“Toes is pooping on the floor!”
Sitting in the living room with a view into the dining room, my dad was the only one who could see Toes at that moment. We’d brought her down from her usual hang out spot upstairs to spend some time with us on Christmas Day, and when we’d tried to take her back to her room, she’d growled indicating she’d prefer to stay downstairs and explore. Also, could we please put that other cat in the basement–the shifty eyed one?
We complied with Toes’s requests and brought her kitty litter down just in case she needed to go. Which it turned out she did. But rather than situating herself fully in the litter box, when my Dad spotted her pooping, Toes had her front paws in the box but her back paws and butt out over the carpet.
This makes so much sense–my mom and I concurred. We’d both often found Toes’s poops near but not in the kitty litter and assumed somehow those poops had gotten kicked out of the box (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from a physics perspective but how much thought are you going to give to the mechanics of your cat’s poop…other than this whole post).
We weren’t mad at Toes at all for her failure to make it fully into the litter. She’s an old girl, and it takes some work for her to step in and out of the box. Rather, we celebrated how considerate she was to make the effort to go to the litter even when she knew she couldn’t make it all the way in. It’s the thought that counts, right?
Sarah Zureick-Brown 
The thought and the effort, no matter how futile…hah!