It had been 2 months since the broken laptop incident.
After much consideration, we’d decided to keep Hazel but make some changes.
All seemed to go, not well exactly, but without major incident.
But then a new problem arose.
The New Problem
I’d felt we’d been lucky with Hazel in one sense.
She was very good with her litter trays and there’d only been a couple of ‘accidents’- at least one of which was our own fault (see ‘Living With A Bengal Kitten- Hazel’s First Week‘).
Both of those occurred not long after she’d arrived.
Then suddenly she started urinating on the door mat.
The first time, we put it down to some unknown factor- possibly an issue/being fussy with one of the litter trays.
So we cleaned it up and thought we’d keep an eye on her.
But not long after (a day or so) she did it again.
This time, we took it more seriously.
An Addition To The New Problem
This urination issue was accompanied by an additional problem.
Not only had Hazel taken to urinating outside the litter trays, but her litter mat and our door mat became spots for her to defecate on.
If looking for the positives in this, one may say rather on mats than a carpet, bed or sofa.
And that’s very true.
But cleaning faecal matter off a long brisled door mat or isn’t a pleasant experience either.
What We Did
Not knowing why this had started happening, we began looking at with what seemed like logical first place to start- her litter trays.
Some cats are very picky with their toilet habits and will only be happy when the litter type, tray size and cleanliness meet their standards.
As mentioned, Hazel seemed to have no issues with her trays initially, but perhaps this had changed.
So we worked on keeping them as clean as possible.
Secondly, we had not long previously, introduced a new type of litter with the hope of switching her from wood chip to clumping litter.
This was still in its transition phase, so we resorted back to using more wood chip.
I even decided to ‘show her’ where her trays were- no sarcasm intended.
It wouldn’t take long to discover whether these simple steps were enough.
It turned out they were not.
Further Reading:
