We have two cats who are litter trained, but one of them occasionally pees on rugs or linens instead. According to my fiancée, the cat was accidentally toilet trained on a towel as a kitten, and now she likes to pee on towels and similar things like rugs and blankets. While she did manage to re-train the cat to use litter, the cat will revert to peeing on linens occasionally, especially in times of stress. How can we reinforce the cat’s litter training and discourage peeing on rugs and linens?
Note that we have already removed most of the rugs from the house, so the cat doesn’t have many opportunities to pee on them. However, the bathroom is becoming a problem, as we need towels or rugs on the floor while bathing, and the cat has peed on them twice this week. Strangely, the cat seems to leave the kitchen floor mats alone – I don’t know what’s different about those.
Likewise, we keep the bedroom door shut when we’re not in it, so that the cat can’t pee on the bed. Unfortunately, that’s getting to be a problem too, as the cats will sometimes hide in the bedroom so that we can’t shut them out of it. This all would be much easier if we could just trust the cats not to pee on fabric – especially because the whole house has hard floors, and it’s more comfortable with rugs.
I don’t know whether this is relevant, but the cat has done this right in front of me several times. Unfortunately, I know just enough to recognize when the cat is about to pee but now how to stop it. I grew up with dogs and know how to shoo them before they pee, but it doesn’t seem to faze this cat.
Related: “How can stop my adult cat from urinating in inappropriate places?” but in this case, the behavior is not new, and the cat was accidentally trained to pee in the inappropriate place.