Tinkling outside the box

There’s a fridge magnet on the fridge that Mike put up years ago.

Funny, right? Not so much at the moment.

When Mike’s cat Angie reached a grand old age, it wasn’t so much thinking as tinkling outside the box. She decided the litter box in the bathroom no longer appealed to her, that she preferred the diningroom. Not only did I have to install a second litter box in there to save the carpet, but I also had to spend $50 a bag on what calls itself the World’s Best Cat Litter. (When she visited in 2013 my friend Krys was shocked at how much I was paying.) It was the only cat litter Angie found acceptable.

Well, Stella is now a grand old age and she, too, has started tinkling outside the box.

Not in the diningroom, thankfully. No, Stella started peeing on the bathroom floor, halfway between her toilet and mine. It didn’t seem to matter how clean I kept her box. 

My friend Jean gave me a couple of trial pee pads. 

She also suggested taking the lid off the box. Tried that and it worked for a bit, but then the puddles began again.  

So, I decided it might be time for desperate measures, time to go back to the expensive (now $70 a bag, although it is a big bag). That worked for quite a while. I thought the problem was solved. The pee pad I’d put down stayed dry. Expensive, but phew.

Or not. 

Twice in the past five days I’ve found a used pee pad in the bathroom. Now I need to buy some more.

When I stopped at the vet’s the other day to pick up her renal cat food, the assistant suggested trying a lower box. 

Stella pees high (reason there was a covered box in the first place), so that may be an accident waiting to happen, but worth a go. 

Pee pads, I fear, are going to become a bathroom fixture for the foreseeable.

Oh, well.

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Postscript: Went to the shop, got lower litter box, installed it. Stella went in, did a smelly poo, kicked litter all over the place, then got out and peed on the floor.

Photo taken after poo removed and pee washed up. A new pee pad now in place. Sigh.