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Cat Daddy’s Big Three for Litterbox Mojo
One of the first things I ask a client who’s been dealing with litterbox issues is to go back in time to when the peeing outside the box first began and simply ask, “When did it start, and what could have possibly changed in our lives around that time?”
Changes with the Litterbox
An obvious place to start would be with the actual litterbox. Did you change any aspect of it, from the type of litter, to the location, to the box itself? If so, see if you can determine what your cat is missing about the old box and try to go back to what was working.
Changes in Routine
Did you get a new job or lose an old one? Did school start back up? Did you begin or end a major relationship? Basically, anything that would cause you to spend either more or less time at home will change the rhythm of the home . . . which gets back to the all-important Three Rs (see chapter 7). Reestablish a reliable rhythm!
Changes in Relationships (Comings and Goings)
New humans, new animals (cat or dog), a new infant . . . any of these additions could bring about a seismic shift in the home dynamic, especially if proper introductions or ongoing dynamics had been slighted. See chapter 10 for animal relations and chapter 11 for human relations (covering all ages). Relationship harmony on the home front could ease any territorial stress and get things “back in the box.”
ADVANCED DETECTIVISM: WHEN CASES ARE NOT OPEN AND SHUT
The examples I’ve given here are what I would consider the “broad stroke” solutions. Sometimes, the litterbox problems that are being experienced fit neatly into a category. Most of the time, however, they don’t—at least not entirely. That’s the folly of trying to write a handbook of sorts when it comes to complex behavior problems. While I firmly believe in all of the high-level Detectivism pieces in our process, there are an infinite number of variables involved once we plug these formulas into your home. It’s not just about the cat who has “the problem”; it’s also about the other players, human and animal; it’s about the history of your family, the family’s current dynamics, the complexities specific to your territory. . . .
So then, what if you have pee in a variety of our “Where” areas throughout the house, involving more than one “Why” category? Welcome to my world! Of course, just because you didn’t get a complete answer to your cat’s issues in the shallow waters is no reason to despair. I would say that at least 50 percent of the homes I’ve worked in, especially multianimal homes, contained a sort of “hybrid” diagnosis and resolution. This is where we have to take our Detectivism to the next level, get crafty with our powers of deductive reasoning, compile evidence from multiple vantage points, and truly engage the “process” of the Process of Elimination. And one of our best tools for “going deep” into the issue involves . . .
Bringing in the Mojo Map
As introduced in chapter 8, the Mojo Map is basically a blueprint of your house that details your cat’s physical world: where things are placed in each room, where the litterboxes are, how traffic flows (for both humans and animals), and, as is relevant for our Cat Detectivism here, where fights and confrontations have broken out, and where “outside the box” activity has occurred.
The first step is to prepare the map exactly as you would have in the Catification section. Use different colors to represent where fights have occurred, where peeing/pooping has occurred, where your cats like to congregate, favorite resting spots, litterbox locations, food stations, and favorite locations to play.
Think back to the Anti–Treasure Map on page 243 and how the information was gathered. We will employ the map here just as we did then. The results take a little time to reveal themselves—remember, it does take time for our cat’s actions to present a pattern. But that’s the beautiful part of this way of working: my clients never fail to connect the dots as they go through a week or two of recording the comings and goings, so that a detailed macro view of the terrain emerges. It is then that we arrive at a critical point in our Advanced Detectivism process: things we initially saw as random occurrences, we now see as reliable patterns.
MORE CAT DADDY LITTERBOX MOJO
Yes, there is a whole lot of information when it comes to a cat’s relationship to her litterbox (as I’m sure you’ve deduced by now). It is, after all, the primary scent soaker, and for her, a core component of her territory—and in turn, of her Mojo. The following tips, tricks, and techniques are absolutely key when it comes to rounding out your cat know-how and in turn, your Cat Mojo.
Schedule an Appointment with the Vet
I don’t mind being a broken record about this one. If you were to call and ask me to come to your home for a consult, I would schedule it far enough out that you would have time to go to the vet first. If I’m told that you had your cat’s annual exam a few months ago and everything was fine, I would send you back, because a checkup isn’t an exam with a purpose. An exam as part of my consultations is a true tip-to-tail. A CBC (complete blood count) with a thyroid level is important, as is a urinalysis (if dealing with a urine issue) or fecal exam (if it’s a poop issue). Not to keep draining your bank account, but I may even send you back to the vet after our initial consult.
One thing your vet doesn’t have the benefit of seeing is how your cat moves around the home territory—how he walks, uses stairs, gets in and out of the litterbox, etc. (Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I absolutely recommend trying to find a house-call vet in your area.) The blood panel will reveal signs of diabetes, renal issues, hyperthyroidism, even cancer—all things that can distinctly and suddenly affect behavior as it damages the body. In my years of work, I have seen an abscessed tooth cause extreme aggression and a broken tail or impacted anal glands cause months of litterbox avoidance. Cats hide pain—it’s part of the Raw Cat makeup. We must make sure that while we are working a course of dedicated behavioral Detectivism, your cat isn’t raising the yellow flag the whole time, saying “OW!” and not “I really hate your new boyfriend.”
Common Signs of Medical Issues
Vocalizing while in the litterbox
The “poop and run” that often indicates pain or discomfort
Small, marblelike poop nuggets, or conversely, soft stool that looks like pudding
Really stinky poop
Blood in the urine
Dark, crystallized urine
Reintroduction to the Litterbox
A cat who has had a traumatic experience with a litterbox, whether the root of that trauma is medical, behavioral, or a combination of the two, cannot be expected to just “jump back in the saddle” once the problem is resolved. It makes sense. Let’s say you take the subway to work every day. Suddenly you hit a stretch where the train derails—not just once or twice, but six times in a row. I think it’s a safe bet you’d start walking to work, and it would take quite a bit of effort to get you back on a subway.
The best way to reintroduce your cat to a litterbox is to present her with choices so that she can make the least scary one. Keep the old box for sure, but add a few more that look nothing like the original in terms of shape and feel. I’ve used everything from cookie sheets (with puppy pads on top) to round boxes, corner-shaped boxes, and Rubbermaid containers meant for storage—all with different shapes, different textures, different appearance, different height . . . just plain different. Try the same litter in the old box, but also a completely different one in the new boxes. Keep the consistency the same, but each brand has a unique feel to your cat. Steer away, as I always recommend, from scented litters, crystals, or, in my opinion, anything clay. There are now an absolute multitude of natural litters out there.
In general, I’m not a fan of boxes with lids on them or liners in them. As I said, keep the original box with all of the accoutrements you had with it, but in the new ones, stay simple. I also want you to offer other options in ter
ms of location. This is one of those times that you may not like what I have to say, but it has worked for me so many times that I’d be loath to exclude it. Put the new boxes exactly where you wouldn’t put them if it were up to you, like the center of the room, or in a room like your bedroom. Again, the idea is for her to have NO association with using the old litterbox—and we all habitually place our litterboxes in the same general area. With box reintroduction, the general rule of thumb is to make the diametrically opposite choice so that the experience won’t trigger the trauma all over again.
Which Cat Is It?
I feel so old when I say this, but man, back when I started this work, if we had access to the kind of inexpensive surveillance cameras we have today, I would have been able to solve so many cases so much more quickly. With an ongoing litterbox issue, once you’ve narrowed down the most “hit” spots, you can have one of these cameras trained on the area. They are motion-activated, so only when one of your cats moves into the sightlines will it start to record. It’s a brave new world out there, you youngsters with your hi-tech doodads!
There are many surprises that will crop up as you collect data. I think one of the larger mistakes my multicat clients make is thinking that only one cat is committing the crime. You’re basically ignoring the rules of graffiti. So many times, cats will imitate street-gang turf warfare, “tagging” the same area over and over in a vain attempt to claim ownership. Even if initially it was one cat’s misdeed, it’s very easy for the other cats to misinterpret these signs. For example, let’s say one cat is peeing outside the box because it’s a physical issue; the other cats may take it as a territorial slight, and suddenly you’ve got a pissing war going on.
Another great benefit since surveillance technology became affordable to the cat masses is that we can blame the right cat. I can’t even count how many homes I’ve worked in where the family had anywhere from three to six cats and were 100 percent convinced they knew who was doing all of the peeing or pooping around the house, even though they had not a shred of evidence. They were convinced, based on the personality of the cat they were pinning the blame on. In the past several years, I just leave one of my cams with the clients to actually get data, and the result has been, in at least a quarter of those cases, that they had blamed the wrong cat. The camera never lies!
CSI—Cat Scene Investigating: Black Light Tips
I honestly don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have a UV light (a.k.a. a “black light”) to help me gather data and make interpretations when working cases that have a litterbox component to them. If you have a urination issue in your home, a black light is just an absolute must. Here are some tips, if you’re a cat-pee black light newbie:
Use the black light in the dark, or get the room as dark as possible. Information becomes very unreliable with ambient light.
The colors that fluoresce will change over time, going from a deeper orange-yellow to a white as the proteins break down over time.
Swirl marks indicate a spot that you used a cleaner on at some point, like those rug shampooers. It might look like Spin Art. In a bad way.
Don’t panic when, even though you cleaned it a million times, you still see the urine spots under a black light, because cat pee breaks down the dye in the carpet, so it will always fluoresce, no matter what (even when the smell and actual stain are imperceptible).
You can distinguish a fresh spot from a spot you’ve already cleaned. The fresh spot will fluoresce more brightly.
Make sure that each stain has a beginning and an end. Trace it, especially when you’re looking around places like the baseboards.
Look at patterns:
A circle on the floor signifies your cat letting go of his bladder.
Spraying is usually on vertical surfaces, and the amount can vary.
Little drops, most often in multiple spots, usually signifies a urinary tract problem.
AND FINALLY, FOR all I’ve been suggesting that you do to resolve litterbox issues, let’s end the chapter with a few Do Nots:
THE DO NOTS
Nothing can fray your nerves faster than dealing in the moment with an ongoing litterbox issue. No matter how bad it gets, however, it’s so important in those moments to step away from the cat! Remember, all you are doing is ramping up the anxiety, trying to punish when they have absolutely no idea why, all the while doing things in the name of “training” or “teaching a lesson.” So remember:
Do not pick up your cat and carry him to the litterbox.
Do not rub his nose into his pee or poop.
Do not put your cat into a time-out because she peed outside the box.
Do not lock her in the bathroom with a litterbox and a dish for the next three days (or God forbid, three months).
Do not yell at her.
Your cat will have zero idea, after about two seconds post-accident, why you are acting the way you are or doing to them what you are doing (or, through your “discipline,” what lesson you are trying to teach). Literally, all you can do during this process is collect the data, clean up the mess, and move on. Armed with just a few frames of the movie, you’re in no position to assess and in even less of a position to act upon what you see. Besides that, as we discussed in chapter 9, punishment just doesn’t work, so just don’t do it.
21
Eso Es Mojo
STANDING ON THAT stage in Buenos Aires a few years ago, slowly realizing that nobody knew what the hell I was talking about, I vaguely remember poking my head above the smog of my public speaking nightmare to think to myself, “I should write a book about Cat Mojo. That might keep me out of this kind of trouble, at least.”
Whether it comes to Saturday Night Fever or your beloved Mojito Cat, hopefully you now got the mojo in you—and in your cat. I also hope that your number of “aha!” moments far outweigh the “WTF?!” moments. Along with that turnaround comes the banishment of words like “randomly,” phrases like “out of nowhere” to describe your cat’s behavior, and misguided anthropomorphisms about your cat hating you, your husband, wife, or kids.
When I was alone, usually late at night, in my old shelter stomping grounds, surrounded by scores of these . . . beings, I would often find myself frustratingly at the end of my human reasoning abilities. Cats, it seems, were taunting me with their inaccessibility; just like many of you, I found myself feeling resentful of the four-legged firewall staring back at me.
I had been a pretty lousy student at school. From beginning to end, my school years were pock-marked with wild inconsistencies. If the topic was purely theoretical, book-bound—forget about it. I was gone, daydreaming and clock-watching. If, however, the topic gave my creative side room to roam, that’s when I was hooked . . . and happy.
In the case of cats, there were twin engines that roared to life, propelling me to the present moment—that creative side was fueled by learning about the Raw Cat. How absolutely miraculous it was that the ancestor was alive in front of me, parading their decidedly undomestic Mojo, trying with every passing day, every tick of the evolutionary clock, to fit into our world. It was a club that I didn’t just want to observe—I wanted to belong to it, and to pass that fascination along to everyone I met. Secondly, there was another clock ticking; if I couldn’t crack the code on a daily basis and help nudge the Raw Cat into the modern world of house cat, then he could die. I found myself, in spite of my best efforts, emotionally vulnerable as individual relationships were forged, realizing that these innocents were looking to me for their happiness and their very lives. That’s when everything changed.
As I’ve said throughout this journey, the goal has never been about solutions, “fixing a hole where the rain gets in,” as the song goes; it’s about your desire to protect your family from the rain. The building and strengthening of your Mojo Toolbox has been a consistent solution. The success you’ve found in committing to empathy has given you t
he permission, so to speak, to explore cat guardianship as a two-way street—a relationship of value where compromise, not a sense of dominion, achieves harmony.
Maybe you’ve just flipped through the book, looking fervently for a solution to a problem that’s been driving you mad. Of course that’s why I’ve provided you with recipes—achieving sanity in the short-term is often the only way to keep this family unit intact during those end-of-your-rope periods. That said, I hope that you take my instruction as nothing more than a springboard from the world of Cats with a capital C, and dive into your cat’s world. Recipes will get you only so far—if followed, they will keep you from starving (or at the very least from eating cold pizza and ramen for the rest of your life). But once you develop the intuition and imagination, you can build something that is yours, something that you can be proud of because you poured your heart into it. That’s why I hope that at some point after the crisis passes, you’ll take the time to explore all of the nooks and crannies of your cat’s world; it’s there that the one-time lousy student is waiting to share all of the juicy details that turned curiosity into fascination, appreciation into passion, and that ultimately turned him stark-raving cat almost twenty-five years ago.
Just as with any relationship, there will be head-scratching (or head-banging) moments when smooth sailing turns suddenly into choppy seas. For those times, here are a few Mojo mantras to keep in the back of your mind as your journey of Total Cat Mojo continues for years to come:
First, when in doubt, go straight back to the ABCs of what builds Raw Cat confidence: the Three Rs, the Confident Where, and HCKE. These tools will always unlock Mojo, no matter how old or young the cat is, the degree of trauma they may have had to endure, or any special needs that may inform their everyday life. And second, take a moment, as often as you can, to remember that you will never have it all figured out. Thinking that you have control over the outcome of any relationship will absolutely destroy it. Stay humble to, and remain a student of, the relationship itself. That was the hardest lesson I had to learn in the past, and the source of the most joy in my present.
Total Cat Mojo Page 33
