My cat is peeing on...

my husband's side of the bed, it's happened 3 or 4 times now, just since christmas. we've had both cats checked for UTI and they were both clear, i know it's a behavior problem and i'm pretty sure i know who it is. here's the deal, we have a yellow lab that just turned a year old, as with any lab puppy, he's got alot of energy and is very curious... well, the suspected cat, tigger, who is ocd, will not run from him, he stands his ground with not only the cat, but the kids as well, we've had the dog since last march, and the peeing has just started christmas day. only thing that really changed before this started was my dog got a new bed. i've got the feliway plug in, it seemed to help for a while, but last night the the dog was sniffing right up on the cat and the cat wasn't real pleased with it, i knew right away this behavior was coming, and lo and behold, my husband woke up to a wet bed this morning. the cat has also pee'd on the dog bed several times as well as the new area rug in the living room.

now i mentioned that he is ocd, we've come to this conclusion by process of elimination... when we got him, he came from a house that had cats/kittens EVERYWHERE. we took him to the vet, our cousin, and he had every parasite known, they had never seen so many ear mites in one place at the same time, anyway, we get rid of all his yuckies and take him in to be neutered... was told he had an undescended teste and we should wait to see if it drops on it's own, so we waited and it didnt drop, they had to shave his belly and surgically remove both of them. at this point he was our only pet. almost a year after we got him, i decided he needed another cat friend, he was not letting me sleep in the morning hours, so, we adopted our second cat from the humane society. well, it had been several months since the neutering and the adoption, but he never let the hair grow in on his belly, he, to this day and it's been several years now, keeps it licked off, we thought it was food allergies, tried changing his food, didn't help, put him on antidepressants, but it was so much work trying to get the pills down his throat. i'm sure that this pee'ing is out of spite of the dog, hubby is ready to take him to the humane society and part of me wants to get rid of him because i just can't take it, but then there's part that gets really sad when i think of not having him here...

any thoughts?

Sashand:

I'm so glad you found TCS. I hope we can help.

First of all, I want to say that though many here do not advocate the use of anti-depressants in cats to fix a behavior problem, I personally feel that if the choice is between keeping the kitty and letting it go to a shelter, I think anti-depressants should be considered. I do believe they should be used as a last resort, however. I know you tried this - but I'll get to that at the end of this post.

In addition to the Feliway plug-ins (which we find work for a while but don't work long term - so we do 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off and that seems to help a lot), you can consider trying Flower Essences along with the following suggestions:

http://www.petsynergy.com/flower.html
http://www.catfaeries.com/what_buy.html


From this thread: Inappropriate Peeing Problems Answered:

Along the lines of peeing on clothes: According to Cat Behaviorist Amy Shojai- if your cat is peeing on personal items and has been checked out medically as ok. The cat could be stressed out over something. Urinating on some object that holds your scent is calming to him. You can read more about Amy on her website www.shojai.com

Here's a clever way to deter a cat from a place where the cat previously peed, contributed by Kev:

Take a Tea bag, then once used and its cooled, pour a few drops of OLBAS OIL on it. Olbas oil is a herbal remedy ideal for colds and completely natural. Health food shops as well as pharmacies sell it here and its cheap enough.
Then place the Tea bag with this smelling stuff on a small food bag and place it in the vicinity of where the cat has been urinating. They hate the smell and he's given it a wide berth ever since - gone back to the litter tray which is great.

Its solved my problem without the need for chemicals etc which I am all for. The even better part is that the house smells of olbas oil and I am breathing a lot easier too.

Click to expand...

You might want to read through that thread - there are more good ideas there - even though some of them are related to territory-marking, not stress, they may help as well.

Also, any place kitty has peed, the scent has to be completely removed (from the cat's perspective) or the scent itself will continue to encourage kitty to keep going in the same place. To do this, you must use an enzyme cleaner, not traditional cleaners. We use http://www.nokout.com/odor.html. This product can be added to the wash (sheets, blankets, mattress pad cover, etc.). You need to SOAK the area of the mattress that has been affected. This will take a few days to dry, so we put folded over towels down under the mattress pad and change them every day until that area of the mattress is dry.

With a stressed kitty, apart from Feliway, Flower Essences, pee-scent elimination (using enzyme cleaner like Nok-Out or whatever) and "adverse scent" scent usage to discourage continued peeing out of the litter box, you may want to consider simply giving Tigger more attention. I don't know how he wants it delivered - an extra 10 minutes of brushing or pets, or an extra 10 - 15 minutes of day of devoted play (often works really well - especially if every member of the household does their own 10 minutes with kitty) - but the individual attention sometimes helps.

There is also a product out there called "Cat Attract." Using a discouraging scent where Tigger is peeing combined with the "attract" scent in the litterbox might also help. I don't know if it's sold in pet stores - but our vet carries it.

You can also ask around at local vets, your vet, or search on-line for cat behaviorists in your area. They can often help by a home visit, meeting the cat, seeing the situation and set-up. I would certainly give this a try before giving up on Tigger.

If you try the above - and potentially other suggestions from the Inappropriate Peeing thread - and it still doesn't work, then I think you should consider using anti-depressants.

Was the problem that he's difficult to pill or that he runs away because he knows a pill is coming? Got different suggestions depending upon the problem.

We took in a feral rescue that was adopted but abused. Talk about a basket-case kitty. We worked with her and though her name is "Spooky" for a reason, she's a wonderful, loving, trusting girl now. But we moved homes AND adopted a homeless 18-year old daughter at roughly the same time. This was too much for Spook, and she started peeing on the couch downstairs, pillows that we have out for the protection of one of our handicapped cats, and our bed. Having been a member of TCS for a time, I visited this forum and found potential solutions. We tried them all. Some of them worked for a few weeks. We finally decided to "retrain her" by putting her in a separate room. Even though I spent the better part of the two days she spent in there with her, she started obsessively licking and WOULD NOT stop. When she created a big scab on her side and at the base of her tail, that was it. We went with medication.

We used Elavil - and specifically Elavil (an anti-depressant). Within a few days, the problem stopped. Both the obsessive licking and the inappropriate peeing. She slept a lot at first, and I wondered if we'd done the right thing. But after about a month, she basically became her former self - loving, playful - just not stressed out. We kept her on the Elavil for three months, then slowly weaned her off of it, moving the pilling to every other day, then every three days, then off. She still occassionaly licks a small patch - but she doesn't lick it totally hairless, and it's never large - and it isn't often. There hasn't been a repeat of the problem of peeing outside of the box.

Hope these help - and feel free to post with any more questions!

And if you do end up deciding to use the anti-depressants and need suggestions and help with pilling, feel free to ask for tips in that regard too.

Laurie

LDG pretty much covered everything to try but I just wanted to add something that helped our kitty (with covering the scent and smell removal) was baking soda. I washed my sheets with a small box of that and it completely removed the scent and apparently my cat couldn't pick up her scent either so she quit peeing on the bed. Her cause was her food though so a switch in food came later, but washing the sheets in baking soda helped prior to us changing her food.

I really hope that you decide to keep your kitty and work with him. It just takes a little patience and time. I know its frustrating but just think of the joy you will get with a happy kitty when this is all over. Also, a good thing to do is to establish some order. Make him feel like number one in the house. When you come home, greet him first, give him attention first. I know this is hard with a dog in the house, taking the dog out to use the bathroom. But maybe your kitty is trying to tell you "hey, I was here first, I should be number one". Feed him first and attend to his needs as the alpha and maybe that will help him feel more in control of the situation.

Good luck

Puppycat, how much baking soda do you put in the wash with items that have urine on them? I was using white vinegar in the water but I had to cycle it thru a few times to get the smell off.

It was recommened to use a whole box, the smallest box. I just put it through the wash one time and the smell was gone. Now I did wash it once before in regular detergent to get the stain out. But the baking soda got the smell out in one wash.

Thank you so much for the fast reply. I am going to try this out, I have a few things that still reek of cat pee when one of my males went crazy before his neutering. That smell is like no other

Puppycat - washing with the baking soda is a brilliant idea! I'll have to add that to the repertoire! Thanks!

Laurie

Tigger is a little weird when it comes to attention, he wants it only when he is ready, and he will definitely let us know when he's ready, he will come and lay on you and snuggle his head in under your chin... he gets lots of attention, more than he wants sometimes i think... but when distributing treats with the cats, i always make sure he gets his first, i just think that's fair. he doesn't like to be brushed and usually not held for too long either, both our cats are inside only, but occassionally i will carry Tigger outside to sniff the air, he loves to sit at the screen door and watch the birds and squirrels at the feeders and will chatter away at them. i'm going to get a refill for the feliway today, i noticed with this last incident that it was when the dog was really irritating the mess out of him, so, i think it does revolve around the dog, but Tigger will NOT run or back down from him. our other cat will, thank you for all your advice, i don't want to have to medicate him, it's so difficult to get pills down his throat, we tried having his meds done in a liquid form once, that was a mistake, they were fishy flavor too, he spit it right out, awful....

Prozac worked for my cat. I have ten and Bradshaw just doesn't get along with any of them except his brother. He would get stressed out and pee on things--he even peed in my purse! He would pee on: pile of dirty clothes, clothes in an open drawer, anything plastic, between the cushions of my leather couch, etc. Fortunately most things could be thrown away or laundered. After two times being boarded at the vet just to get him out of my sight (for a month each) we tried prozac and haven't had any problems since. If we forget to give it to him he gets very sleepy when he gets the next dose but otherwise we don't notice any difference in his personality. He still isn't friendly with other cats but they can at least be around him without hissing and fighting.

Try the Cat Attract litter. We were at our wits end with Forest trying to figure out why he was peeing outside the litterbox. The Cat Attract was finally the thing that worked, and we've had minimal problems since then. (Except when DH bought the wrong litter by mistake...he immediately started using the carpet instead of the box again.) I've been able to find it at most of our local pet supply stores.