Hi all,

We have two Bengals a male and female ( brother and sister ) who get on very well.
When we brought them home as kittens the male Biggles used his litter tray no problem but we had weeks of problems with his sister Amelia as she wouldn't use the litter trays. We had two trays and so bought two more so 2 covered and 2 uncovered.
It took a lot of patience and encouragement but eventually she started using the trays. They share the trays and both use the covered trays for poo and the uncovered for wee. They will have been with us two years next month:-)
They are indoor cats but we take them out every day in their Happy House cats walking jackets and they love that.
Anyway our problem is that Amelia has started weeing outside the tray again :-( but still poos in the covered tray.
We noticed it about ten days ago when we heard her scrabbling under the table in our living room and saw her weeing over a cracked floor board. I tried to keep a close eye on her after that and if I saw her I would put her in the tray where she would jump back out but return in a few minutes to the tray and go. Other times as she was scrabbling I would say " are you a good girl? " (they love praise) and she would get into the tray of her own accord and go, however, I think she has tired of me doing this and now she is going in the bath instead. She crouches over the plug hole and goes then meows for us to come and run the water. Obviously the bath is better than our wooden floor but its not ideal!

We took her to the vet who said she doesn't think she has an infection as her temperature was fine and her wee looks ok. She suggested Feliaway which I haven't bought yet as I know it has mixed reviews.

We think this all started with something frightening her in the kitchen. About two weeks ago we were preparing dinner and she came slinking into the kitchen moving low and slowly like she was stalking something.
We had a small metal grill at floor level under the press under the kitchen sink but the grill has been off for ages so just a dark gap containing what appears to be a small old fan heater which has been there since we bought the house and which has never worked. It's built in so we haven't removed it.
Amelia sat in front of this space staring at it and we laughed saying "are you stalking a big spider" because they love chasing spiders. Suddenly she turned and bolted out the door running upstairs like she was terrified.
Since then she comes into the kitchen very cautiously low to ground and moving slowly. We put the grill back on after looking inside with a torch and seeing nothing. That didn't help so we got timber and boarded it up. She also seemed scared of the pile of stuff next to the sink which was picnic basket, picnic blanket and cooler bag so I moved all the stuff away and left that opening empty. We also took out everything from the cupboard under the sink in order to leave that empty (had to put it all in a box in the dining room where the cats can't go) to reassure her.
At first her brother wasn't bothered at all but now both of them are cautious about coming into the kitchen but I wonder if he is just picking up a vibe from her because he is not as nervous. Having said that they are both quite jumpy and I got badly scratched by Amelia when I picked her up from behind to stop her sniffing a wasp and she went crazy.
I've also bought a fifth litter tray and put it in the bathroom but neither cat had used it.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Any idea what she could have seen as I believe she DID see something but my husband doesn't think so. What could frighten a Bengal that much?

Especially since of the two she is the brave one although she is very small and her brother is huge.
The only time I've seen she scared was in the winter when we saw a large rat in the garden of a house several doors away and she ran away in a panic.
Could a rat have come into the house? We have no signs of rodents though we had a problem with mice years ago.
A couple of years ago we saw a snake on top of the fence outside the kitchen window but haven't seen one since though several years ago I saw one in our garden and our cat wouldn't come into the garden that whole summer.
I hate the fact that they are nervous in their own house not to mention the weeing in the bath.
Any ideas what else I can do?
The fact is they were nervous last year and we thought nothing of it and it turned out a rage cat (Maine Coon?) had actually broken through the locked cat flap and was coming in. We were very lucky that our cats didn't go out because we didn't notice the cat flap was no longer locked. We glued it shut and the cat actually broke the whole cat flap off the door! So we boarded up the door. At that time they were nervous but no litter problems and that was months ago.
Thanks for any advice/help you can give.
Siobhan

Hi. You mentioned your vet said your Bengal's urine "looked okay", but did he/she run an urinalysis test? Hopefully, your vet has the diagnostic equipment for a good count; some vets have older equipment and the techs just "count", which doesn't necessarily give accurate results for treatment. Also, did your kitty have bloodwork done ?

If it were my Bengal, I'd have the tests. I know alot of veterinarians like to run all kinds of tests to "rule out XXX" (and make a profit), but that's what I would do.