End of my cat pee-pee rope!

Suddenly, without warning, -L. exclaimed (10/14/2007 11:30 AM):
Most of you know me from me posting here over the last - who knows how
many years. I don't give up easily and I don't advocate drastic
measures. But I am at the end of my rope with Mimi.

Mimi is my tortie I have had since she was 7 weeks, and she's 17.5
now. Off and on over the last 5 or 6 years she's peed outside the
litterbox, I thought, as an accident - she'd hang her butt over the
edge and pee. It would happen every few weeks. No big deal. Well,
since we lost Peewee, it got worse
-L.


I'm just back from leave so haven't read all the followups - though I
did see the suggestion of pee-pads and towels. My vote would be for the
pee-pads.

Meep is the same - she occasionally pees outside the box. She's done it
less since I've switched her to all wet food, and add water to it, so
her cystitis is finally under control (re the vet). But she still does,
every once in a while.

I worry sometimes that she's got some chronic problem from the cystitis,
because when I catch her at it, sometimes what she does is start with
her butt low, and it rises slowly, seems like it's taking a certain
amount of force to pee, and the force causes her butt to lift. It's not
cystitis, and she doesn't do this every time. Does Mimi do this?

Usually, for Meep, it's a matter of cleanliness. If she's used the box
*once* and it hasn't been cleaned, she'll often pee outside the box. So
this is something I usually find when I clean the box first thing in the
morning. Yea, she has me well-trained

What I've considered doing is finding a small, shallowish pan that I can
set in front of the box, to catch the miss. Like a 9x9 brownie pan or
something?

What I have right now is a really gigantic litter mat
(http://tinyurl.com/2mukfg - the really big one); if she pees over the
edge and I can't get to it right away, I just sprinkle some litter over
the wet spot. That soaks up the problem, and I can clean the mat at a
better time.

Good luck. I understand your frustration.