tips and advice- yeah, i dont exactly know what to do with my cats. I actually change their litter boxes every other day if not every day and i did recently change litter to the more expensive kind to help with the odor a bit more. But, besides the few spots that I have seen them actually do it, i havent seen anything else. it seems like they are always going in their litterbox, like i can hear one of them in the box now...i will just have to watch them more closely i think. with the bib situation, i think maybe they kept going on it because they hard started that and until we washed them like you guys said, they thought it was acceptable, but as for my old cat grooming, he can be a butt, and he just started this a few weeks ago and him and the other cats have been all together since oct/nov- i think i am going to get him groomed and see what happens cause he has done this before and getting him groomed stopped it (he is a long hair cat and sometimes gets a few hairballs that he wont let me brush out or cut off of him, so i think he is just mad about that and letting me know- but thank you so much and i am definitely looking into getting some different sprays!! :)

[nancyjac]

It sounds as though this has been a long standing routine for all of your cats, so from their point of view, they are doing the right thing.  Cats naturally establish preferences for their "bathrooms".  If you don't immediately let them know where your preferences are, they will continue to use their own and have no way of knowing that is unacceptable.  The longer this has been the case, the longer it will take to change it.  As opus said, you need to locate and remove any unacceptable spots.  Cats have a way stronger sense of smell than we do, so just because you can't see it or smell it doesn't mean they can't.  At the same time you need to consistently show them what is acceptable.  This means removing any new unacceptable spots as soon as possible after they occur and physically carrying them to their litter box.  How many litter boxes do you have?  How often do you clean them?  What kind of litter do you use?  Since cats are pretty fastidious, if you are cleaning the unacceptable spots, but not the acceptable ones often enough, you are actually telling them to use the unacceptable spots, since you clean those for them (meaning cleaned superficially to remove liquid and stool but not smell, just as occurs when you clean a litterbox.

[opus88]

refer to the post 'my cats urinating in my roomates room' that may help you with some answers I hope.
all I can suggest is that when a new cats came into the house the original kitty probably sprayed to mark his territory, than with the urine smell there all the others would also pee in the same spots....thinking it was the 'place to go'...cat urine is a very hard scent to remove...washing may lessen the smell for us but not for the cats who have such a strong sense of smell, you'll need to get a product called 'urine off' at a petstore in order to remove the scent., than another spray to stop further marking....and sounds like you'll need to treat many areas of your home. this can be a real problem I sure hope you are able to solve this.