My cat Tabby is 8 years old. She is an exclusively indoor cat, and has never had any problems with the litter box until recently.

7 mos. ago, we went out of town and left Tabby at home and had a friend she knows and likes check in on her and feed her twice a day. A week before we left, we added dry food to her steady canned food diet. She was doing fine before we left, but the day before we came back, my friend told us she had started having diarreah and was not making it to the litter box. When we came home, we took her off the dry food, and he diarreah stopped. However, she decided to poo in the hallway (about three feet past her litter box)every morning since.

We've tried everything we can think of to get her to stop, but nothing has worked. We bought her a new litter box and put it where she had been going in the hallway, and she poos in that one in the afternoons, but not in the morning. She poos just next to that one in the mornings. And she refuses to pee in the new one; she has to pee in her old one, so now we have two litter boxes going. We've tried keeping them spotlessly clean and not so much so, and neither of those has worked. We have newspaper in our hall permanently so she doesn't ruin the carpet.

Our theory is that she has separation anxiety, because she does it just after my mom leaves for work each morning, but before I get up. If I get up early, or on my mom's days off, she does not have this problem. Plus our vet says she is fine physically, and he did not have any other helpful advice.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It's been 7 months, and it's getting old. Is there anything we can do, or are we destined to a life of cleaning up cat poo every morning? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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