What Your Cat's Litter Box Behavior Is Really Telling You With Dr. Jacklyn Ellis

Cat pee on the rug. Poop beside the box. A cat who “always used it before” and suddenly won’t. Those moments feel personal, but they’re usually biology, stress, or a litter box setup that isn’t working anymore. I’m joined by Dr. Jacklyn Ellis, Director of Behavior at the Toronto Humane Society, to get uncomfortably specific about what cats are doing in the litter box and what they’re trying to tell us.

We unpack the science of feline elimination behavior, including how researchers build an ethogram to capture dozens of distinct “micro behaviors” that most of us never notice. Dr. Ellis explains what changes when cats move between an enriched environment and a restrictive, clinic-like one and why holding urine can be more than a behavior issue. We also talk about the subtle signs of discomfort, from pawing at the wall to repeated aborted attempts, and when a vet visit matters even if your cat seems “fine,” especially with conditions tied to FLUTD and hidden pain.

Then we dive into her multicat household litter box research: clean vs dirty boxes, whether cats care who used it, and the surprising difference between odor and physical obstruction. If you’ve ever wondered how often to scoop, whether scented litter helps, or how “one box per cat plus one” actually plays out in real homes, you’ll leave with clear, practical guidance, including how to run a simple preference test and why box size is often the biggest win.

If this helped you see your cat differently, subscribe, share the episode with a fellow cat person, and leave a rating or review so more owners can solve litter box problems with empathy and evidence.

Transcript

Welcome And What We’re Exploring

Kristiina Wilson 0:00

Hey, and welcome to another episode of Hiss and Tel. This week I am joined by Dr. Jacklyn

Kristiina Wilson 0:05

Ellis, Director of Behavior at the Toronto Humane Society, to discuss the science behind cat litter box behavior. We explore her groundbreaking research on litter box preferences, elimination behaviors, social stress, medical causes of house soiling, and what our cats may be trying to tell us with their bathroom habits. And this is just a little housekeeping, but if you enjoy Hiss and Tell and would like to help support future episodes, you can now contribute toward production costs through the support link on our website or via Buy Me a Coffee. The podcast is completely self-funded and every bit of support is appreciated. Okay, let's get back to the podcast.

Meet Dr Jackie Ellis

Kristiina Wilson 0:40

Welcome to another episode of Hiss and Tell. I'm your host, Kristiina Wilson, and with me today is Dr. Jackie Ellis, the Director of Behavior at Toronto Humane Society. Welcome, Dr. Jackie Ellis.

Dr. Jacklyn Ellis 0:50

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be with you today.

Kristiina Wilson 0:53

Thank you for being here. Um, so can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what originally drew you into studying cat behavior?

Dr. Jacklyn Ellis 1:01

Sure. Well, growing up, we always had cats.

Speaker 1 1:15

Oh, it's so interesting. When I grow up, I want to study cat behavior. And she said, Oh, that's not a job. So I sure showed her. But I ended up doing uh anthropology in my undergrad where I found out I could do primatology. So then I did my master's studying monkeys, following labourons around the forests on a mountaintop in Nigeria, studying stress, which was fascinating. But then I got the opportunity to do my PhD using those same techniques, both in the behavior lab as well as in the physiological sample lab, but working with shelter cats. So I thought this is a great opportunity to work with the species that really has my heart, as well as have a much easier time finding my animals in the morning.

Cats Aren’t Spiteful They’re Signaling

Kristiina Wilson 1:58

That's absolutely fair. I can I can only imagine. So is there something that you think people generally misunderstand about cats as a species?

Speaker 1 2:07

I think that probably the listeners of the podcast aren't really among this group, but I think in general, speaking to my friends and family, and especially people who aren't really cat people, they know as well as I do. They have that bad reputation of being kind of spiteful creatures who behave the way that they do just because they're little jerks and just to kind of get one over on you. But of course, there's so many valid reasons for when they behave in ways that people see as reflections of this jerkishness, right? But so I would say that's probably the number one. Their bad reputation for being little jerks.

Kristiina Wilson 2:39

I so agree. I can't tell you the number of times I see on my client history forums spite that people are listing as spite. I'm like, there's that's not that's not a thing. Oh, how has your work in shelters sort of influenced the way that you think about behavior in pet home? And now let me do that again because that didn't come out right. How has your work in shelters influenced the way that you think about cat behavior in the home?

Speaker 1 3:02

I suppose in my area of the cat research uh world, I think a lot about how cats are gonna integrate into homes. Right. And what we see in the shelter is kind of like exponentially higher reactions than they're gonna have. So because cats are just not as well socialized as our dogs are, most cats typically live in one home for most of their lives and leave that home to simply go to the vet and have bad things done to them. Cats are really not socialized to novelty very well. And so when we see a reaction out of a cat in the shelter to be really scared at first, that makes so much sense. And so I do kind of think about what that cat's gonna be like when they first go home and try to provide support to adopters based on the reaction that we see on that of that cat at the very beginning. Some cats, well, we all know there's some cats who come into a shelter and on day one are like, hey, yeah, so those cats I might counsel the adopters a little bit less on the side of like sanctuary room and you know, give them time and space. Whereas the cats that have really rough landings in the shelter, those are gonna be uh adopters that I really counsel hard on those points. Right.

Building An Elimination Ethogram

Kristiina Wilson 4:06

Makes sense. So I want to get into all of your amazing research work. Uh the first uh study that I want to talk to talk about is the ins and out of outs of the litter box detailed ethogram of cat elimination behavior in two contrasting environments. Um can you explain for our listeners uh what is an ethogram? Because I think a lot of them probably don't know.

Speaker 1 4:25

Yeah. And an ethogram is simply a list of behaviors and their definitions, right? So it's kind of like a it breaks it down on paper what you're looking at so that you can say, is this tail lashing or tail thrashing? And you can be like, oh, I don't know. Let's look at the ethogram and see the different definitions so that you can ensure common language when speaking about behaviors and that the reader of the papers can understand exactly what it is that you're meaning when you use these phrases.

Kristiina Wilson 4:51

Right. So the study identified about 39 distinct elimination-related behaviors. Were there any behaviors that surprised you?

Speaker 1 4:59

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I think the study in general, before this study, most behaviors that had been described, most ethograms that existed for looking at elimination behavior kind of focused on the negative.

Kristiina Wilson 5:11

Right.

Speaker 1 5:11

And so this paper was the first to really kind of be explained. And that makes sense. I mean, most of the time when we're talking about uh uh elimination behavior, we're talking about how to make sure, how to prevent out-of-body. So that's totally logical. But this was the first study that looked at some of those positive behaviors as well. And I think that what was fascinating was um just the sniffing, where they were sniffing, how much they were sniffing, as well as tasting the litter in certain situations.

Kristiina Wilson 5:38

Yeah. So before you did the study and built this ethogram, how simplistic was our understanding of litter box behavior? Because I know this is not really a topic that is covered, and or when it's covered, it is sort of covered with our strong negativity bias, I think, that we just have when we're doing research, period, but especially when we're doing research on cats.

Speaker 1 5:58

Absolutely. I think by and large, it was limited to, you know, enter box, dig box, eliminate, sniff elimination, recover, leave box. There's a few thinkers out there that did introduce a few other behaviors like whether they were digging at the walls or bouncing on the sides of the box, but and and and to go from that number to whatever, 39 different behaviors in our ethogram, it was a big, a big jump.

Kristiina Wilson 6:23

Right. Yeah, I bet. I know you did observe differences between cats in enriched versus restrictive environments. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Enriched Setup Changes Bathroom Behavior

Speaker 1 6:31

Sure. What I found the most fascinating of the paper was the difference in the okay, so we looked at duration of elimination in three different parts. So there was pre-elimination behavior, so the stuff they're doing before elimination begins, the actual uh event, and then what they're doing after the elimination. And so what we found was that for the clinic-like environment, so we looked at clinic-like environment versus enriched environment. So for enriched environment, we tried to make it absolutely maxed out, like, you know, the bathroom at the four seasons, like absolutely everything you want in a bathroom. And for the clinic-like environment, it's more like, you know, a porta-potty at a music festival.

Speaker 2 7:09

Yep.

Speaker 1 7:10

And so we looked at uh the biggest difference, in my opinion, was that the difference in duration of time in each of those different phases. So for urination, we found that the time it took to actually urinate in the clinic-like environment was way longer than in the enriched environment. And that makes sense because also the frequency was very different of elimination. So for urination, they were urinating way more frequently in the enriched environment. So basically, what that means is much like at a music festival, you might hold it as long as possible before actually going into that porta potty, and then you might be in there a little longer because you've been holding it. And so, what that means for cats is that they are holding their urine, which can be a trigger for a number of medical conditions, most notably UTIs. And so that's really bad for cats, and that's bad for anyone, but we're talking cats.

Speaker 2 8:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1 8:07

And so that that is kind of like a way to think about it. The environment that you provide your cats for a litter box is actually a health, like is something you can do to promote positive health for your cat, which is something I just never really thought about before.

Subtle Signs The Box Isn’t Working

Kristiina Wilson 8:22

So, do you have recommendations in that area? Like, how should we set up our cats to have little spa retreats, like spa wellness bathroom retreats? Like do you Yeah.

Speaker 1 8:30

So this recommendation is not directly from the paper, but it's super related to the paper. But my opinion, the number one factor is size of litter box. There's lots of papers out there that show the difference in preference between sizes, and ours is really one of them if you look at the size of the enriched environment versus the clinic-like environment.

Kristiina Wilson 8:48

Right.

Speaker 1 8:49

Now, of course, there's lots of other factors for your cats with the 15 cats in your home. I'm going to wager a guess that you have a lot of litter boxes in a lot of different parts of the house. And so that's that's gonna be a big factor, especially in multi-cat homes as well. And then the third thing would just be frequency of scooping. So making sure that you're removing soil and removing waste at least daily can go a long way to making that the four seasons rather than the porta potty.

Kristiina Wilson 9:15

Absolutely. So do you think that behavior professionals or owners sometimes miss subtle signs that a cat is uncomfortable with their litter box setup?

Speaker 1 9:24

Absolutely. I think that um for for most people, and this includes veterinarians, this includes most pet owners, this is just really kind of common across the board. We think if they're using the box, it must be fine. Right. I get talks from clients all the time who say, we talk about the cat's out-of-box elimination, and I say, Oh, well, the the litter substrate you're using or the size of your box, I would recommend trying something else or trying a preference chest, adding a second box to ask them which they prefer. And they say, always say things like, Well, she always used it before. And I think, well, maybe it's just that something was the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps they were doing all these behaviors that were kind of the subtle behaviors that you weren't picking up on, but they weren't actually going out. And then once they had that final straw, they decided, that's it. I'm not gonna be able to do this anymore. And I think in the paper, um, one of the things that we really saw as these signs is that kind of pawing at the wall next to the litter box or not putting all four paws in the litter box to use it, and truncated attempts. Like, so it takes them a really long time. That's the other thing. I was talking about the three phases, and I talked about how the duration of the actual event with urination is much longer in the uh clinic-like environment. But also the the pre-event and the post-event can be longer. So that means what that actually looks like in reality is the cats kind of getting in the box, like they're gonna start, but then they're like, no, I don't want to. And they get in again. They're like, oh, I really should, though. I really have to go. I'm like, no, I don't want to. And the same with after they go, because the the the cycle of the behavior is, you know, go in, eliminate, sniff, cover, not all cats cover entirely, but sniff, cover, and then leave. But they're really not able to properly kind of cover in some of these events if there's not enough litter substrate, if it's not an appropriate type of litter substrate, which is gonna result in frustration. And that's why, and they can't quite complete the sequence. And so they keep they're stuck in like a feedback loop where they keep trying to.

Kristiina Wilson 11:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:23

So that pre-behavior and that post-behavior can both be longer.

Speaker 2 11:27

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:28

Because they're frustrated. And these are the micro behaviors that I didn't used to know about, that most veterinarians I would hazard don't know about, and that most cat owners don't know about, where they just say, Well, she used to use it, no problem. But the problem she was just telling you with micro behaviors and you weren't 100% seeing them because you didn't know what to look for.

Kristiina Wilson 11:47

Yeah, that's fair. And so, how would you recommend that that cat owners look for those behaviors? Do you think people should set up cameras in front of their? I'm always such a proponent of telling clients and friends just put cameras everywhere, but I think it depends on the client, the friend person.

Speaker 1 12:07

I always try to play to what I think is realistic for the human. Because even the absolute best plan is a terrible plan if it's not going to be implemented.

Kristiina Wilson 12:15

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 12:16

So if there's I sometimes have foster parents who are super gadget excited, who love to collect data for me, who will really do way more than I would do in my home. For those people, I will recommend the works, all that stuff because I know they want to do it. But for a lot of other people, I would be a lot more uh realistic, a lot more what's feasible for you in your life. And a lot of the times it does come down to that box banging behavior or the the wall that's something you can hear from another room. So if you hear that, that can be a sign. Also, depending on where your litter box is located, you can really see them coming in and going out. And you might be able to, it might be more realistic for you to actually witness those kind of aborted attempts and then kind of going back in. And if you see something like that, or if you happen to catch a glimpse at your cat and he doesn't have all of his uh paws in the litter box and just kind of balancing on the side, sometimes people think, sometimes these are the things people think are super cute, right? And they tell me about them. They have seen them, they just don't know what it means. So these are the things they can be two things at once. They can be at once cute and also a bad sign.

Kristiina Wilson 13:16

Right. So if people see those things, what should their next step be? Do they need to get a bigger box? Do they need to go to the vet?

Speaker 1 13:23

I think it would depend on a lot of different factors. Right. I always recommend a vet visit if it's indicated. If all you're seeing or hearing is your cat just kind of banging at the wall while after it goes to the bathroom, I'm not sure I would go straight to vet for that. Right. And I would look at what substrate are you using, how frequently are you cleaning it out, and how big is it the box. Because if any of those are already optimized, I probably would, or at least like exaggerated based on what's typical pet owner does provide. I would go to one of the other ones. I always recommend, I mean, I've probably done more litter box preference tests than anyone on the planet, with possibly without, with the exception of you coming up soon. But and I find that most cats, most most most cats prefer clumping clay on scented beer. But that's not to say that some cat might not prefer something else, but most prefer. So I would try working with that litter. And then, of course, scooping at least daily.

Kristiina Wilson 14:16

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 14:17

I think if you're able to kind of capture those three things large box, right substrate, to a correct depth, and um what was the last thing I said? Large box scoops daily? Yeah, scoop daily. More likely to set up your cat for not banging on the side of the wall. I would imagine you'd see a reduction in some of those microbehaviors that are telling us perhaps the cat's not liking it, even if he hasn't gotten past the point where he needs to go outside of the box.

Multi Cat Stress And Litter Access

Speaker 1 14:43

Totally.

Kristiina Wilson 14:43

So because elimination is such a vulnerable behavior for cats, how much do you think social stress influences litter box behavior in multi-cat homes?

Speaker 1 14:52

I think it depends on the cats. Yeah, but I would say it's likely to be a big factor in a lot of homes. I think that much like litter box preferences, there are subtle behaviors there that might be indicating to you that the cat doesn't really like it, but you might not be as good at reading them. The same goes for intercat tension. I think that a lot of people say, Well, my cats don't fight. And so they're obviously fine with each other. But we see those micro behaviors there that are not always super easy to pick up on. I mean, so some people easily describe their cats' relations as relationship as good or harmonious, and then when you actually get a look at a video of them, you can pick up on some of those inner tensions, and you think, okay, this is a home where certainly I could see that a cat blocking another cat from using a litter box and it not being clearly apparent to the owner.

Kristiina Wilson 15:43

Yep.

Speaker 1 15:44

So I think there are for sure homes where the two cats, absolutely two or more cats, absolutely love each other, and that's probably not an issue at all. But I do not think that's every home. And I think it's likely more homes than not, you know?

Kristiina Wilson 15:59

Yeah, unfortunately, I agree. I I feel like I hear that from clients a lot too, that though they will come to see me for litter box behavior. And of course, one of the first questions is, you know, how do your cats get along? Is there bullying? Oh no, no, no. Well, do you ever see one of the cats just kind of lurking around the box when they're not going and kind of blocking your other cat? Oh yeah. There's a disconnect between, I think, what people understand is litter box bullying and and you know what it what it actually looks like. Did did the study change kind of how you think about the relationship between medical and behavioral litter box

Clean Vs Dirty What Cats Choose

Kristiina Wilson 16:34

problems?

Speaker 1 16:35

I think like so many things in life, behavior and medical are so so related, it can be difficult to tease them apart entirely. I think that I am not a veterinarian, so all I can do is my best to set up the litter box to meet the cat's preferences as much as possible. But if we don't do that, then we are likely to c well, they're more likely to cause a medical issue as the UTIs we are talking about.

Kristiina Wilson 16:59

And so the two really are kind of connected in a in an inextricable way in so many and so many Yeah, especially things like fluted and things that are so stress-bound and deal with inflammation and cats are so sensitive to those things. They are one of our most sensitive guy. He has fluted and it just is always a battle between trying to he's super smart and so do like you know, giving him enough enrichment and doing clicker training and taking him on harness walks and making sure he goes outside and all of these things so that he doesn't become so stressed that he blocks and it's a whole thing with and I find that these cats are often super smart and require so much more additional intellectual stimulation than maybe some of the dumber guys in our house. I know they're just dumb and happy and like those guys are so easy. Anyway, moving on. Um, I wanted to also talk about your other paper, which is does previous use affect litter box appeal in multicat households? Um, I think that is probably a pretty self-explanatory title for our listeners. But you do you want to tell us a little bit about the study and what you did and what you found?

Speaker 1 18:03

Sure. This is one of my favorite studies I ever did because it was silly, but also revealed some really interesting stuff.

Kristiina Wilson 18:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1 18:11

So, I mean, there is the obvious, I mean, we tell people to clean litter boxes regularly because it is assumed that cats prefer a clean litter box. But nobody had actually ever shown it. So we thought, okay, well, let's do that. But also, thinking about these multi-cat homes, does it matter if the litter box is dirty with your waste or with someone else's waste? And then on top of that, does it matter what kind of waste? Like, is urine worse than feces? And then on top of that, well, assuming that it is the waste, is it the smell of the waste or the physical obstruction and visual obstruction of the waste? So we did, oh my gosh, like a number of different ways to look at this. It seemed like such a simple study when we first discussed it, but we just kept adding other layers to try to tease apart this onion that is litter box behavior. So we looked at, we had three research questions. The first is just, how do they feel about a dirty litter box versus a clean litter box? And then within that, okay, well, then separating that out does so, which, by the way, yes, they prefer a clean litter box. This was a clear preference. Um, and that was uh both for pee and and for pooin. So they preferred to both urinate and defecate in a clean litter box. Then we looked at, okay, well, does it matter if the dirty litter box is dirtied by yourself or dirtied by another cat? And importantly, in every one of these comparisons, there it's another cat that they know and have a somewhat harmonious relationship. So housed cats that are separated at night. We would, again, I'm sure there were little spats here and there, like little tensions with these microbehaviors, but there were never, there were no fights in these groups. So then we looked at if a litter box was dirtied by urine and feces of yourself from the day before, or the urine and feces of your buddy. So we gave them two litter boxes and they had they got to choose which of these they got to use. But we found that if they were provided with these two dirty litter boxes with the different identities of your users, there was no difference in preference. So they did not care. They preferred a clean box, but it didn't matter who dirtied it, which was really interesting, I think. Yeah. Then we looked at, then the next question was we wanted to look at if the smell of waste was a factor. So we wanted to make the box smell like stuff, but without having the physical obstruction. So I had some technicians at the time and they hated this part of the process the most. So I made them take some feces from a familiar cat and liquefy it and then distill it down to just like the essence of poo. So it smelled really bad, but we could only put like one little mil in the box. And we took one mil of urine from a familiar cat as well. So these are was a really stinky process. But so then we started offering different boxes of water, uh, different boxes for them to do preference tests between where we did one mil of urine in one box and one mil of just water in one box, one mil of liquefied feces from a familiar cat in one box, and one mil of distilled water in another box, one mil of urine and one mil of liquefied feces in one box versus what two mils of distilled water. So really trying to look at that combination effect. And one mil of urine from a familiar cat versus one mil of liquefied feces from a familiar cat. And none of this mattered to them. The smell itself, and believe me, it really smelled. And it was in the box specifically. They did not care. None of this had any impact on their preferences.

Kristiina Wilson 21:31

Well, you did all of this work and they were like, we don't care. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 21:35

In my experience with cat preference tests, they either, it's either super significant or not significant at all. There's rarely like P equals 0.04. Yeah. Really, really significant or not at all, which is super cool. Yeah, they're nice of the cats to do it that way.

Kristiina Wilson 21:52

It's true. They have strong opinions. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:55

So then we moved on. And if any of your listeners aren't following, Super well here. I invite you to look at the paper by uh itself. I have in my favorite boxes and what they looked like. So this next part was my favorite part. And it was my tech's favorite part because they thought the other one smelled really bad, but this one was just ridiculous. Yes. But this is where we wanted to really mimic the clumps of the urine and the logs of the feces without any smell.

Kristiina Wilson 22:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1 22:24

One for the urine clump, we tried 30 milliliters of saline solution. So we wanted to like look at dose effect basically. So we wanted to look at what if it was just like a little bit of urine versus what if it was a lot of urine. So for dose effect, we did one clump of 25 milliliters of saline solution was the small dose, and the large dose was three clumps of 60 milliliters of saline solution. So we looked at each of those boxes and compared to a totally empty box, no obstruction. And then we did, then to mimic the feces, we used gelatin logs. So we just got some of those, like they're molds that you use to make tubular ice cubes to fit down the neck of a water bottle. So we used those, but instead we used like plain gelatin and we uh experimented with a couple of different amounts of gelatin versus water to try to get it to be the closest texture to like a healthy poop log. So it was it was a weird day for the technicians. But we eventually settled on the the right dilution factor. And so we did for the the dose comparisons, we did one gelatin log in a litter box versus an empty litter box, or three gelatin logs in a litter box versus an empty litter box. And so for all of those, we found a significant effect of all of them, with one exception. But so cats really preferred to urinate in the clean litter box for all of those situations versus any of the physical obstruction categories. And they de preferred to defecate in all of those situations, with one exception when it was just one gelatin log versus a clean litter box. They didn't seem to really care. They wouldn't use either box pretty frequently. Right. So then we decided to kick it up a notch and we decided to do kind of that combination of urine and feces together. So we had one small clump of urine and one gelatin log versus nothing. And we had three clumps of the large clumps of urine and three of the gelatin lugs versus nothing. Yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 24:25

They were probably like crazy, yeah.

Speaker 1 24:27

And then one clump, so I'll stop there for now and say, yeah, they really preferred the clean box even more in those, obviously. So then we wanted to really test the urine versus the feces. So we did one clump of the small urine clump versus one gelatin log, and three clumps of the large urine clump versus the three gelatin logs. And they preferred, they strongly preferred to poop and pee on the gelatin logs versus the urine clumps. So this is so way too much results, probably, to be talking about on a podcast. I just love this stuff. I think it's so interesting. Yeah. So it's such a, I think it's uh like a uh creative to the heart of the question. And so what I can say here from this is they don't care who the prerose user is. I mean, it might be different if we picked a cat that they really didn't get along with at all, but we didn't test that. We had enough reference tests on the Goazis. Plus, they that we didn't have a cat that they didn't like. So but if you're using, they don't care about the scent, they really care about the physical obstructions, and they seem to care much more about the urine clumps than about the fecal logs. So what I think is really I really take away from this is that I used to, you know, you see so many commercials for cat litter, and it'll be like this cat who's like plugging his nose with the scent lines uh coming off the litter box. Right. I don't like those scents that are coming off the litter box.

Kristiina Wilson 25:42

Well, they're awful.

Speaker 1 25:43

We should get rid of it by cleaning the litter boxes, but it's not for the cat, it's for us. The cat doesn't seem to care that much, which I was, I did not expect. And then when it turns to the physical obstructions, we need to get rid of those as much as possible. And we need to be getting both the urine and the feces. But that urine is kind of actually the one that bothers them the most. Right.

Kristiina Wilson 26:02

I wonder why that is. Do you have any thoughts about why?

Speaker 1 26:05

Think as long as their poop is healthy, they can kind of kick it to the side, and the volume of the urine might be more like you know, when you, if you do happen to get a little behind on your litter boxing and you're going to feces really isn't what you're battling. You're battling large clumps of urine that gather at the bottom of the box and you get sticking. That's fair. That's my guess, but really at the end of the day, I can recommend what to do, but I cannot get right into that kitty's mind and ask them. This is as close to asking them as you can get.

Kristiina Wilson 26:38

I know. It's too bad we can't give them a survey because I sure have a lot of questions that I that I can't answer with camera studies alone either. Did you happen to notice anything? And this obviously this wasn't in your paper, but this is just a personal interest that I have noticed in our personal cats that there has always been one cat who, once we clean, we know we clean all the boxes at once. There's always one of our cats who tends to be like the bossiest like head cat or whatever, will go through and mark in each box as we clean them. Like as we're cleaning the boxes, first it was our cat Steve who passed, and now it's our one-year-old CH cat who is just, she's also, they're both tuxedos, and they have to go in each box and pee or poop or something in every single clean box as we're cleaning them to mark it. And I'm wondering if you saw any kind of a similar behavior if we just had two insane cats.

Speaker 1 27:25

So in this study, all the cats lived together during the day, but they lived in their own enclosures overnight, mostly so that we could collect this data for our motor box use. There's also a picture of the enclosure in the paper if you're interested in looking at it. But so for this study, no, because they only had their own boxes. But I will say in my house, I think it's just a race between the cats to see who can mark the box as soon as I am done cleaning it out. So it's just whoever's fastest that. But that'd be interesting. With 15 cats, you could really have a good sample size to figure it out.

Kristiina Wilson 27:54

Well, it's it's always it's always egg every single time. And and before her, it was always Steve. So what implications does this then have for the kind of classic one box per cat plus one recommendation?

Smell Doesn’t Matter Obstruction Does

Speaker 1 28:06

This one where n equals the number of cats equation is based on two things. Just one, assuming you're putting those boxes in different areas. Yeah. It's really just giving them opportunities to not be, you know, kept from using the bathroom. But two, I think a large part of it is that most owners, most pet parents, are scooping the box once a day, maximum. Right. Like I think there's lots of us out there who scoop it more than once a day. But most pet parents, I'm really just trying to get the get it in their head that you just have to do it once a day because I think there's a lot out there who are scooping less frequently. So if we can get to that once a day, that's great. And the more litter boxes you have, the less it matters how frequently you're scooping it. Because that just means that there is less opportunity for that waste to accumulate to get to that point where you have enough physical obstruction that it's really gonna bother them.

Speaker 2 28:52

Right.

Speaker 1 28:52

So I think that how it would relate to that is it's just that more support for the logic of n plus one, where n equals the number of cats. And perhaps saying that if you absolutely need to go under that number, for example, you live in an apartment, there's not a lot of great opportunities, you need to up the frequency of scooping.

Kristiina Wilson 29:11

Right. Yeah, I agree. Did you see at all um in this study or in any of your other studies, cats entering the box to do one function leaving, and then coming back to that box or another box within the same time period to do a second function? So to going to pee in one box, leaving, and going to another box immediately to poop.

Speaker 1 29:33

So I don't I might have seen it, I didn't write it down, right? But I do know that anecdotally, I've talked to lots of pet parents who have multiple cats, multiple boxes, and they say some pet parents will say, you know, Fluffy always uses box number one and Rodriguez always uses box number two. They just kind of have their own boxes. And then I know equal number of pet parents who tell me that it's funny, the darnedest thing, they both always pee in box one and poop in box two. I don't know why. So I think that there's a lot more to it. I think there's a gonna be, my guess would be, a big relationship between, like a big association between the relationship and the cats and how they choose to use the boxes.

Kristiina Wilson 30:11

Right.

Speaker 1 30:12

But that's a study for another day, as you said. It is.

Kristiina Wilson 30:14

There's there's so many bathroom studies to be done, just so many. I also really like the name Rodriguez for a cat. That was a very, very good job on pulling that one out.

Dr. Jacklyn Ellis 30:24

He's my favorite cat in shelter right now. So there's got it.

Kristiina Wilson 30:29

So how do you kind of balance these evidence-based recommendations with the reality that we just talked about, that cats are still individuals with preferences, right?

Speaker 1 30:39

Yeah, I think of these these studies tell us overall what a cat's preference is. Right. What cat's preferences are overall. And I think that that in general is always the best place to start, unless you have very clear evidence that maybe start a different place. But so if you have a cat, if you're working with a client who has a cat that's going out of box, I would always check to see how their preferences, how what they're being provided, aligns with these preferences that are shown through in these studies. And if anything is not kind of matching up, that's probably the first place I would start with recommendations. But that's not to say that that's where I'm gonna end. So let's say you're working with the cat that's going out of box and the owner is providing silica cat litter. Right. I might say, okay, first thing I'm gonna try is a preference test or complete replacement, but I find preference tests are uh kinder to the cat. And often

N Plus One And Scooping Frequency

Speaker 1 31:26

when you get some pushback, like she's always used silica before, that can't possibly leave the problem. We say, well, let's just try it for a short period of time and she'll tell us whether she has a strong preference or not. It's it's often an easier way for me to work with clients. But so then I might start with the silica clay versus the clumping clay or silica pellets versus the clumping clay as my first go-to port of call. But it might not work, right? They might still prefer the silica. So that would be how I would be say, okay, well, then I guess you actually do prefer this. So I'm gonna go on to something else. Let's look at box size, let's look at, you know, location, let's look at something else. So I always think of if a cat has is going outside a box at all, how is what they're being offered differ from the general best practice recommendations that are uh shown to be true by these scientific studies? And that would be where I would first start with trying to make

Out Of Box Poop Medical Links

Speaker 1 32:10

changes.

Kristiina Wilson 32:10

Yeah, that makes sense. Do you this is again just for my own personal interest. That's the whole podcast is about my own personal interest since this is my area of interest also right now. Do you feel the same way about when you have clients come to you for out-of-box defecation or house soiling?

Speaker 1 32:26

Interesting that you say that. I'm actually just about to submit two papers on specifically on out-of-box defecation for publication.

Kristiina Wilson 32:33

I'm just interested because I I do always have I have a good amount of clients who come to me for mittening behaviors. And really? Yeah. I always think, you know, first, I think the literature often says, you know, 95% of these cases are medical, right? So like the first thing you need to do is like a full veterinary checkup because it could be IBS IBD, it could be lymphoma, it could be like gastritis, it could be like a million different things. I'm curious, what is your feeling? And what what did your these studies, what have they revealed? When when obvious things like is it a large cat or a long-haired cat and the box is too small, or you know, things like that that are very obvious have they rolled out?

Speaker 1 33:12

Outside of these papers, but inside my experience here working at the shelter, I agree that a very large percentage of out-of-box defecation only cats are medical in in at least late, they at least have comorbidities that are that are medically concerning. And that the highest percentage of those that we see are constipation and mobility issues. Yep. So degenerative joint disease, spondylosis. These are very, very common.

Kristiina Wilson 33:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1 33:37

I would say if you are going to a veterinarian to get your cat checked out for the out-of-box defecation that they're exhibiting, I would say make sure that you bring in lots of videos of your cat ambulating at home because you're not gonna see those same behaviors at home. So take multiple views of the cat walking up and down the stairs, jumping on and off things, and playing so that they can really get a better idea and make sure that your vet does a really thorough ortho exam whenever possible, because that's gonna be kind of one of the best ways to to diagnose a lot of the mobility disorders that are associated with out-of-box defecation that we see in our shelter. And then, of course, bring in a fecal sample so they can see what that poop looks like because constipation is a very big one as well. Yeah, that's true. And I think it's really pain-related as pain-associated conditions seem to be very, very linked to out-of-box defecation in the cases we see in our shelter.

Kristiina Wilson 34:28

Yeah. That totally makes sense. And I'm I'm working a case of that right now as well of a a cat who from kittenhood had really bad, like diarrhea and then constipation, and that has been fixed. But I think because of that, it has now become this negative association. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's challenging. Yep, it sure is.

Speaker 1 34:49

And often while they're going through pain, the caregiver is doing everything they can to offer them different types of litter boxes, which is great. That's absolutely nice, but now they're all poisoned.

Kristiina Wilson 35:00

I know that's that's that's exactly that's the issue. And then there also has to be some caregiver retraining as well, because the yeah, that there's you know how it is. There's a whole host host of things that happen, but that definitely is um a place where those issues are intertwined. So that sort of leads me to ask how much of what we call behavior problems are actually normal cat behaviors that are happening in environments that don't meet their needs.

Speaker 1 35:24

Yeah. I often call them undesirable behaviors. Yeah. Because that puts it more back on me. Right. Because this is a behavior I don't want to see. How can I do something about that? And so 99% of the time, well, a very large percentage of the time, these are places, as you as you imply, places where the cat's needs are not being met in some way. And if these are litter box problems, we need to make sure that they're medically getting what they need, as well as that we're doing everything that we can to optimize the environment, whether that be the litter box environment or the household in general, to make sure that they're not terribly stressed and that they're not terribly bored and and and the list goes on. But in terms of other behaviors, it really kind of all comes to the same forefront. A lot of the undesirable behaviors that we see in shelter are obviously fear-related behaviors, and we think about it the same way. There are some other behaviors where, of course, things get a little bit more concerning when we're talking about significant human-directed aggression, particularly, and to some degree aggression towards other pets in the home as well. But we really do address them starting from the first same place, right? Thinking about how we we can do techniques that will kind of work on their environmental enrichment and then health as well, and then taking a step up and going to kind of just modifying the environment for management to make things less less apparent. And I think I think that's really the key to all of it is thinking about them as undesirable behaviors, more as behavior problems. Because from the cat's perspective, it's not a problem.

Kristiina Wilson 36:45

Right. Yeah, that's that's true. I think cats are all out here living their best life, and it's just yeah.

Speaker 1 36:51

You just have to be detectives around them, be like, okay, how can I make you happier?

Sudden Changes Spraying And Next Steps

Kristiina Wilson 36:55

Yeah, it's that's very true. For someone listening whose cat has suddenly stopped using the litter box, are there some things that they should evaluate?

Speaker 1 37:04

Really, probably any sudden change in your behavior. The first thing I'm always going to be talking about is considering a trip to the veterinarian.

Kristiina Wilson 37:10

Yep.

Speaker 1 37:11

And so that is huge. If they've if you've ruled out medical, I generally tend to think about a box elimination as one of three causes other than medical. So we're talking something's wrong with the litter box. So trying to optimize that as much as you can. Something's really stressing that cat out. So that could be um you just moved, a new person moved into your house. Perhaps, you know, we hear this one all the time: like, my son went away to university and now he's coming home, and the cat's always peeing right on his hockey bag or something. You're like, and that's the cat being insecure in their relationship with that person. So trying to reforge a group scent. So there's something that they're stressed about. Um, and then the final one is kind of is it being blocked from accessing the litter box? And that's not just from the cat itself, but sometimes, you know, there's something about the room like the laundry machine goes on that is not a physical block, but that is a block. It's a sensory block. It's just like no. And so those are the ways I generally tend to think about. And that's typical litter box use. I'm not talking about spraying at all, but yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 38:10

Yeah. Well, yeah, talking about spraying, I will say we never had an issue until we moved out here to the country. We live like in the middle of the forest, and there's a lot of we have bears, bobcats, raccoons, possums, coyotes, like groundhogs, uh everything. Last night there was a huge raccoon fight on our deck, and that activated our nervous cat, and he, you know, got upset. And we also have a lot of feral cats that we TNR, but in the process, you know, before they're TNR'd, they certainly do a lot of spraying around. And that's something that I think people who also live in rural environments or areas where there's a lot of non-not neutered feral male cats should be aware of that. That can also set off their cats to spray all over their home, causing them to live in a pea house.

Speaker 1 38:54

We've I was also told by someone one time, I've never evaluated this, but I think it sounds logical. Um, but often if your cat is spraying in your home, think about where they're spraying. Because if they're spraying on exterior walls, probably something from the outside of the house dressing them out. Yeah. And then if they're spraying on interior walls, there's something inside their house that's stressing them out. So I got that one who lives in my mind. Don't know exactly how true it is, but it's it makes a lot of sense.

Kristiina Wilson 39:17

When should owners suspect like pain or medical disease if even if the cat seems otherwise normal?

Speaker 1 39:24

I know we kind of spoke to this, but it's tough because cats really do hide so much of these types of behaviors. I'll be honest, if there is a big change in elimination behavior at all, I would definitely go to the vet. I understand that these days the cost of vet care is prohibitive in so many cases. But because cats hide pain so well, this can be one of the most obvious behaviors that we can see that can really indicate there's something physically wrong with your cat. So if they stop using the litter box suddenly, or if their frequency of litter box use changes suddenly, or if they're obviously if they're straining or making sounds while using the litter box, I would be a trip right to the vet for me.

Kristiina Wilson 40:02

Yep. That that

The One Upgrade To Make Today

Kristiina Wilson 40:03

makes sense. Um if someone could make one improvement for their cat's litter box setup today, what would you recommend?

Speaker 1 40:10

I am a big advocate for the underbed storage tote, I suppose. Really, it doesn't have to be an underbed storage tote, it just has to be a big box. The larger, the better. Some cats, you know, we have a cat in shelter right now who just pees this way. Like it's not spraying, it's just how pee comes out of them. So an underbed storage, he just pees like horizontally straight out. So using a litter box, an underbed storage tote for a litter box would be terrible for him. Yeah. But you could get a high-sided, what we have for him is actually designed for an indoor litter box for dogs, but it's very expensive. But you could, we just happen to have one donated, but you could get a large rubber mate tote and cut a big U gouge in the front of it so they can get in and out. Um, there's lots of ways you can DIY. In fact, I will never buy a commercially available litter box for the rest of my life, I don't think. Yeah. DIY is they're always cheaper.

Kristiina Wilson 41:00

They are.

Speaker 1 41:00

And they're more appropriate for cats. So I guess my number one thing would be really think hard about what is the largest litter box you can live with in your house and get that.

Kristiina Wilson 41:09

Yeah, that that totally makes sense. And I will say my halfway done study really backs that up because our most popular by far is the giant, giant tote that's in a bathtub that we sacrificed. And even that, sometimes I'm like, I was telling my wife the other day, I was like, what if we just got rid of the tote and we just lined the tub in plastic and just dumped litter in there because they would love it. She was like, We're not doing that. We have to drop litter in somehow. I know. Yeah, the line had to be drawn, but I was like, they would be so happy. So, what studies do you

New Research Resources And Closing

Kristiina Wilson 41:43

have coming up? Can you that can you can talk about? Is there anything that you're up to that you want to promote or discuss?

Speaker 1 41:48

Sure. I just had a pair of companion papers come out about uh post-adoption success of under-socialized gift different cats on the range of how the spectrum of how socialized they were and how they fared post-adoption, as well as one about kittens, under-socialized kittens of different ages and how they fared post-adoption. Um feel free to check that out. I have a free course online called Beyond Doing Better, uh, that's goes along with a paper I published on some ordinal writing scales that can be used with really good inter-observer reliability to assess cat behavior. And then there's so the the course is available online for free. Anyone who wants to check it out. It also has some credits for some CE credits for IAABC and C C P D T.

unknown 42:36

Cool.

Speaker 1 42:36

And then I'm just in the finalization stages of more directly related to our topic today, on two companion papers about out-of-box defecation. I think that out-of-box elimination doesn't get as much interest as it should in the literature, but what is out there is pretty much entirely exclusively on out-of-box urination.

Kristiina Wilson 42:57

Yes.

Speaker 1 42:57

So I wanted to just shed some light on a not very much talked-about topic, the out-of-box defecation specifically. So one is a post-adoption follow-up study looking at cats with a history of out-of-box defecation to see if they re-offend in their subsequent homes. And the other is looking at medical conditions that we found at Toronto Humane Society to see which ones are most frequent in cats that have a history of out-of-box defecation. And then we also, it's the same cats in both studies. So we're also able, well, some of the same cats. So we're also able to look to see if those cats with the different medical conditions, which of those medical conditions were associated with more or less rates of out-of-box defecation in those subsequent homes. So it'll be really interesting stuff. I'm excited to get that out there.

Kristiina Wilson 43:40

I'm so excited to read that. Literally, I cannot stress how excited I am to read that because I think it's so relevant and so will be so helpful because a lot of people have this problem and they they just get mad and they they don't understand what to do. And then I think a lot of behavior professionals also don't quite know what to do in these cases. Like you said, I think there's so much. Literature about out-of-the-box urination, but then we're kind of just left like, ugh.

Speaker 1 44:05

And you know what? There's not a lot out there to guide veterinarians. Yeah. There's a lot of examples of standardized workups to perform, but standardized workups are not always, especially with the rising cost of veterinary care, not always a great option for everyone. So if there's a way we can kind of help tell them what the frequency is of the ones we're finding, and which of these conditions are more associated with continued re-offending. I will say though that one thing that's lucky about out-of-box defecation is that most people would rather clean up their cat's poop out of the box than their cat's pee out of the box.

Kristiina Wilson 44:37

So that is true. And then you don't normally have to throw away your couch.

Speaker 1 44:42

Yeah, exactly. So we find adopters are not as fussy about out-of-box thing. If we say this cat has a history of out-of-box defecation, but not urination, they say, oh, well, I guess that's not so bad.

Kristiina Wilson 44:52

Yeah.

Speaker 1 44:53

Yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 44:55

Positive? Yeah, absolutely. Where can people learn more about your work? Do you have a website? I will put links to all it to your studies and everything, everything you mentioned on the show notes.

Speaker 1 45:05

But I will send you a link to that course. Okay, perfect. Really just Googling me, and especially with the words Toronto Humane Society, will get you a lot of places really quickly. But I'll send you a link to that course because it solves so many problems that I was struggling with. And I find that a lot of organizations are struggling with, which is you say, How is this cat doing? You ask your volunteers, how is this cat doing? And they say, Oh, she's doing better. And I say, Okay, well, what does better mean? Better at what? What be is better good or is it just less bad? And what behaviors are you seeing that are improving? And it just gives a really easy way to quantify that. And I've found that a lot of other shelters who already started implementing this system and have just been raving about the it's creating a lot less confusion and it's e allowing them to be much more efficient and with their their case management strategies and allowing them to pivot much more quickly when something isn't working to recognize that right away and be. I bet. Yeah.

Kristiina Wilson 45:57

Well, and it also gives you a tool to be able to, if you want, make a spreadsheet and plug it into the spreadsheet and then make some charts. And look at it.

Dr. Jacklyn Ellis 46:05

I love a good I love a good spreadsheet. I love a good graph.

Kristiina Wilson 46:09

Dude, you have no idea we have one going for Kitten Man for our nervous peer. And it just like I've got spreadsheets for everything, for everything. Woman after my own heart. Yeah, big dork. You know, I would I'm gonna take a look at that. I would love to talk to you again at some point about your your kitten work, about your shelter work. I think there's there you're doing so much interesting work that I think would be also interesting to our listeners.

Speaker 1 46:32

My pleasure. This was a blast today, so happy to come on again anytime.

Kristiina Wilson 46:36

I'm so glad. Thank you so much um for being on the podcast and for talking to me about all things cat bathroom related.

Dr. Jacklyn Ellis 46:44

We're number one at number two.

Kristiina Wilson 46:45

That's a great slogan. You need to put that on a shirt.

Speaker 1 46:48

My mom always says that about me. She used to, she always called my theses my my PhD, my poo HD, and then my master's thesis, she called my thesis thesis. She's very clever, my mom.

Kristiina Wilson 46:59

You need to put all of these things on some merch, honestly. Like build yourself a website and put it all. People will buy this. Just make yourself some side income, like hats, t-shirts. I think hats would fly. Like love it. Theses theses. I would buy that immediately. Just saying. Anyway, thank you so much for being on the show, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you're looking for one-on-one support with behavior issues like litter box problems, aggression, anxiety, or multicat dynamics, you can find me through my behavior consulting business, Catitude Adjustment, at catitude-adjustment.com. If you like the episode, please consider leaving a rating or review. It really helps us grow. For more episodes, show notes, and resources, head to hissandtelpodcast.com. Huge thanks to Cat Beats for the music, and I'll see you next time.