Friday, January 4, 2013

Experiments in litter...

Our October and November was spent trying to determine just what the magical mixture of litter and boxes was the right one. 

Our course of action:

1.  Leave these boxes in place for several weeks and monitor closely.
2.  If that doesn't work, we'll start Kitty Prozac and continue #1 for several weeks.
3.  If that doesn't work, we'll continue the Prozac and lock her in my craft room with her food and cat box.  I spend a lot of time in there and she has a shelf next to the window.
4.  If that doesn't work, we're at a loss.

During this period, the longest she went without using a pad as a litter box was 17 days.  Then she went back to using the pad, often so close to the litter box she had to be touching it.  The good news was she always used the pad so we didn't have messes to clean up, just clean off the pad and pop it in the washer.  By this time she wasn't using any part of the family room so we removed all the pads from the furniture there and had extras to put down.  She would go several days in the box and then not in the box.  No rhyme or reason.

We removed the corn litter because after the first day, she never stepped into it again.  She also only used the sand once or twice, so we changed the sand litter to Cat Attract.  Any port in a storm, right?  Although this litter gets good reviews, Sassy doesn't seem to like it any better than the regular old Arm and Hammer we've been using.  We did purchase another x-large litter box for the Cat Attract which comes in 40 pound bags.  The x-large box is quite a good size but she always leaves her deposits against the edge.  Solid or liquid, it doesn't matter, always right against the edge.  So, we thought maybe she doesn't like the boundary.  We used an old round saucer for putting under a  Christmas tree with a one inch border and added some litter.  She liked it for a few days and then never used it again so we removed it.  Another quirk of her is hardly ever covering anything up.  Once in a great while, but mostly she doesn't.  I don't know what that means.



Look at that face - don't you just love that face?  She has a slight problem with tearing, especially her left eye, but that seems to be normal with Persian types.  We wipe her face and eyes daily but it's hard to keep up with; the little bit of black on the left side is some kind of grit that the tearing leaves.  When you see her in person, she looks like she has an underbite.  As if her jaw juts out giving her an attitude.

She's just discovered a new place to sleep - my big yellow corduroy chair in the family room.  Ironic since she used this chair as her first inappropriate potty place and I had to have the cushion cleaned three times.  We removed the cushion and put down a waterproof pad under the cushion, over the arms and up the back.  If she uses it again, it will just be the cushion we need to have cleaned, not the chair itself.  I think that she won't use it again because she's sleeping there.  I will give that a few more weeks and remove the water proof pad.  We had already removed the pads on my husband's chair and the couch.   My fingers are crossed that we can solve this problem.  I can't imagine not being able to give her belly rubs.

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