female spraying

Hi there,I just signed up to this site as I am literally at a loss over what to do next.

I have 2 female cats(litter mates) and have had them now 7-8years.Due to me living on a busy main road and in the past years losing every cat I had on the road i decided to keep these as house cats,they have a wander round the garden daily and dont seem interested in venturing any further.now I know people will call me irresponsible,i never had them speyed like my previous cats due to them being housecats,and i know there are less likelihoods of speyed cats getting certain cancers etc.

Now I have read with interest all the old posts about feline spraying,in all my years of owning cats I have only ever came across one other female i had (speyed)which would spray up everything.



Over the past year or so one of my cats has started this habit,dont know where it has started from,but we noticed that it was when she was in season she would spray up various items usually it was the hoover that got it ,i kept wiping this down with non bio washing powder as informed by a vet,gradually the problem has increased,its now anything and everything whether she is in season or not and nothing will stop her,to the point my partner and my son are chastising her for doing it,and wiping her nose in it which i've told them wont work n will make her do it more.Whatever spray they now find,they use her fur as a mop to wipe it up and say if she insistant on marking everything she can stink of her own smell

We've tried feliway and a calming collar,to no avail,I took her to the vets and they were a waste of time,she told me it could be stress but the cat cant speak so i'll never know! They also told me there was no infection (by feeling her tummy?) I know she has had cystitis in the past but i know from how she acts around the litter box and she hasnt been doing this.
I told my partner n son to leave her alone for a few weeks not telling her off if she sprayed or chasing her,but still it continued.

We now shut the cats in the kitchen at night to confine the spraying,but you get up in the morning and its everywhere,its gone from the odd time or 1 amount of spray to everything she can back up against,the metal bin,washing machine,fridge,all the unit doors and now she started climbing on the worktops and spraying up things like the fruit bowl and this morning i come down and she has climbed onto my 2grand keyboard and sprayed over my music books and into the buttons on my keyboard.I am less than amused to say the least.
Shes also sprayed around her food bowl,which cats arent meant to do,oh she also sprayed up the rear of my sons pc which went in all the ports.

And on saturday something she had never done before,she backed up to me and sprayed up my leg!!!!
I've tried various behavioural sprays that you spray on the surface that they dont like the smell of to no avail.
And i couldnt possibly cover everything in foil ,becuase as it is id have to cover literally every single thing in the house ,including areas that are above floor level.

There are a lot of neighbourhood cats and they do all seem to head for my garden,my neighbour has 4 alone,which he had the same amount of time as I've had mine,so surely if it was due to that, the spraying would have started a long time ago and not just over the past year?

She just seems to be on a mission now,you open the back door into the lobby she will go spray up all my partners karate gear,baskets of laundry,bags,she sprays in the kids shoes,and as soon as you open the door to the garden she goes round and squirts about 30 times up everything out there,then runs back in and does it inside again.

My partner said he now wants rid as he aint putting up with it anymore,i cant see no end to it as it progressively getting worse.
I thought about getting them speyed as someone told me there are 2 many female hormones,which is whats causing her to do it,but i feel it has become habit now with her and speying will not stop it.As I said i've had another speyed female who started spraying after being done.And I've seen the blokes next doors fixed females come in my garden and do it up the compost bin.

I love my cats more than anything but its starting to cause friction now so much that i dont know what to do for the best,obviously it would break my heart to get rid of her,and i know her sister would miss her as they are very close


i thought about getting a cat carrier/or a small dog cage,and putting her in that overnight,as I seen on dog behaviour shows they did that to stop dogs weeing everywhere as they wont toilet where they sleep,but i feel this could add further to whatever stress it is she has and aggravate the problem further,any ideas very much appreciated

thanks for the replies folks

i went back to the vet on tuesday and complained the last one i seen was a waste of time,paying them £30 to be told cats cant speak,i know that myself without having to pay someone to say it lol,as id noticed her hanging around the litter box and only doing a tiny amount of pee i thought she had uti again.

The vet spent ages talking to me and said that it doesnt seem as if she has an infection but just cus she cant feel any thickening of the bladder doesnt mean there isnt one and that it wont hurt to put her on a course of antibiotics.
She told me to give them and check for any signs of improvement in around 2-3weeks time,if it continues then it may be behavioural.

She said the speying may help but due to the age you have to think if it's necessary,i told her that it was something i was thinking of but that she is constantly in heat meowling like a klaxon siren and i knowthat they prefer to do it when they out of season,and finding that time seems impossible,she told me that cats usually only season a cpl times a year usually at the end of winter so the kitties will be born when its nice and warm or late spring so they born in autumn.

So why mine is doing the constant meowing we have no idea.

You say that speying will make them nicer cats,although they cant be any nicer than what they are now,kitty mcsquirter as i've now called her is my cat,my protector,she doesnt sit with anyone,she's not a lap cat but will sit by your side(only me she doesnt sit near anyone else) she used to sit guard on my bedside table each night as tho watching over me,if i whimper or she thinks im in distress she comes running meows at me finds a way to jump up and then nibbles at my cheek,and her sister will go in the kids beds push herself under the quilt and curl up inside their arms and sleep there all night,she is defo my eldest lads cat,she w8s for him to get back from school and she jumps and gives him a kitty cuddle kinda wraps her front paws around his neck and butts his face with hers lol.

anyway regarding the spraying,my partner and son have stopped chasing after her to see if being calmer will help.I stuck foil over the bottom half of the kitchen units and the fridge she had been spraying up,and closing the blind in the dining window at night,in case it was seeing other kitties in the garden,it seems to have eased a little but this morning she had done it up the back of the kitchen door so as soon as you opened it to walk in you stepped in it

but its only 1 bit,tho she did spray up my sons football after they had been playing out last night,

actually as i type i just seen her do it up the hoover (which i'd taken outside to hoover my car yesto) and i now just spotted some up the side of my music keyboard again!!! i can see the marks on the foil and it aint healthy having cat piss on a kitchen worktop either

I will look into getting her speyed,i cant get help towards it, i dont work but also dont get the right social security benefits to get a reduction so it will be full price for me.
Vet said to me if it continues i may need her to see a behavioural specialist who charge around £80-£100 per session,but i dont see my partner being happy at wasting all his wages on a cat,as I said the female cat i had years ago that was speyed was a nightmare for this spraying everywhere,was worse than a tom for it,and as much as i love my cats i dont want to throw hundreds or running into thousands for things to not improve.

Im going to get her speyed but if it continues after that then i really wont know what to do

once again thanks for replies folks,as per vets advice i am giving her the course of antibiotics and then waiting a couple weeks to see if makes any difference,before booking her in for spey.as she told me it would take around 3 weeks to notice any change if it was caused by a uti,however she said because the spraying was vertical,it is a territory marking trait and not due to illness.

Luckily most of my floors are either laminate or tile so at least no carpets/rugs to throw out,the funny thing is she doesnt do it up anything on the stairs or landing which is the only area that is carpet,which is a good thing in a way.

There is a problem with cats and my garden,as i said my neighbour has 4,those were all descendants of the same mother as my cats,i did have them for a while when they were kittens,my friend wanted some and i got them from same lady i had mine from but she found out after a cpl months she was allergic so i had to take them back and then my neighbour had them off me and they had offspring of their own.(they are all female),but this is going back 6yrs or so.

They spend ages in my garden first thing in morning one after another they all come over the fence and find a spot to sit in my garden,the old lady on the other side of me hates any cat going in her garden,shoos them off,she even nailed carpet grip spikes to the side of her fence (which didnt stop them lol)and hung mothballs from each fence post,she also has this cat scarer thing its constantly all day making this high pitched squealing noise,annoys the crap outta me but it dont seem to bother the cats pmsl,they all still just wander round her yard

It is trying to work out what started this spraying in the first place,as id have thought it would have been something she'd have done from sexual maturity being as she not yet been speyed.But as I said it is only something she has started doing over the past year.In all those 7years ive had them she had never done it before,so i have no idea what has triggered it.
My partner and son have stopped chasing her and scolding her for the marking,hopefully it may lessen if she not constantly on edge.

we did get some info from vets about dealing with cats entering the garden like setting up a motion sprinkler system also the idea of a scarer sounds good so im going to sort something with that,obv i will have 2 tell my neighbour as he a cop dont wanna upset him lol

I do clean the area down with non bio washing powder and wipe down again with water after but she still remarked the same areas,however after putting the strips of foil over the bottom of these doors she hasn't yet for 3 days remarked those areas,she has moved up to a kitchen cupboard she had never marked before this morning as i can see the sticky sheen and the tile grout is wet.But its only 1 bit,i cant stop her marking my keyboard tho and i cant throw it away as it over £2k worth of music instrument she likes the bass speaker for it and sprays up the side and the cloth front,even after hanging foil off it she is climbing onto the kitchen worktop to mark it,and there is sticky cat pee on kitchen worktops which is not hygenic.

My main q is if its to do with them not being neutered,why in the past did a cat i had neutered from 6mths old then start spraying up everything?
im just worried that if it carries on after the spey then my o/h will give me no other option but that she has to go.as she spraying pee up all his training kit and karate pads etc

He not a cat fan and loves dogs,but tells me i always get what i want as i wont allow him to have a dog hehehe.

And another q,if is as seems that she constantly in season,which i gather from her constant klaxon yeowling,the vets have said it best she not in estreus when the spey is done,how do i get around that?
They are surprised that she is like it on a constant basis and not just the 2 times a year they told me,there now only seems to be a day in between her being quiet and the nxt back to the yeowling again,im just worried it could cause complications due to her age and the fact she a little overweight.Also it seems the yeowling and spraying are linked

If i hear her yeowling and sneak after her she often looking for something to mark.

Another thing im worried about is the fact the first vet told me its stress causing her to mark,because id gone about her constantly overgrooming,and they gave her a nice funnel to wear,which to me just stressed her and made her mark even more,once she is speyed,they will do another collar to stop her biting stitches licking the wound etc,this in turn will cause her to stress and urine mark again,so it just seems im in a vicious circle lol