Sassy in prison.... Day 1...

It's with a very heavy heart that we have decided to cage Sassy because of her bathroom issues.  Wednesday she started peeing on the pad (she's hasn't done that since early August) and this morning she both peed and pooped on the pad right next to the cat box.  Needless to say, we're both frustrated.  We've tried all the methods except this one and this is our last resort.  From here, taking her back to the shelter is our only option and we're sure no one will adopt her if they know she won't use her cat box 100% of the time.  Our plan of attack is to keep her in the cage during the day when she can watch the birds and put her in our downstairs laundry room at night so she can walk around a bit.  Both areas will have a cat box just a few steps away.  We will remove the rugs in the bathroom before we put her in just in case she's tempted by them.

Carl is also off renting a rug shampooing machine so we can clean the carpet in the living room.  We want to keep the litter box in the bathroom if this works; we will not be returning a litter box to the living room and hope that cleaning the carpet will make her lose interest in the living room as a bathroom.

This is the cage we used when we took her to Wisconsin.  Ironically, she spent an entire week in our cabin with no messes at all.  She consistently used her litter box.

The rugs in the laundry room will be removed before we put her in tonight.  She'll have more room to move around and I've even added some of her toys.

If this works, we will move the bookcase and build an enclosure around the box so it's a little less noticeable.  We clean the box every time she uses it so odor shouldn't be an issue.  She'll be confined at least until the end of January, then we will let her out in the family room during the day when we can watch her but lock her up at night for a few weeks.  We should know by the middle of February if we can retrain her to use the litter box.