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My 10 month male kitty has developed a litter box problem. I have him for 3 weeks now and the first few days I locked him in the bathroom during the night with food, water and bed and his litter box to make sure he uses the litter box. Everything went fine and because of excesive miawing, we decided to stop locking him in the bathroom during the nights. He then continued using his litter box normally.
Then, after a week he urinated on our bed. We immiadetely decided to not let him in the bedroom again (because we thought that it was a territorial soiling since we were letting him sleeping with us or something). 5-6 days after that he urinated on the couch. By then we realised that he does that because he has allready defecated in the litter box and because we were sleeping we didn't have the chance to scoop it right a way. The same thing had happened when he urinated on the bed.
Then he did it again and urinated on the couch but without having allready defacated in the litter box. So, we decided to lock him in the bathroom during the night to re-train him. The first night he defacated in the litter box and urinated in the litter box and in his basket bed(with which he is not very familiar, not used it many times). The second night he was really crazy and miawing the whole night, and especially in the morning when I woke up because I heard a big noise of something falling down, and I saw that the kitty had managed to open the door and he had thrown the litter box down (it is not placed in the ground level) in which he had defecated and urinated.
We decided to not lock him in again. The next time he urinated, it was in his litterbox and the next time he defacated was on the couch.
I don't know why he is doing this. He sometimes uses the litterbox and sometimes not and now that he used the couch 3 times he has associated the couch with urinating and soiling. we have tried our best to clean it and put plastic under the couch sheets so that his urine doesn't go in the couch etc.
What should we do? We have thought of some solutions but probably some of you epxerts can help me out with this and advise me to what the best solution might be. We thought of putting his bowl with food on the couch so that he eats there and doesn't use it for urinating and defacating. The other we though is to place another liter box on the couch and gradually move it.
We also realised that he does this when we are not with him. I think that he uses the litter box when we sit in the living room. But when we are sleeping and he is staying in the living room it is more convinient for him to use the couch...

Also, I went to the vet a week ago for a general check up and she didn't say anything about something being wrong with my kitty...should I go again? Other then this problem, he seems perfectly fine.
Some help would be really nice to have from anyone!! So, any advise???
Myrto

Call your vet and ask about any potential health problems based on his recent exam. Frankly, this does sound like a behavioral problem however. It could stem from separation anxiety.

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Smile, it will make them wonder what you are up to!

Thanks a lot for your reply!
I'm thinking of visiting the vet during this week just to make sure. However, I too think that there is an attitude problem.

I think that the problem is that we have not trained him to go to his litter box at a specific place. We have him 3 weeks. We locked him in the bathroom during the first 2 nights and then we stopped because of howling. Although he used it the first 3-4 days, I think it is difficult for a kitty to learn so quickly in a couple of days. So when he defacated in his litter box and then we didn't scoop it because we were sleeping, he found another place and with such a limited training I think he got easily confused with which place is the right one. We tried again with the bathroom and he went mad. The next day of his madness I think he didn't like going in the bathroom any more. So do you think he could associate the litter box and bathroom with bad experience?

Anyway, since he got confused and since he sleeps and stays in the living room most of the day/night we decided to place his litter box in the living room and remove the couch. That was yesterday. Yesterday night was a success, he urinated and defacated in the litter box. But in the evening when me and my man were sitting in the living room he urinated in the hall on a bagback. Of course it was a mistake from us to put the litter box in the living room. Cats want privacy and noisefree places when they want to do their job.

One solution would be to lock it outside the living room during the nights since there aren't many "nice" places to urinated outside of it so he would go for the litter box. Or we could lock him in the bathroom and gradually let him be in a bigger space. The problem we have with those solutions is that the living room doens't have a door. So it is impossible to lock him outside the living room and it is impossile to gradually open the space for him to train him properly. Because when we open the bathroom door for him to open up the space a bit he immiadetely has access to the living room. And the best would be to leave the living room at the end because it is his favorite place. And the other problem is we can't get a door because we rent the house.

I think I should get one litter box more. So that there is one in the living room where he likes it during the nights and one in the hall when things don't go his way in the living room during the day. Do you think that might work? And if so how do I train him to use just one? Should I place the litterboxes close together gradually to the place I want it to be? Will that work or will he prefer to stay in the living room?

I know I should lock him in the bathroom or kitchen but then I think that he avoids getting in that "room" during the day because of fear.

I'm sorry for the big post but I try to figure out what is going wrong with him and what we have done wrongly because we are not experience with kitties, it is our first time.

You can also try getting a littermaid-the self-cleaning litter bos. I have 4 cats and 4 littermaids, makes my life so much easier and thiers so much cleaner! Be aware that the cat will need to become familiar with the mechanism going off 10 min after the box is used, but he will get used to it!