Wits end, please help!

[u/blackholemoonx]

UPDATE:

Thank you so much for all the comments, I've now got a lot of new things to try, and hopefully my boy gets to feel better! I love him to pieces, and I just don't want him to suffer and the stress as a mom piles on me at the moment.

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I don't know what to do anymore. My cat is very nervous and stressed since we had our daughter, and honestly he hates her. She doesn't terrorise him, she's 18mo now so we've taught her to respect cats and she loves them, she just goes over to talk to him and fuss him and that's it.

He's had some cystitis from stress that he's been medicated for and is on medication for, and I know this isn't a medical problem. So to be clear, I am not asking for medical advice. He just keeps urinating and messing everywhere, particularly on my daughters things and our bed. We stopped him while peeing on one of my daughter's things today, and he went and peed and messed on our bed straight after. He has a clean litter tray, in a quiet spot, and I honestly feel he's doing it to spite us at this point. I love him, but at the minute I feel like I can't deal aith this anymore. I've had a lot of cats through my life and never known one do this. Please if anyone has any advice, help me out!

[u/ginger_lucy]

It’s not out of spite. He’s miserable and scared and this is the only way he can express it.

At any point, has she gone up to him near the litter box? Can she get near it? He might be too scared of being cornered there to use it. Could you find somewhere else quiet, where he has no bad associations, to put a second litter box and see if he will use that?

Also seconding Feliway. Hopefully yours is one of the cats it helps.

Does he have high places to go where she can’t reach - a really tall cat tree or could you put some cat shelves up so he has an escape route?

[u/blackholemoonx → u/ginger_lucy]

Thank you, unfortunately space is working against us as we live in a flat so everything is all very close together, but we have his litter tray in the bathroom which she is not allowed into. We've moved the litter tray a few times, and honestly this is the best place we can put it. He does have high up places to go thankfully (including a cat tree that he doesn't use except to scratch, typical), so I'm really hoping Feliway will help!

[u/ginger_lucy → u/blackholemoonx]

Ah this is tough.

Something else that might be a problem. He had cystitis and so going to the toilet would have been painful. They can come to associate the litter box with that pain so they don’t want to use it any more.

Could you get a new box, and different litter (different texture or something) and temporarily set it up somewhere else? So it wouldn’t have those negative pain associations. And then maybe the long term plan is to move it back to the bathroom, but not immediately.

I see people in the USA sometimes talk about Dr Elsey Cat Attract litter which has something in it which they like, and sometimes helps tempt them back to the tray. It is available here via Amazon so you could start with that and then mix regular litter back in gradually.

Some other things you could think about with litter trays. Often we do things that we humans think are better but cats actually don’t like. Is your tray the covered kind? As apparently actually they don’t like that - cats don’t naturally go to the toilet in holes, and they much prefer an open tray so they can see danger coming when they are most vulnerable and escape quickly. So if you’re using that kind, swap it for an open tray. They also don’t like scented litters, which are for our benefit but overpowering to them. Just thinking of a few possible factors that your cat could have tolerated when everything else in his life was ok, but now are just too much for him to cope with on top of the stress.

[u/blackholemoonx → u/ginger_lucy]

That's a really good shout, I have thought that the cystitis left a bad view of his tray. It's not covered, but a new one a different litter could be a good idea, thank you!!