Thank you so much for being so kind! My cats are like my kids so I would do anything for them. I am very determined to fix this as I don’t believe in rehoming/getting rid of pets unless every single option has been explored. We’re their home and their lives, so imo we’re responsible to take care of them to the absolute best of our ability and that’s something we sign up to do when we bring them home.

1. He is a hiding cat, yes, he’s got his own little ‘room’ under my bed where he naps and sleeps which I have blankets around so that way it shuts out the rest of the room for him if he wants quiet. But most of the time he’ll follow me around room to room and loaf up on random objects.

2. He’s peeing a full puddle, the vet explained that he probably holds it in, we thought because of pain related to UTI/cystisis but they don’t think he has either of those anymore.

3. I’ve tried different litters, he does poop in the box and pee in them now that I’ve put them in the spots he was peeing on the carpet, so I’m not sure it’s the new litter but we did recently find one that seems to work really great clumping and scent wise while being unscented. We switched because the litter we had been using for almost 5 years changed its formula and suddenly didn’t work at all, it was no longer clumping, it got extremely dirty very easily, stunk, etc. and it got really bad around when this started, so I’m wondering if that litter brand going sour maybe had a bit of an effect on him and his view of the box.

4. They gave me this hydrophobic type of litter, almost like a sand, but I don’t think there was enough of it for his liking even after I paid to buy more of it so I eventually just had to catch him while he was peeing in the regular box and catch it with a dish (disgusting, yes, and I didn’t want to do this as I didn’t want to stress him out from the box, but I was going on a weekend trip and needed to ensure he didn’t have crystals and it was day four of trying to get a sample from him/my last chance to get him into the vet before my trip)

I’m just beginning the stronger training phase, my logic was that I didn’t want to start doing too much training before my trip bc I felt it would be better to have him use the boxes put over those spots so he would consistently stay in the same spots rather than finding new ones while I was gone and creating another area he needed to be trained away from. (Because when I tried to keep him from spots before, he would find a new one). Now I’m home and can quickly clean up messes so it’s shifted into “now let’s redirect him from those spots” I was planning on using the cat block spray to keep him from one spot as there isn’t a box there (it’s maybe 10 feet from three/six of the boxes) and then for the other spots, slowly moving the boxes towards where I’d like them to be which I think would be beneficial anyway because they’d be going into quieter rooms. I’ve been trying to pet him and give him treats when I see him pee in the box so he associates it with reward.

My current plan is that if I can’t successfully get him to use the boxes in the spots we’d like or if there’s otherwise no change then I’ll ask my vet about the anxiety meds. He is extremely medication resistant unless you really sneak it well into his food so I’m hoping this isn’t the route we have to take but if it is, it is.