kitten trampling on poo in litter tray !

Grimbal

We have 3 cats (how on earth did that happen?!):

2 year old little lady (Maisie), scrupulous about her personal hygiene
5 month old girl kitten (Smudge) - good generally
her brother (Harvey) - terrible ! misses cleaning his bum regularly, and quite often tramples on his own poo in the litter tray

Any hints or tips on how we can get the little chap to be more considerate about wiping his paws on the way out? we have mats, but it doesn't often catch the stuff that wedges between his toes, so cue:

- midnight last night i woke up to him running over the pillows, leaving a trail on them (and me!)

- this morning, my OH scooping up said kitten and charging with him over to the kitchen sink whilst roaring for me to bring a cat wipe


smudge (F) on left, Harvey (M) on right:


and Maisie (2YO F)

basill

How big is the litter tray?, a giant one might give Harvey room to walk around before burying the poos

Grimbal

we've got the big trays with the curled over tops (link), which are bigger than the usual size I think. we've also introduced completely covered trays (link)this weekend in the hope that more is caught on the way out. Both fail dismally as he's still treading poo on the floor/duvet/pillows/carpet/windowsill/floor/me

Scrapaholic

Before I read the post I thought you would say he is a little kitten but he's a few months . Would a different kind of litter do the trick , maybe catch a bit more from his paws . Suppose you can't always wipe after he's been . I have newspaper around the tray which only one of our cats uses so if he misses at least it's not on the floor . Maybe he'll get a better technique over time . Bet you've got enough to do without all the extra cleaning and bedding changes too .

flossy_splodge

How often are you cleaning the tray out?
Some cats won't 'behave' if the tray is not completely clean?:o

Mupette

how deep is the litter, is there enough for him to bury it?

lovewealthhappiness

Bless, they're cute! With regards to poo paws, not sure. Would definitely agree with Mupette and make sure there's plenty of litter in there for covering.

Unfortunately, it could just be what that cat does, one of mine was totally useless with litter tray...would stand in tray and do business over the side then try to cover by scraping the actual tray! We always knew he was a bit special, the joy of having pets I suppose!

Grimbal

lovewealthhappiness wrote: »

We always knew he was a bit special

Thanks all for your contributions - looks like our little Harvey is going to fall into the "special" camp....
we have a big litter tray, fill it pretty deep with litter, kept reasonably clean with mats to the front.


We went out & bought a couple of throws for the bed so that we can have a clean one in reserve if he decides to do the poo-dance on the other.


What _should_ be blindingly obvious to us, and we've missed is that we need to cover 360 degrees around the tray. Thanks to this thread, we've realised that our two little ladies step gracefully out on the mat in front quite obligingly as though they know what it's there for. Harvey however, the big hapless gangly boy that he is, does his business, spends three times as long as the girls burying it (& in the process trampling it into himself *sigh*), then sprints off at high speed, missing the mat, to the nearest absorbant surface......................................