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My Pet World: How to get a cat to use the litter box

By Marc Morrone, Tribune Content Agency on

Q: A few months ago my 4-year-old cat started pooping in my bathtub. She continued to pee in her litter box. When we blocked off the tub she continued to poop on the floor next to the tub. She still continues to pee in the box, which we keep clean. I would prefer not to change her litter brand due to asthma. We currently use feline pine, which can easily be cleaned up and dumped in the toilet. Her litter box is lined and we've done nothing to change anything we've used. Other than diapers or potty training, do you have any suggestions? Thank you. -- Sharon Wilson, Chicago, IL

A: Well if it is your destiny to have an issue like this with your cat then a pooping issue on washable surfaces is a lot easier to deal with those cats that choose to pee on the furniture.

At any rate, for whatever reason, she does not want to poop in the litter box. This is quite clear. Most cats prefer to bury their waste so that other cats do not know they have been in that area, but this behavior is instinctive, so most domestic cats may not feel this way.

So the best advice I can give to you is to re-create the bathtub for her to poop in but have things under your own terms. Continue to keep the bathroom door closed and put a litter box right next to the one now that she pees in but instead of litter just try lining it with a flat sheet of newspaper or a puppy wee-wee pad.

Most likely when she goes to the litter box to pee she will explore the new box next to it with a smooth surface in it like she prefers now and most likely she will take advantage of it to poop in. Then you can just dispose of the paper and line it with a new sheet for the next time.

This may not be the answer that you wanted to hear but compromise is still better than losing and cats rarely lose, so it must be you that compromises.

 

Q: We have a mini-dachshund that is now 2 years old and he is the best dog in the world except when we try to cut his nails. As soon as he sees the clippers in our hands he runs and if we confront him he turns into an snarling wolf and he has no hesitation in biting us when he is in this red zone. We tried to put a muzzle on him and then come out with the clippers but he fought the muzzle so hard that he got his foot stuck in the strap and broke his dewclaw off and there was blood everywhere. His nails grow very quickly and they curl around into circles and cannot be comfortable for him. We were wondering if you had any tips that we could use to make the situation easier. -- Gary Sims, St. Paul, MN

A: This is not an easy question to answer. Cutting the nails of a dog that does not like the process is sort of like music -- there is music that is good and there is music that is not good and it is hard to describe what you can do to make the music that is not good, better.

Either you can cut a dog's nails or you cannot and it sounds like you cannot in this case. I doubt I can tell you what to do to make the situation better under the circumstances and a dachshund is one of those breeds of dogs that do need frequent nail cutting.

Of course if you had nothing to do all day you could train the dog with positive reinforcement training methods to happily accept nail trimming. However it can take weeks and weeks of training to do this, but any animal can be trained to do anything as long as the animal understands that whatever it is that you are training it to do is in its best interest or has some kind of tangible reward.

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