How can I get my cat to cover her feces consistently?

You can’t, unless you wish to cover them for her, or, follow her around 24/7 with the scooper.

It’s just her particular way of doing things and while it may change, the best you can do is accept her quirk and cope with it.

One of my cats doesn’t cover hers either, but the other is adamant about covering his. Sometimes he’ll get in the box after she’s left it and cover up her poops for her. I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it.

@Coloma I already cover it for her. I normally catch it before she stinks up the whole house. Good thing I love her.

@Seelix Any chance I could borrow your other cat?~

@bobbinhood – Sure, I’ll send him over! He’ll only require a couple of treats as payment :)

Cats are so individualistic about this. One of ours is positively obsessed with covering. Yesterday I saw that he had gotten a roll of paper towels (don’t ask me how) and unrolled the entire thing onto his litter box. There was a pile of paper towel about a foot high. The litter just wasn’t doing the job to his satisfaction, apparently.

I don’t have any personal experience with the automated litter boxes, but maybe that would do the trick for you.

@thorninmud – You made me LOL.

Easy solution: take away privileges if it isn’t done properly! lol I’d only resort to this, of course, after having a talk with the cat.

My two ( male & female ) are funny this way.
Marley is fastidious about covering, usually after getting out of the litter box he puts a paw back in and keeps covering just to make sure. lol

Mia covers hers but is not as OCD as Marley.

Infact, she threw up her breakfast yesterday and after cleaning it up and febreezing the carpet I caught Marley making raking motions over the barf spot several hours later. Heh!

But…he is a ‘typical’ sloppy guy when it comes to eating.
He leaves crumbs from the dry food all over the floor from taking each bite out and eating it outside the bowl while Mia never leaves a mess.

I wipe up cat food crumbs with a damp paper towels about 5 times day. :-/

More dominant cats don’t cover their feces. So your cat probably has a healthy ego :>)

@crisw

LOL…purr-fect!
Cat psych 101

Give her a knuckle sandwich next time. Don’t take no for an answer!

I haven’t had the experience you have. I always allowed my cats privacy when it came to bathroom issues. There was never any mess or odor. Perhaps you’re being too intrusive? And the cat is being passive aggressive?

Like @crisw said. The more dominate cats might not cover it. Although my most dominate cat was on her own outside before I rescued her, and she was usually careful about covering. I think because she had to be more vigilant while outside.
I also think if it is a cat that has never been taught differently by the mother they may be less likely to carefully cover their poop.

You really can’t train them to do it. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t. I scoop a lot of poop throughout the day, because mine starts to howl as soon as he makes a deposit.

@thorninmud That’s awesome. I think I’d rather have her not cover her poop than steal all of my paper towels.

@Aster I’m not sure if removing litter box privileges would be punishing her or me! Too bad cat’s don’t think like teenagers. Wait…maybe I’m glad cats don’t think like teenagers.

@crisw You can say that again!

@Sunny2 It’s a good thought, but I don’t think that’s the problem. I’m rarely in the same room when she doesn’t cover.

A tiny, tiny shovel?