My younger cat cries a lot of the time when he uses the litter box…I first noticed it one day when I was cleaning at yhe shelter before I took him home and I was so freaked out about blockage or infection because sooo many male cats have that problem and have history of surgery and/or requiring special food. I am really fortunate to have a really excellent vet and took both cats in right away upon adoption because things are often missed in the shelter environment. By that time I was more freaked out because he kept doing it. The vet took a urinalysis (the plastic litter was a nightmare he was so upset about being locked in the extra bedroom with sparse amounts of strange litter that he ppooped in the closet) Anyway the long and short of it is that it seems to be behavioral he does tend to vocalize when he is hungry or wants me to wake up or is board. It also seems likely that it is stress related. The urinalysis showed the presence of a small amount of crystals but not at all representative of a problem or source of discomfort. So I was given instructions to add as much water to his diet as he will tolerate, to keep track of output via clump sizes and also to really pay attention to whether or not he cries only when he urinates. I noticed pretty quickly that sometimes he does it when he goes #1 sometimes #2 and many times not at all. I don’t have separate litter boxes for each cat but by scooping daily I can get a pretty good idea if things are normal. Its been 2 years now and he was just crying in the box last night which to be honest still gives me pause but he has never gone outside of his box his urinalysis is always normal and as long there are never an absence of large clumps and I heard him going last night as I was walking by their “bathroom” (a closet dedicated to litter box I just leave the door open a tiny crack and they let themselves in and out) and it was obviously a lot of output. It’s one of those things that I think it pays to have an abundance of caution about but I also feel extremely neurotic alot too. I just know that these things can really sneak up and I worry that I wont be paying attention and miss an important sign and wind up with an emergency I can’t afford.
