…constipated. It seems to me that you have a perfect set-up. Your cat is distressed about peeing in the box, leaving his mark. You've probably tried leaving two boxes close together, containing different kinds of litter, to see what he would do. When you solve the mystery I hope you finish the story.

Yr friend,

Pluto

He goes right outside the litterbox too sometimes. I'm not really sure why. Maybe since it's right next to the litterbox he feels it's just as good.
When he does that, I clean it with bleach. Then he won't do it again for a few months. If you have carpet there, you should move the box to somewhere where there is only bare floor. Cats like to pee on carpet.

My grandmother had a cat that would go into the box, but he peed sideways, so it would go outside. We had to get him a covered box, and that solved the problem for the most part.

Sorry. I've had quite a few cats, but I don't know why your cat walks around meowing before he goes. Could he be calling for a mate and then spraying? I think if he was, he would spray in other places too. I've found that all cats have their own particular eccentricities. The cat I have now likes to lick the side of the toilet tank. Yuck. I had another cat who would unroll the toilet paper and drag it outside the bathroom to his litterbox to cover his stuff instead of just covering it with the litter.

get a covered box (however some cats HATE the covered box and will forgo using it - ACK)

or

Is your litter box up against a wall or in a corner? Might try putting it away from the wall or corners.

We have a cat that lets a few dangle outside the box sometimes, we've found this is because she get's too focused on scratching/pawwing at the wall near the litterbox than she does taking a shit and therefore it's not behavior just distracted pooping. Moved her box away a bit from the wall and it stopped the droppage.

Good luck!

1. No scented litter - ever! The dust gets in their fur, on their feet, they eat that horrible stuff when they wash themselves. It's loaded with carcinogenic chemicals (as are the scented products humans use; I'm one of those who has multiple chemical sensitivities, so somewhat of an expert on this - and the chemical scents used to set my mother off on coughing jags when she was on oxygen for emphysema and asthma the last two years of her life). Plain generic unscented litter. If you use baking soda to make it clump, do NOT use the chemical soda found in the pet aisle (it's chemically scented, smells awful; I bought some and discovered that mistake when I opened it at home; tossed the whole thing in the garbage). Get the large box of real baking soda in the baking aisle. Put about a fourth of an inch in the bottom of the litter box, then litter over it. They'll mix it in when they scratch it.

2. The litter box has to be big enough for a big cat (you already know this with three cats), and like someone said above, there needs to be some space between the litter box and a wall. See if your piddle cat will tolerate a covered litter box. My current cat, CC, occasionally piddles on/barely over the edge, but hasn't done so for a while since I caught her digging in the middle of the box, then piddling, told her 'Good Girl' and now she sometimes comes into the bathroom with me and does her thing in the middle of the litter box; she gets told 'Good Girl' and then saunters off. When she poos, sometimes she gets part of it in the litter box, sometimes part of it goes on the outside of the box (and she seems to come tell me she's done her poo; seems like a kittenish thing to do, like announcing to mama that she's poo'd). I should have a larger box for her. If she piddles over the edge, I make sure to put paper towels under the box so there are no drips from the bottom of the litter box. Cleanup is easy for me because I keep her litter box in the bottom of the shower.

3. When all else fails, put one litter box in the bottom of the shower or tub, and then if he goes over the edge, no problem in cleaning it up. If he does manage to go inside the litter box, give him high praise for it since he seems to be announcing his intentions to piddle before he does so. Follow him next time he announces his intention to piddle; if he's too close to the edge, gently push his bum to inside the litter box, see if he gets the message, then praise him when he does it right.

4. Might have to search, but I know there are litter boxes with high sides (or maybe they're the bottom of a covered box, I don't know for sure, just that I've seen one with high sides). Most cats don't like going inside the covered ones because they inhale the dust if they're particularly vigorous scratchers, but the high-sided box with no lid is good for no/few accidents since the tail end is down a ways by the time a cat does his/her business.

Good Luck!

cat is distressed because all he's been hearing on TV is that Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and he's just given up on the system. I catch myself feeling the urge to poop on the floor when I hear this BS.
Anyway, we have a cat in our shop that was doing his business outside his box. I got to watching him and thought that it seemed he just didn't like his box. For one thing, it was the largest store bought box we could find and it still seemed too small. So I went to a local plastic outlet and bought an enormous heavy plastic storage container. I cut a door in it and filled it with 2 bags of litter. He loves it and hasn't gone on the floor since. I know this probably isn't the problem in your case and we're fortunate to have a lot of room in our shop.

Emma had 3 kittens. The girl was the first to do EVERYTHING except pee in the box. The boys were perfect with it. The girl would pee on the bed or on the carpet or where ever she happened to be (thankfully, she was still small & it was easy to clean up!) The girl is still with Emma and me (and she is my little love). I looked up the issue on the interwebs, saw infection is usually the culprit, talked to the vet about it, she got abx - problem mostly solved. She immediately began using the box correctly.

She does have one small peculiarity which lingers, which is that somehow she missed figuring out covering in the box - she thinks it's yucky to scratch the litter after going, so she scratches the floor around the box... which of course does not cover what she wants to get covered, so the poor thing scratches and scratches on the floor. No harm done (it doesn't leave marks), she's just losing minutes she could be doing other cat things like watching birds or sauntering or kitty-flopping or doing other non-scratching things. I tell her a good girl to try to distract her so she can go about her day. She eventually gets bored with scratching and walks away.

P.S. A friend of mine who has had 3 or 4 cats tells me that one needs 1.5 cat boxes per cat. We seem to do well with 2 cats and two boxes next to each other.

(actually I sent the cats ahead on a plane which they didn't appreciate, lol) and came to Spokane. My daughter had just lost her second cat so she took my cats in while I relocated. One cat did extremely well without too much trauma but the second cat was quite obnoxious. My daughter and sil got two more cats to add to their family and one tolerated the additions. The second cat did not tolerate the additions and started "marking" her territory by urinating on anything and everything. I took her back and she's a single cat again and has no more "problems" using her litter box. I also use the pee pads in front of the opening to the box to catch most of the excess litter from the scratching.

One last thing, cats are individuals, more so than dogs and do their own thing. That makes behavioral problems all the more puzzling.

It sort of resembles one of my cats.

Having given up trying to change any cat that insists on doing that, I have always put a plastic boot tray in front of the cat box and set an old throw rug or towel or tee shirt on it. I launder the wet or soiled cloth and keep a supply of clean cloths handy. I figure that especially when a cat has gotten old, and no attempts to change the behavior have worked, it is time to stop getting angry at the cat for it. The main thing, at least for me, is that both of us relax and enjoy our remaining years together.