We’d only had the catholes for a few weeks when we started noticing that one of them had a rather annoying habit. We’d go away, and when we came back, she had left us a little present in the bathtub.
They both had a perfectly fine litter box, right there next to the tub, so it wasn’t for lack of proper facilities that they left little gifts for us in the bathroom. And the box itself got used, by both of them, so it wasn’t like they just didn’t understand the whole litter box concept. The culprit knew what she was doing.
At first we weren’t sure one was responsible. They’re sneaky, my little jerks. They know what they’re supposed to do, so they’re careful not to get caught when doing bad stuff. We kind of hoped it was Pants who was responsible, because then we could call her Poopy Pants and all sorts of hilarity would ensue. But eventually we discovered it was Jezebel, because she would slink around and act guilty whenever there was a fresh offering in the tub. Once I even caught her in the act—she was scratching around at the porcelain of the tub, trying to bury it (with no success).

To combat the problem, first we took the litter box out of the bathroom and kept the door closed at all times so she couldn’t get in to do her business. But she kept sneaking in anyway, and we gave up and decided to move the litter box straight to the bathtub. If she’s going to poop there anyway, we decided, we might as well give her the option of getting it done in the right spot.

That’s right. I gave up my bathtub for the little jerks. Now I can’t take a bath without soaking the whole thing in bleach, and even then, it’s still vaguely reminiscent of Eau de Poop, so I generally just don’t bother.
The good news is that most of the time, Jezebel uses the box now, but about once a week, we still poke our heads into their little poopy domain and find that she has left us a little present right next to her litter box.
What we can’t figure out was why. Why is she ignoring her perfectly good poopbox in order to turn my bathtub into a place I never again want to take a long hot soak? Well, we started to notice that she often did it when we were gone for a while. So maybe it’s partly that she misses us when we leave. We started making sure to give her lots of attention before we left for work in the mornings. She also seemed to do it whenever it had been more than a few days since her litter box had been cleaned. She’s a priss. So we bought another litter box and started cleaning more often. That still did not stop her.
The only logical conclusion is that she does it because she’s a supreme jerk. Sadly, this is the one reason we can do absolutely nothing about.
Poop away, jerkhole. Poop away.