Cat urinating everywhere

Lorrs33

My cat is fourteen years old and recently she has started urinating everywhere she sits herself down. She has been fully house trained and always used her litter box, but now that's only one of the places she uses. My mam is getting very frustrated and I'm worried she's going to put her into an animal shelter if it doesn't stop. Can anyone help?

MsFifers

Have you taken her to a vet? It sounds like an illness rather than a behavioural issue. You can be assured the poor thing is very distressed herself as cats are such clean animals.

Putting your pet of 14 years into an animal shelter is very harsh - especially if you haven't gone to the vet first for advice.

anniehoo

It sounds like shes a kidney infection(cats are prone to these) or bladder weakness. Shes 14, id be at the vet ASAP with her getting it checked. Cats are very private about going to the toilet so no doubt she'll be stressed at soiling herself etc.

devais

Yes, bring her to the vet - it may be a problem with her kidneys. Unfortunately older cats do tend to get kidney problems. While it is awful to have a cat who is peeing all over the house as it smells so powerful, to put her in a shelter after she has reached such a good age is sad. Maybe you could restrict her from having access to rooms with carpet (a nice bed in the kitchen for her so that any accidents can be mopped up easily?)

Lorrs33

Apologies, I exaggerated a bit. My cat isn't unintentionally urinating. She seems to be choosing spots other than her litter box to urinate. And it's all stuff made of some sort of fabric, it's never on the floor where it's easy to mop up. If cats could be spiteful, it would certainly seem like that was the case here. She has easy access to her litter box yet she runs upstairs and marks her territory on my parents' duvet, even on her scratching post, her bed, my dog's bed, etc. I just don't understand.

Rancid

Lorrs33 wrote: »

Apologies, I exaggerated a bit. My cat isn't unintentionally urinating. She seems to be choosing spots other than her litter box to urinate. And it's all stuff made of some sort of fabric, it's never on the floor where it's easy to mop up. If cats could be spiteful, it would certainly seem like that was the case here. She has easy access to her litter box yet she runs upstairs and marks her territory on my parents' duvet, even on her scratching post, her bed, my dog's bed, etc. I just don't understand.

You may just have come up with the reason yourself...
Has something changed recently in her environment, another cat or other animal in the house, furniture moved or replaced, even another cat hanging around your garden?
Any of these things can cause cats to spray, and they often do it *inside* the house even when the cause of the spraying is outside the house.
First of all, get your cat to the vet to rule out a urinary tract infection.
Then consider what might be unsettling her so that she feels she has to claim (back) her territory.
Think of it this way: If a strange cat strolls through your garden and sprays, the scent will remain there for a long time and if you or your family brush against the sprayed hedge, etc., and carry the scent into the house, your own cat is *obliged* to spray to reclaim her territory.

The Sweeper

Lorrs33 wrote: »

If cats could be spiteful, it would certainly seem like that was the case here.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO.

It is not the case. It is not even remotely the case. You cat has a tiny, fuzzy, peanut brain. It is capable of knowing food, water, affection, attachment - it is not capable of spite, the thought that goes into spite, the planning that goes into spite. Humans are spiteful. (Putting your 14 year old cat into an animal shelter - that would be spiteful.)

What's happening with your cat is generally referred to as 'inappropriate elimination', or in general going outside the litter box. There are causes and there are solutions.

Why is my cat peeing all over my house?!

There are a number of reasons for a cat to urinate in places other than its litter box. The first reasons that need to be investigated are clinical.

Medical

The cat needs to go to the vet. Cats will sometimes start urinating around the house because of kidney problems or painful bladder syndrome. This includes interstitial and idiopathic cystitis. Ever had cystitis? It's quite common in people too - burning when you pee, the urge to constantly pee even though there's no urine to come out, and pain when you do pee. It's the same for cats - and the urge and the pain are what causes them to squat anywhere and everywhere within the house. Some prefer fabric, others prefer plastic bags, some like to climb in on the laundry. In every case they're seeking a pleasant material to urinate on and clean up, because cats are essentially clean animals and if they are urinating all over the house, then something is wrong. It may feel spiteful to find your cat has peed on a pile of laundry you've just folded, but all she's doing is trying to find a clean. absorbent place for her to pee.

Behavioural - territory

There are a number of behavioural reasons for your cat to start peeing outside the litter box. One is territory - sometimes when a new cat enters the neighbourhood, it can make your cat feel very threatened. She may be able to see the new cat through the windows of the house, or encounter it or its scent in the yard. This could be making her very disconcerted, so she begins to spray and mark inside the house, because she's desperate to establish precisely what territory is hers. The solution to this is to keep her inside, so she's not encountering the marauding outdoor visitor, chase the visitor out of your yard, and try and keep her away from the windows where she might be able to see the visiting cat.

Behavioural - change

Cats don't deal well with change. If there are new people, a new baby, or other news pets in your house, that can often lead to uncertainty and anxiousness in the cat, which in turn can often lead to peeing outside the litter box. Cats can also be very sensitive to household rhythms and atmosphere - so cats in a house where there is a pending separation, for instance, often add to the stress and tension by starting to inappropriately eliminate. Most owners can't see past their own stress to realise that they're actually the cause of the anxiety in the cat, and it isn't just deliberately trying to make their lives worse. The best way to deal with this behaviour is to take the safe haven route (below).

Behavioural - inconsistency

If your cat used to be allowed outdoors and now isn't, or used to be kept indoors and is now being shooed out; if the cat's favourite room is now off limits, if it's food, water or litter trays have been moved around, if the furniture has been shifted temporarily - all these things can cause some peeing problems, but it's worse if it's inconsistent. What I mean by that is you can always change your living arrangements with your cat, but the change should be firm. Intermittent change can really mess with a cat's head - e.g. if you used to let her out, but now you don't because you want her inside only - that's fine, but NEVER give in to her yowling and let her out for a few hours. That sort of behaviour is cat torture - she can't understand anything except the intermittent reward and it's very distressing, this 'sometimes I can, sometimes I can't situation.

How to stop the peeing

First, make an effort to understand the peeing. And don't anthropomorphise the cat - she's not being mean, sneaky, spiteful or vengeful. She's a cat, she's not capable of the depth of thought behind those emotions. She may be anxious, frustrated, distressed or ill. Try and think cat for a minute - what has changed. New noise? New furniture? Has food / water / litter / environment / other animals / othe people or anything else changed?

If the peeing is medical, treat the condition. If it's behavioural, either try to remove what's bothering the cat, or if that isn't an option, go the safe haven route.

Creating a safe haven

A safe haven has two meanings - safe for your cat, and safe for your soft furnishings. If you want your cat to stop peeing all over the house, restrict her access so she can't roam all over the house. This safe space is also where you can address reconditioning - a process by which you retrain your cat to use its litter box, and only its litter box. Plus keep your cat in here until its been seen by the vet, and the vet has ruled out cystitis, kidney problems, other illnesses and discussed the possibility of administering a hormone injection to stop the behavioural peeing.

Choose a room. It should be a room the cat already likes. This is the room where the cat is going to be restricted for the next few weeks. In this room you need to put a variety of litter trays, with a variety of litter. You'll also put - at a distance from the trays - the cat's food, water, bedding, so on. Never let the cat out of this room unless you're going to supervise her for the duration of the time she's outside the room. When you can't supervise her, back into this room she goes. The object is not to stress her out, it's to provide her a safe space, hence choose a room she likes and put her familiar bed and toys and bowls in there with her. You're trying to create a controlled environment that will minimise her stress.

Managing the clean up

Outside the room, you need:

• A black light - a UV light of any kind
• Enzyme based cleaner - something for washing babies' cloth nappies is usually good
• Wash clothes, bucket, scrubbing brush, absorbent kitchen towel
• Feliway diffuser
• Feliway spray

If you close the curtains and blinds and switch the lights off, then turn on your blacklight, areas where there is cat pee will flouresce a pale yellow. It is vital to clean up all traces of cat pee where the cat has inappropriately peed, because the scent of pee is a licence to the cat to return to that spot and pee there over and over again. Subsequently you need to go through the entire house, while the cat is holed up in her safe haven, and you need to clean up every last trace of cat pee. If you let her out of her safe haven into a house that still smells like a toilet, then she'll treat it like a toilet.

Enzyme based cleaners are great at getting rid of pee. You need to wash down the areas that floursece under the UV lamp, then mop it as dry as you can with the kitchen towel, then check with the UV light, and wash it down again if you need. As a final solution, you can put a couple of droplets of lavender essential oil in a bowl of warm water, and dab the cleaned area with the lavender essential oil to completely mask the odours.

You need to do this in every single place the cat has peed. If you don't clean up all of the pee, you'll have this invisible scent prompt constantly tempting your cat to pee in places you don't want her to, no matter how hard you're trying with your many litter trays and so on.

Feline happy hormones

Feliway diffusers and spray bottles are a synthesised feline 'happy hormone' smell. Humans can't smell it. The diffusers work like an air freshener plug-in - you plug them into a socket in the room where the cat spends a lot of time, and they create an atmosphere of wellbeing for the cat. The feliway pump spray is the same stuff in a small bottle. The pump spray is very useful if the cat has, for instance, peed on the good couch. You clean the couch up completely so there is no trace of pee. You can dab a tiny bit of essential oil onto it to make it nice for people. Then you can use a feliway spray, and spray the cushions, arm rests and couch generally. You won't be able to smell it, but the cat can. Feliway has different degrees of usefulness depending on the individual cat, but in cases where it works well, I've seen a cat who used to spray the kitchen cupboards walk back into a clean and feliway sprayed kitchen, stride to the cupboards, and then become momentarily distracted as if to say 'What was I here for again?' and then wander away, without spraying.


Alternative litter trays

It can sometimes happen that a cat simply eliminates around the house because it dislikes its litter tray (I would wonder if that would be the case i in a 14 year old cat, but just in case anyone reading this has similar problems with a younger cat...)

The main issues a cat may have with its litter tray:

• Cat doesn't like the size of the litter tray
• Cat doesn't like the shape of the tray
• Cat doesn't like the litter
• The tray isn't clean enough
• Cat doesn't like where the tray is positioned

Cats like a litter tray that's out of the way a bit, not in a main thoroughfare. Most cats prefer a larger tray - larger than the really cheap supermarket ones. Some cats like a covered tray, others prefer an open tray. A covered tray can help cats who are angsty about feeling safe when they pee or poo.

If your cat isn't pooing all over the house, just peeing, you may want to try buying her more than one tray. Some cats don't like to pee where they poo. Chances are, if it's just pee, she does like the tray somewhat though because otherwise she'd be pooing outside the tray too (especially in places like the sinks, the bath, the shower tray).

Trying different tray sizes and different litter can help - you can do this while she's in her safe haven. Establish which trays she uses the most, and continue with those types / litter brands when you're reintroducing her to the house.

Litter trays should be kept clean. You need to be scooping poo out of them every day. How often you clean the entire tray is up to you and your cat - if you can smell it, her sense of smell is far better than yours. You should never be cleaning out cat litter where the ammonia is so strong it's scorching your sinuses.

The upshot

The upshot is that your cat doesn't speak English. She can't tell you what's wrong, but by peeing all over your house she's showing you that something isn't right with her. That something could be medical, behavioural, territorial, emotional. As her owner, it's up to you to figure that out, and provide your cat with an environment where she can get well again so she doesn't feel the need to pee in your house.

Once your house is pee-stain-free, you've ruled out any medical issues with the vet, and your cat has had a couple of weeks of reconditioning in her restricted space with her variety of litter trays, you can trial allowing her out of the room for longer and longer periods of time until eventually, hopefully, she can again come and go as she pleases without peeing everywhere in your house.

Lorrs33

Rancid wrote: »

You may just have come up with the reason yourself...
Has something changed recently in her environment, another cat or other animal in the house, furniture moved or replaced, even another cat hanging around your garden?
Any of these things can cause cats to spray, and they often do it *inside* the house even when the cause of the spraying is outside the house.
First of all, get your cat to the vet to rule out a urinary tract infection.
Then consider what might be unsettling her so that she feels she has to claim (back) her territory.
Think of it this way: If a strange cat strolls through your garden and sprays, the scent will remain there for a long time and if you or your family brush against the sprayed hedge, etc., and carry the scent into the house, your own cat is *obliged* to spray to reclaim her territory.

We have been feeding stray cats out our back for about two to three years now but I guess it's only lately that they are starting to venture into the house when we're not looking. We also got her a new litter tray. She peed on a cushion this morning and I found a little bit of blood so my mam has made an appointment withthe vet tomorrow.

Rancid

Lorrs33 wrote: »

We have been feeding stray cats out our back for about two to three years now but I guess it's only lately that they are starting to venture into the house when we're not looking. We also got her a new litter tray. She peed on a cushion this morning and I found a little bit of blood so my mam has made an appointment withthe vet tomorrow.

Good that you've got the vet appointment. The blood spot points towards cystitis and if it's going on for a while, then possibly urinary tract infection also.

When one of my cats had cystitis he sought out cold surfaces to pee on, floor tiles, kitchen sink, etc. I always had the idea that he began to associate his litter tray with the burning pain he felt while trying to urinate and he kept away from it to escape from the pain.

The stray cats you're feeding probably always stressed your cat, but maybe even more so now that they're venturing indoors into her last safe territory. The advice given by The Sweeper is excellent. Once you've got her treatment under way for the medical problem keeping her inside and not letting her hear, see or smell the strays will help a lot.

Let us know how the vet visit goes.

Lorrs33

My mam and I brought my cat to the vet and blood was taken from her to test for a kidney infection. She was given an antibiotic and she hasn't urinated anywhere but her litter tray since. My mam brought her back to the vet today for the blood results and it turns out my cat is in the early stages of kidney failure. We should expect her to get worse in six months to a year. It doesn't make sense, she's as active as she always was. I don't want to lose her

ppink

Oh no thats terrible news Lorrs33. Can they give her anything to help her? very sorry to hear that

Lorrs33

ppink wrote: »

Oh no thats terrible news Lorrs33. Can they give her anything to help her? very sorry to hear that

They recommended food to her, 'senior food' but it's dry and my cat has no teeth so she can't eat that.

Toulouse

http://www.felinecrf.com/