How can I get my cat to cover their litter?

Question

We recently adopted two older rescue cats (11 and 13 years old).

Apparently, one or both of them do not cover their feces when using the litter.

One of our other cats has rather strong feelings about litter etiquette, particularly when it comes to properly covering waste. We've seen her chase one of our other cats for not sufficiently covering up.

I mention this, because lately I've been finding significant amounts of feces just outside the entrance to our litter boxes. At this point, I strongly suspect that what is happening is that one or more of our cats are flicking the uncovered feces from one of our newer adoptees outside of the box.

Is it possible to teach an old cat new tricks, and get them to cover their droppings?

Answer 1

My parent's cats have two litter boxes. One cat is diabetic and the other is grumpy about the litter box.

Before the first cat became diabetic, there would be no issue with either of them using the boxes. If it got too dirty, they would both refuse to use it. After she became diabetic, their tolerance for the box being clean lowered drastically and they normally go on the floor if there was anything in the box. We've also found that if the cats are upset about something (eg. my parents going away for a few days), they would aim to use the floor.

We've combated this in several ways. We got larger boxes, put something under them to make the area generally more clean, and got more boxes as well. We found that they were much happier with this. Another idea is to have another box further away. They might get a preference of which box they want to use, and will end up having their own.

The last piece of advice I can give is getting a little mat to put in front of the litter box. I put this little mat, intended to get pieces of litter off the paws, in front of my own cat's litter box and she's much more comfortable. She used to get overly stressed about the box and this has helped her astronomically.

tl;dr:

1. Get larger boxes
2. Get more boxes
3. Keep boxes as clean as you possibly can
4. Get a mat to go outside of and around the box to ensure cleanliness of area and mental help.

Answer 2

Sometimes cats will also eliminate right outside the box because they don't think the box is clean enough. I can't think of a way to get the other one to be more fastidious. I think the only answer is to either clean the box more often, or to get an additional box.