Need advice about spraying incident

Readers of my journal know I'm introducing a new cat into my house. This morning I had a spraying incident. I need to address this post haste or I can't go forward. I'll just quote the paragraph I wrote in the journal, which is still in progress for today:

Beginning yesterday, Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]ve been occasionally leaving the bedroom door open for short intervals to allow the three to circulate in and out as they please. This morning when I go in to see if anythingâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s going on, I find an oval-shaped wet spot on the side of the box spring. Rocket is sitting on the bed. Rocket routinely engages in “fake†spraying, so I suspect heâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s the culprit. Unless I nip this in the bud, he might do it all over the house. So the plans to let little gray out are postponed. This is a new problem I didnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t face during my last intro, so Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m going to open a thread in the behavior section to get some input. Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m not about to do DNA testing on the urine spot, so I need to find out which cat did it and how to prevent it from happening again. The first thing is to get out Natureâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s Miracle and clean the spot. I have an old fitted bottom sheet covering the box spring, so, oh goody, I get to take everything off, including a heavy, heavy extra thick mattress to get at it.

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Any advice on how to find out which cat did it? How to stop it from happening again (other than the cleaning ritual -- I've got that down.) And this is a biggie: if it's Rocket, how likely is he to beginning actual spraying in the rest of the house?

Thanks......

This is far from scientific, but I have found that everyone except the offender will visit the spot and do the sniff test on it. That's all I can think of, beyond DNA tests and surveillance cameras.

I can't think of any way of indentifying the offender except catching them in the act. My Ophelia would spray & a short while later, she'd be over checking the spot out.

i know which cat does it at our house. raven. i've watched him do it before. for raven, the trigger is outside roaming cats. he sees the stray cat from the bedroom window, then goes out and sprays our patio door vertical blinds. when he gets really bad a feliway diffuser helps. though i haven't used one in a year now. feliway spray on the spot can help too. that's what we did in our last apartment. cleaned the spot then put feliway spray on it. he does it so rarely here that i don't worry about it so much. we went out of town for 4 days or so, and he had sprayed while we were gone. but i know it was because the bedroom blinds were open all weekend. they are normally closed with curtains pulled at night. so he can't see the stray tom that saunters by when we're home.

i can't say how likely he is to spray the rest of the house. it kind of depends on how insecure he is. our last apartment raven sprayed several different spots, usually near doors or below windows. in this one he only occasionally hoses the vertical blinds by the patio door(which are thankfully easy to clean).

he's most likely spraying in reaction to the new cat in the house. it could be that you've reached the number of cats rocket can tolerate living with.

editted to add: i would also get him checked for a UTI. sometimes sudden spraying is a symptom of a UTI. i remember from other posts one of your cats gets them (i can't remember which one though ).

Thanks for the input. Feliway is going on my shopping list. I've used the diffuser before, when I was having aggression problems with Tommy and wasn't impressed with the results (lack thereof) so I'm going to try the spray this time.