Please help! MAJOR cat urine problem

Thanks for reading my posting. I am new to this forum. I have two cats, a 5 yr. old male and a 6 yr. old female. We have always had a minor problem with our cats marking/spraying in our home, but it was generally limited to easy-to-clean areas and occurred infrequently. Now I am going nuts. I believe that both cats are marking my beautiful living room sofa (in addition to certain items that belong to my 9 mo. old daughter) and any laundry basket they can find, empty or full. I am at my wits end. My husband wants to get rid of them, but they have become members of our family. My son and I would be devastated. I feel that I have made a commitment to these cats, for better or for worse. That said, I'm not sure how much more I can take. I am embarassed to have company because I am sure that our house stinks at this point. I have tried Nature's Miracle to eliminate the odors, but it only helps somewhat. I just ordered a kit from "Planet Urine" which contains a dry chemical pet stain and odor remover. I haven't received it yet, but I'm skeptical that it will work.

Here are my questions: What works to get the urine odor out of carpets and upholstery? What can I do to get my cats to stop (they have been to the vet, we have increased the number of litter boxes, we even tried the female on Buspar.)

Other info: the male clearly stalks the female and I believe that she instigates the marking behavior, the male loves my kids and the female is very shy and hides most of the time.

If anyone has any ideas, they would be greatly appreciated. This is causing a lot of stress in our house for people and cats alike.

First, we need to know for sure that the problem is spraying rather than urinating. If the cat is standing and the pee shoots straight back so that he/she is aiming high on the wall or side of the couch, it is spraying. If the cat squats while peeing, it is normal urination.

If the cat is peeing (not spraying) inappropriately, you need to get him or her to the vet ASAP. The #1 cause of inappropriate urination is urinary tract infections or blockages. Given the stress your female is under, that may be what is going on. You can also read some of the other posts on this forum for other great ideas for stopping inappropriate urination.

If the cat is spraying...he is marking his territory. Basically, he's saying this is my place, not yours! This can be a difficult habit to break but it is absolutely possible to do so.

Try the following ideas and also do a search for spraying on this forum for excellent ideas on other threads.

1. Use Feliway to help him not want to spray. Feliway mimics the friendly marking that cats do when they rub their faces on things. When a cat smells a friendly scent, they are unlikely to mark with urine. The Feliway box will give detailed instructions on how to use it....follow the instructions carefully.

2. Hang aluminum foil on the places the cat likes to spray. Cats usually will not spray on foil because it makes an unpleasant sound when hit with the urine and it makes the urine splash back on the cat. Each day that the cat does not spray a strip of foil, tear about an inch off the bottom of the foil until the foil is completely gone. Don't remove the whole strip all at once because the cat may interpret this as you saying it is okay to spray here again.

3. If you see the cat getting into the spray position, yell "No!" and then grab him and put him in time-out (in the bathroom for example) for only 2-3 minutes. Do the same if you caught him in the act.

4. Check to see if there are stray cats hanging out outside your house. A cat will often spray in response to strange cats around the house. Make sure you don't walk through outside cat spray and track that smell into the house.

5. Be patient and persistent. Breaking the spraying habit han take a while, but it should work.

Good luck!

If they aren't spayed or neutered I would start there as well. With the neutralizers, I have found the only thing to work is NOK-OUT. You can even put it in a cool mist humidifier for a whole room. Breeders I have talked to use it on whole males. You can read up on it at www.kalever.com. Just click on the word NOK-OUT.

I am ordering some of that product!
Thanks

Yes, anyone with ANY crummy odor should try it. Now mind you, I am not a rep and do not make any commission or do they know I recomend it. I just happen to find it the best to eliminate odors. I have used it for smoke smell,food smells,in the laundry, or just to give a room a clean fresh smell. I had one of my vets try it. One of his cats peed on his pillow(now if it were my pillow, I would have just thrown it away!), but he soaked it in some Nok Out and he said..poof it was gone, he was amazed. I am surprised more people dont know about this stuff

Unless you have actually seen which cat is urinating on the sofa it might be only one of the cats not both. You mentioned that the female cat is timid and hides all the time and that the male is stalking her. It's possible that the female is urinating in inappropriate places because the male is between her and the litter box or attacks her when she comes out of the box. I am assuming that both cats are neutered. We had a similar situation. We have a large ferret cage (no ferret, just the cage) which is plenty of room for one cat, food dishes and litter box and 2 roomy shelves to sleep on. We put the cat that was peeing around the house in the cage so she would feel safe fom the other cat and have easy access to "her own" litter pan. She liked it because she was safe from the other cat. We kept her in there for about a week. Then we let her out of the cage when we would be nearby to protect her from the other cat. We still close her in the cage at night. She goes right in when it gets to be bedtime. During the day, she knows the cage is still there with "Her litter box" so she doesn't have to pee in wrong places any more.
It's worth a try, if you can isolate one of the cats and see if the peeing stops you might be able to retrain them to use the litter box.
... Bonnie Raymond

I tried to click on the Kalever site for Nok-Out but all I got was something called Swish. Anyone else have a problem? Also, has anyone used a product called Feliway to discourage spraying? Any othe suggestions? My house is covered in plastic to stop the furniture from being ruined. I do have 11 cats (sigh) Anne

To read about the NOK OUT click on the link to koncepts. Or you can just go to www.nok-out.com

I thought only males sprayed and if they were neutered, they wouldn't. I have a three year old male that has been neutered since he was 6 mos old and recently got another male kitten. He was neutered a few weeks ago, he is just barely 7 mos old. I hope I haven't been told wrong, I would hate to find another home for Mac but I can't have a cat that's going to spray.

sue

Well, it is true that when a male is neutered at an early age, the spraying is curbed. As with all things, there will be a few that will spray to show who's boss. You would need to figure out if he is really spraying or he is just peeing though. Spray is usually on a vertical surface.

Usually being fixed will stop spraying but I have 8 males and 3 females. With that many males there are always territorial issues. I didn't have a problem the numbers went over about 5. I think having so many males is the real problem. Good luck, Anne

I ordered my nok-out and it just came....whoopie!!!!!!!!

Make sure and let me know what you think of the Nok out. You can also add a little bit to a cool mist humidifier and run it in a room to help clear the air.

There is a hydrogen peroxide and baking soda formula that works well, search hydroge peroxide on this forum. I was going to order nok-out, but read on the mfg. site that they do animal testing on rabbits and rats. They give all the data about rashes and eye irritation. After that I said no thanks.