How Do I Stop Undesirable Cat Behavior?

The most I have ever had was 4 cats at one time and it honestly isn't much worse than having 3 or 2. The only thing that can make a difference is changing cat litter more often in a few more boxes. Feeding, watering and playing isn't much different with cats in larger numbers due to the fact they don't require much attention or upkeep.

Perhaps a little more food trips at the grocery store more often but yeah... Multiple cats isn't really a huge increase in care, once you have one or two it's not much different.

I'm already annoyed by my one cat sometimes <,< hair everywhere
and he poops like a medium sized dog >,>

Not much money to get too much at once, so we'll prolly start with another litter box for now, possibly repellant spray.

We'll see how it goes after that. Thanks everyone for the tips!

Genius! I'll keep that in mind for future incidents with my brat.

I also have problems using the toilet when there is a large group of felines watching me.

I have 4 cats myself, but have had up to 12 visiting at one time. I used to foster litters of kittens, and special need/hard to adopt adult cats. If you are generally a clean person, it it not much more work. Any time someone comes over, I always ask for their honest opinion and only once has someone said they could smell a cat box. I actually had a friend who owned 14 cats, 3 children, 5 dogs, several birds, and 1 guinea pig. Her house ALWAYS looked like it came straight out of a magazine, and smelled like fresh laundry. It's all about what the person can manage.

I have a good friend who has 10 cats in a small 3 bedroom house. She has 7 catboxes and cleans them all daily. (Yes, she is determined to grow up into a crazy cat lady.)

Reasons why cats pee where they shouldn't, many reiterated from above.

Not enough cat boxes. The reasons for this vary with the cats. They include territorially, bullying, personal differences or personality conflicts (I won't pee where HE peed), and the boxes not being acceptably clean to the cat.

I hate to mention it but they also will pee in inappropriate places because they are mad at you, the world, or life the universe and everything and want to teach you a lesson.

Medical problems. While there are many different possible ones, they all boil down to "it hurts to pee there so obviously I need to pee somewhere else."

The inappropriate spot now smells appropriate. Even if you can't smell a thing. Get an enzyme cleaner like Petzime.

I never had intact females show more inappropriate behavior than spayed ones, nor any less for that matter. But get them fixed. Now. Full vet exam with urinary tract emphasis while you are at it.

About the kitten who is nursing off the wrong cat.... They are CATS. They don't care about what you think, or what you intend for them to do. Your job is to dispense food, clean catboxes, and worship them.

i only have 1 cat, and thankfully he doesn't really exhibit most of this bad behavior. most of what people have posted is very helpful, but you do need to keep in mind that cats are animals, and even the best plans aren't going to work 100% of the time. i've had a problem with my cat waking my girlfriend up in the middle of the night for food. he has food in his bowl but he just wants the attention of someone giving him more. we've tried ear plugs, spraying him with water, sleeping pills, and overfilling his bowl before bed, but i've just come to realize that he just wants the attention. and sadly, there isn't much of a remedy for that besides attention.

i can understand the concern for the nursing, but that's imbedded in their DNA. so unless your willing to take the cat for a cat scan and put it on some anti-anxiety medication, you're prob just going to have to cope with that one.

the enzyme cleaners will help to discourage the cats from peeing outside the boxes, but again, that will prob take some time. and i also agree that more boxes will help. as demented as this may sound, a sandbox rather then a small individual litter box might be a better alternative. it also might help to remove some of the fighting if they can take care of business together.

foil can work for the jumping on the counters. also tape works well. leave the sticky side up. cats dislike that feel as well, and it helps to take some of the cat hair out of the air when it lands on it and cleanup is nice and easy, though application is slightly more time consuming then foil.

Put him on a food that does not contain corn.

This is not some silly food fadism, its real. They can't digest corn, it passes through them almost unchanged. It has no nutritive value for them other than sugar (and little for us.) Also the HQ foods from pet food stores produce far smaller stools than the supermarket stuff.

Humans cannot properly digest corn either >.> Fun fact.

Anyway, on topic, thanks every for the responses, really appreciate it.

It's a proven medical cat fact that attention leads to them ignoring you, and you ignoring them makes them annoy you for attention.

SCIENCE!

I'm happy i found something that he will actually eat, no idea what's in it tho >.>
It's just annoying sometimes cause he won't use one of those closed boxes and he loves to use the toilet when i'm using the toilet as well..

That is a lot of cats for one household. I would try to enrich their environment as much as possible (eg plenty of verticle space, play time, fun things to watch like wildlife) and try to make "safe havens" for each of the cats to go to if they are feeling threatened by other cats. Consider getting some Feliway diffuser plug-ins to release some "happy pheromones" into the environment. (Realistically, thinning out your feline herd by adopting out some cats might be necessary.) Here is an excellent resource for how to enrich your house for your cats: OSU's Indoor Pet Initiave

The litterboxes themselves are another big part of the issue. The rule of thumb is to have as many litterboxes as you have cats, plus one more. So yes, 8 litterboxes! But the other component of the litterbox issue is the type, placement and cleaniless. Don't think putting 8 litterboxes in your basement will work -- particularly if you live in a multi-level house. You need to have the litterboxes ideally on every floor of your house. Also, cats do not like covered litterboxes. Studies have also shown that bigger is better. Something like one of those underbed storage boxes is the size of litterbox cats prefer. Finally, consider the cleaniless of the litterboxes. Are you scooping them every day? (Would you want to use a public toilet that hasn't been flushed in a week?)

I'm going to hijack the thread a bit! >.> We took in another cat about 9 months ago, putting the count up to four. Once we got him, we added yet another glorious litter box which increased that count to five. However, the new cat is still terrified of the two other males in the house, thus inducing a piss fest in the basement and the stairway to the basement. He'll rarely come upstairs. One of the other males insists on chasing him whenever he sees him, despite my yelling at him constantly and constant removing him from the area. Any suggestions on getting them to just accept each other's presence? I've considered putting them all in a bathroom to work their ***out, but I'm worried about a bloody battle commencing once I close the door.

I actually considered that for Imp and Loki, and we did it once, but all they did was sit in corners and growl/hiss at each other.

Honestly the repellent spray never worked for our troublemaker cat, we had about 4 in the house then. All cats were fixed, 3 pretty large regularly cleaned litter boxes and we couldn't get her to stop. She was always extremely stressed out (she was our latest cat to the edition). D: Pissed in the sink, tub and beds(thank god not mine, lolz). I could just assume it was because of overcrowding. I don't know how it's going anymore with her, since I moved and took one cat with me. D:

If all else fails, try for this!
My cat from hell!

Cats seem like a lot of trouble...

We also have a walk in shower with sliding glass doors. Maybe if I put them in there and turn the water on to half of the shower would "unite" them after surviving the deadly water situation. But more than likely that would make things worse and they'd both just piss on my bed.

LOL

I just fatten mine up til he's too lazy to be arrogant.

That just makes them yowl for awhile xD Its kinda funny but its terrifying for them.

Confine the new kitty to a "Safe room" with everything he needs. Allow him to stay in this room for about a week. It takes about a week for him to settle in and "Reset" Cats communicate mostly via smell, not so much through visual/body signs or sounds. So putting them in the bathroom together to "work their ***out" will actually make it worse. Once new kitty has reset, you'll see him greeting you as soon as you enter, eating/drinking well, playing with you, purring and snuggling, using litter box correctly and grooming himself. During this time, confirm that the old kitty's are settling back down and no longer using the stairway and basement for urinating.

Once everything seems back to normal, it's time to start the reintroduction of new kitty with the rest of the feline family. This is done via smells! Grab 4 handtowels, (1 for each cat) using the handtowel, rub the scent glands (found at cheeks of face and forhead) on each cat. So handtowel #1 is used on Cat #1, HT #2 = Cat #2, HT#3 = Cat #3, and HT#4 = Cat #4. Now with your 4 cat scented towels, use the towels as placemats for feeding. So HT#1 is used as a placemat to serve Cat #2, HT#2 is used to serve Cat#3, Ht#3 is used to serve Cat #4, and finally HT#4 is used to serve Cat #1. They are learning to associate the smell of each cat with a reward! The negative association that was previously built is now going to be changed to a positive resource. You want to do this everyday until each cat is eating their food, and each cat has been served food while smelling the other cats.

Is putting him in a bathroom that's infrequently used a poor idea?

should just about solve the problem:

If you don't have the money for the proper amount of litter boxes then you don't have the money to take care of your pets. That's negligence.

My uncle had a cat that actually liked being sprayed

I wanna go shoot some people on TF2 with Scout now...

Anywho~ Yikes 7 cats @.@ i feel crowded as is with 4 cats + mutt in a 6 bedroom house T_____T tho... it could be the other 5 peeps that live here that make me feel crowded >___>.

The peeing is probably due to the litter-box. Cats will pee elsewhere if the litter-box is full with fecal-matter or urine. Just keep the litter box clean throughout the day or purchase a Litter-Maid.