hell no, we won't go...

[Petunia]

...in the litter box, if we don't feel like it!

my girls have decided that it's ok to poop every where, including on the carpet (which they never did before)

why are they doing this and are they too old to re train? (not that they were ever "officially" trained in the first place, they just USED to use the litter box pretty faithfully)

oldest girls are 21 mos or so
there are two coming up on a year old
and the babies are still under 6 mos

 

[mamarat]

Probably the younger ones are pooping everywhere and the older ones have to do the same to leave their scent too. Fun and games..lol

 

[jorats]

Did this just happen or has it always happened? Did anything change?
Like mamarat says, it's probably the young ones making the older girls follow their bad habits.
It's never too late to train.

 

[Petunia]

hmm, well a lot has changed recently but I don't know how much of those changes have affected the rats.
There are two less cats in the house and I've been on odd hours because I don't have those two keeping me on some sort of schedule (Nell is pretty flexible about meal times and whatnot)

I have been letting them out to play a lot more often, sometimes as many as five times in one day. Usually for an hour or more each time, the shorter periods are when they themselves go back in the cage and go to sleep LOL


That does make sense that the older ones are marking after the young ones, because it started with a few poops under the cage, and then they ALL had to poop there :roll: so there ended up being quite a nice pile of raisins :giggle:

although the raisins under the cage were first left by Paige- she gets so excited when it's out time that she runs out the cage without stopping to "potty" first, and then doesn't want to go back in til I chase her around for a half an hour and make her go back in :lol:
and Paige will be a year old in October.



Then someone pooped in their Fisher Price castle and of course, everyone else had to poop there too.

I need to steam clean the carpet but I have to wait til the weather is a lot drier to do it. I hope that helps some.

I guess the other change is that I don't go around and pick up all the raisins after every playtime but I've been too stiff and sore to do that recently

I used to clean up the stray ones in the cage too, but haven't been doing that either.

Hmm, maybe the one who's forgotten her training is me :lol:

 

[jorats]

lol sounds like you need to get back into training.

 

[Petunia]

lol sounds like you need to get back into training.

yep it looks that way
:lol:

 

[MissGuardian]

Same happened to me after I got Balder..
He didn´t know how to use the litterbox, so the older ones decided to stop(he was 5ish weeks then)..
When he got older and got more control, he started using the litterbox too, and then the older ones followed.. So here it fixed itself really..

As long as I have two litter boxes in the top floor and one in the bottom that is :gaah: :wallbang:
They just can´t agree on one corner :wallbang: