Tinkling outside the box
As many of you know, my cat Kidley (age unknown, but senior, according to the vet), has kidney disease. He was first diagnosed about two years ago, and he has deteriorated by stages, but now there's a new issue.
He mostly sleeps now, sometimes so quietly that I have to check to see if he's breathing. However, when he's awake, he's awake, and loves being brushed. He is insistent on mealtimes, wakes me up in the morning, accompanies me to bed at night,but hardly eats anything unless it's real meat.
As far as I can tell, he's totally deaf.
He has long been one to poop in random places, using my bed so often that I cover it with a shower curtain. (He hasn't done that lately.)
However, he has a new bad habit. A while ago, I wrote a question about his meowing loudly at night, and someone (I forget who, but thank you!) suggested that he had lost his night vision. Sure enough, it stopped when I put a night light in the kitchen near his food and water bowls and left the bathroom light on overnight.
Well, now he is peeing just outside the litterbox. I started surrounding the litterbox with puppy pads, and that seemed to work for a while. But now, whenever I get up in the morning or when I come home, I find yellow puddles on the puppy pads as well as wet littler.
However, he has never wet the bathroom floor or the puppy pads when I am home.
Is he just mad that I'm not home? Then why does he do it at night--not in any other room, but just outside the litterbox--when I clearly am at home?
= new reply since forum marked as read
(by the way I believe that was me with the advice about the night light 
)
Maybe now that he's old and ill he gets stressed by being alone, even at night when you are home. If he had a UTI then he'd be doing it night and day, whether you were there or not, so I'm thinking it has to be in his head.
When my old cat had kidney failure he started pooping in random places. I think he gone into a state of confusion or dementia or something due to the disease. He always pee'd in his box though, thankfully. I had moved everything into the kitchen for his convenience, so his litter box, bed and food and water dishes were all within about 8-10 feet of each other.
I just remembered something else: he started sitting and sleeping in a corner of the dining room--really unusual behavior. So something wasn't quite right.
He passed away at age 18, about six months after being diagnosed with renal failure.
