spraying and food connection?

ranger

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I'm not sure if this should be a nutrition thread or behaviour. Mitz occasionally goes through phases of spraying. He's the lowest in the pack and submissive to the other three, plus an 'emotional' type, easily bothered by routine changes, and I've gone through an elimination list of what might be causing the problem.

Having got rid of all strange/foreign objects in the house he objected to, feliway everywhere (all four love it), proper odour eliminators and all the other basic steps to stop it, I've got it reduced now to a pattern I can spot, and it's to do with when I feed the cats meat! When Jazz had a tooth out and for a couple of weeks they had to have dry food only, he didn't do it once. The first night I fed them meat again, about an hour later he sprayed three times in five minutes. He gets clearly excited and agitated, shouts at me and rushes around, the meat clearly has an effect on him and it doesn't seem to be directly at the time of eating either.

I wondered whether it might be that he was competing with the other three when they're fed the catfood. That doesn't seem to be the case, and while the other three eat all of their spoonful, Mitz often only has a few mouthfuls and then goes away and leaves his, he prefers the dry food. I've tried a couple of different brands and it's the same effect. Could it be a dietary thing, could the food have this effect on him, or is this a behaviour thing? Does this ring a bell with anyone?
 

sharky

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food and spraying no that i know off unless he has an allergy to the food...

Is he fixed??
 
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ranger

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He's fixed, and never did it before he was neutered. He seems just to be a territorial boy and I know the other things that bother him, but I'd love to work out why the wet catfood seems to aggravate this so much. I did wonder about allergies - although can't think what there would be in the food he'd be allergic to!
 

lotsocats

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How odd! I have never heard of a cat spraying in response to food...but you never know!

I had a cat who died of kidney cancer just over a year ago, who would spray every time he was given catnip! He would get so excited because of the catnip that he would run around the house and very joyfully spray everything in sight. To say the least, we stopped giving the cats catnip until poor old Chester passed away so that we wouldn't have any more spraying frenzies in the house!
 
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ranger

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That sounds like Mitz too.... possibly he just gets too excited at the thought of meat!
 
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