The Battle for the Litter Box

You know how most cats want their litter box clean or they won't use it? Well, my Jack is just the opposite. He takes offense when I clean his litter box. I think that's why every time I go into the bathroom to go to the bathroom, he follows me in there to make sure I'm not cleaning his litter box.

It began with him just watching me like a hawk and meowing in protest when I started scooping out his poop. It progressed to him slapping my hand with his paw to try to get me to leave his poop alone. The latest thing is he'll jump into the bathtub and start frantically pawing at the tub while I remove his poop from his litter box.

And he's not much happier when I give him clean litter. He watches where I dump it so he can try and get at it. One time I made the mistake of dumping it in a garbage I left on the kitchen floor, planning to dump it in the morning, and by morning he'd had it full of holes with litter falling all over the kitchen floor when I picked the bag up to throw it out.

And when it comes to filling up the litter box with fresh litter, I have to be fast, or he'll try to jump in it while I'm still pouring the litter in his box. The second the litter goes into his box, he's jumping in to pee on it to mark it as his own.

I thought if I put it up on the toilet to fill it he'd wait until it was filled and back in its spot on the floor. Nope! I was still pouring the litter in when he jumped up on the toilet and into the box. He was already peeing in it as I picked him and the box up and put it back in its spot on the floor.

And as I mentioned in a previous post, he likes knocking the clean litter out of the box and on to the bare floor so he can roll around in it on his back. Lately, he's also started knocking a piece of his poop out of the box and playing with it like it's a toy, even though he has plenty of toys.

I've been able to figure out a lot of what his behavior means, but this one has me totally stymied.