Not using the litter box?
Hey all you fellow cat lovers, I know I don't normally post here, but I've "lucked" myself into 5 cats (will be 6 cats, possibly, on Saturday). To make a long story short, my grandmother had 6 cats and I promised I'd take care of them or find homes for them if anything ever happened to her. So, alas, I have 5 cats. The other one is still at her house refusing to be captured, but he's still eating, drinking, and going to the potty.
A little background info, 5 of the 6 cats were cats who could come and go if they wanted to. They were all fixed, and all had their shots, but if they wanted outside they could go. Then it got to the point that only 4 were allowed outside (hehe, Mamoo had her 2 favourites that she didn't want to get hurt outside). We brought home Trey as soon as he came out of the scared state. Trey is a 3-legged brown tabby, absolutely a sweetheart. This is the cat that knew both of my grandparents before they passed. Then, we went to try to capture Jessie, Callie, and Jake, but only managed the first two (Jake is the one refusing to be captured). We've had them here for a little less than a week, and Trey has been here almost twice as long as they have. They were all 3 doing GREAT. My parents went down today to take care of some legal issues, and caught two more of the cats, Jack and Jill. When they arrived at the house, they noticed piles of cat poop all over. Some in the bathtub, some on the rug. We knew it wasn't Jake because he had been there alone without the other two for days and nothing happened, but my uncle let Jack and Jill inside and that's when this all started to happen.
So we know the culprits are Jack and/or Jill. We believe Jack is the one that doesn't know how to use a litter box, or to even go there to poop. Jack is the one that would go outside for a long time, come home, sleep and eat, and then go back out. So he had no real need to learn how to use it. Jill, on the other hand, would be inside for days at a time sometimes. Earlier this evening, we found a pile of cat poop, and we haven't had problems until Jack and Jill arrived.
Thinking it could be Jack, how do I get him to learn? Do I just need to let him outside, hoping he'll come back when he gets hungry? Or what? I need to do something with him tonight, because we're not having cats here who cannot use the litterbox. And we cannot let him poop again on the carpet... something needs to be done tonight. My parents are suggesting to let him out, I'm thinking of just putting him in the bathroom. But that won't solve anything - he'll just poop in the bathtub, or on the floor. He just doesn't know what the litterbox is. I even showed him all of the litterboxes -- some had poop and pee in them (obviously, covered up), but he just didn't know what to do. He even laid down in it!
So what do I do? :( I'm leaning towards just letting him out, but I'm thinking one of you smart cat people will be able to guide me in another direction with terrific advice.
