Cats Defecating on Furniture

Question
Norman,

I have two well-behaved Bengal kittens. I keep them down in my basement during the day while I'm at work, and then they come upstairs with me during the evening. Yesterday while I was in the basement, I noticed that there were about 5 defecation spots on an old chair I had down there.

I checked and there are no accidents anywhere else. Also, they have not peed anywhere other than the litterbox.

I'm confused about what might be causing this. It doesn't look like a habit because there were only a few spots on the chair.

They are about 3 months old. Do you think they could have worms?

This worries me because I definitely don't want it happening on any of my good furniture upstairs.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Answer
Hannah,

The first thing I would do is to have them to your vet to check for worms, or other intestinal parasites, or impacted anal glands, or the like.

It could also be that someone used the old chair at some point to defecate and one or both of the kittens have discovered it. You can clean up inappropriate pooping with an enzyme based cleaner specifically for pet stains and pet odors (available at most pet supermarkets or farm stores).

If the behavior does not continue on then it was a one time happenstance.  If they get a clean bill of health and the behavior expresses itself again, you can try sprinkiling some "Cat Attract" litter in the litter pan.  It may even make sense to get rid of the chair and see if the litter pan behavior returns to normal.

Please let me knbow how it goes.

Best regards... Norm.