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Copropha…coppero...she eats cat poop!

Behavioral Issues
  • Okay, not so much eats it as brings it out of the cat box and puts it out for us to see. Not a HUGE ordeal but man we want to break her of it without alienating the cats in the process. It's just nasty and unhealthy.

    We've tried boundary spray and green apple (to make the cat poop taste bad! :) ), and naturally we let her know we don't approve of it when she does it, but nothing seems to deter her. To a dog, cat poop must taste like pumpkin pie or something.

    Anyone got some ideas? We can't really fence off the area as one of our cats is pretty old. They're also indoor cats so letting them out doesn't quite work either.

  • it IS a nasty thing, LOL.

    I don't have that problem now as the cats live upstairs and the dogs downstairs.

    I did buy a covered cat box and turn it so the opening was facing the wall; that slowed the dogs down…. a bit.

    Could you put the cat box in one room, say a bath or laundry room, and put a smaller cat door in the door? It would have to be a small one because the B's can squeeze through the larger ones.
    Any chance of that?

  • Can you put it in a room where you can install a cat door and then keep the door closed? This is what we do. We also have indoor only cats and have the litterboxes out in the garage with a cat door as access to the garage. We don't open and close the garage very often so this works pretty well for us. It really could be any room that has a door though. The dogs don't fit through the cat door so they can't get to the litterbox.

  • Dallas goes to the cat box as well. Ick.

    At my mom's we actually just cut a small square at the bottom of the laundry room door for the cat to slide in. Dallas has tried getting through it actually [his dog food is kept in the same room] & got stuck. Haha.

  • I keep my litter boxes in the basement and up on an old dresser. I put a chair in front of the dresser so the cats can jump up easily, but Stormie can't - his cat poo breath drove me to desperate measures! lol!!!

  • Since you said you had an elderly cat, this probably wouldn't be an option for you, but maybe somebody else on this thread could benefit: We put our cat litter boxes in one room & put a baby gate up. The cats can jump over it. Booger has never tried. Lola jumped over once, and has never seemed to have the desire to jump over again. I don't know why.
    Obviously this wouldn't work, either, if your basenji can jump or climb a baby gate. But it works very well for us.

  • We have a special litter box we had made so the cats could hid from her but the problem is our older cat is about the same size as the dog. So she still gets in the cat poop!:(

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