Mimi, the problem child

cinderellie

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Alright, so Mimi, a 10 year old fixed female cat, who was an only cat for 9 of her years, has lived with us for over a year now. She has always been our "problem child", (although we've learned to love her to bits anyways) and has been know to pee outside her litter before, and such, we've tried all the tricks in the book including feliway. Nothing seemed to make things better. The vet claimed she was perfectly healthy and it was just her personality.

She lived in my room for over a year, luckily because it's the attic bedroom, it also has the old bedroom turned stairwell room, so she had lots of room and got my company at night. When in her/my room she only peed on the floor right next to her litter box, she did it so often that the hardwood floor has rotted away in that corner. From time to time we'd try and introduce her to the other cats. She does not like this one bit, and her shreiking has egged on our youngest male who at first was very good with her, but started to get irritated with her incessant growling and shreiking and has now decided he'd like to have her for dinner one day... Anyways, when she was out she would sometimes pee in a few places around the house, the guest bed, the coat closet, and on the kitchen floor. Because of this we have never been able to bring ourselves to bring her out permanently and let them fight it out, because we don't want to find out where else she'll pee if given enough time.

Anyways, back to the story, a couple of months ago I couldn't bear the smell of the urine in my bedroom anymore, so I decided it was time for another really major cleaning of the floor, so we put her in the guest room while we cleaned. I decided I wanted to let my room air out overnight so I put her litter and her food in the guest bedroom, and well, a few months later she's still there. Overall she has seemed far happier in this room, partly because it's my computer room, and I'm a computer geek so I spend nearly all my spare time in here, so she gets my company most of the day.

Sleeping in this room and having her litter here seemed to end her peeing on the bed, up until Christmas Eve. Since then she has been peeing many times a day on the bed, sometimes several times in an hour.

Her diet has not changed, nor her water supply, her litter has been changed and cleaned for her, just in case she decided it had gotten too dirty, we have been replacing the pee pads leftover from my infancy every time we notice she's peed again, and laundering them fully, however nothing seems to curb this problem. I noticed yesterday for the first time, that she appeared to be having issues in the litter box, although she was in a generally strange mood so I can't be sure if that was the cause or not.

The only change in her little world in the last week or so has been christmas time, and our preparations for it, although we haven't done anything in her room, and we haven't had any guests over, so I don't think that it's likely to be the cause of her problems. I will take her to see the vet's the first opportunity we get, clearly, to make sure she hasn't developed anything serious, or treatable.

The part that really got to me today, with all this, is that I was sitting on the bed and she got a nice happy cuddle and purred up a storm, then got bored as she usually does, only about a minute later, I noticed she was standing next to my leg and not moving, and it hit me she was peeing, right there inches away from my leg! I tried firmly saying "no mimi", blowing at her side a little (it's a very effective and painless way of distracting our cats normally), touching her gently, and then I resorted to clapping to see if she'd stop, but oh no, she just kept squatting. *sighs*

I should also note she's on feliway, and although it improves her in so many other ways it does not do anything to her peeing!

Anyways, hope you've made it through this long long message! XP I doubt there's anything to be said that I don't already know, but if nothing else, I felt I needed to talk about her and her behaviours, so that I could go back to loving her, instead of feeling this urge to bite her.
 

hissy

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Well don't bite her, you will just get a mouthful of fur.


Seriously, what is probably wrong with her can be addressed by a vet. I didn't see in your post where you took her in to be checked for UTI. That would have been the first thing to have checked.

She also could just be responding to the stress in the house. Cats use their bladder as stress targets and any change can make a cat stressed. I have one cat that goes off every winter, when I take off the summer coverlet and put the winter one on. He starts to pace and cry, and until I figured out the trigger, he was peeing on the winter coverlet. I did take him in to be checked by the vet first before moving to what behaviorally could be wrong with him. It is a process of elimination sometimes.
 

yayi

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Your Mimi is like my senior Joji. They're about the same age, loners by nature AND alpha kitties. Look, they pee or mark whatever they smell is strange or outside their jurisdiction. The guest room has been Mimi's sole territory and that explains her "good behavior'. I am worried she may have developed some health problems with the sudden change. But one can never tell. My Joji will pee if there's even a different scent in the air (I am not kidding!!).
But because Joji is very,very special to me (being one of my first cats) I know her. I make sure she never lingers far from what is familiar to her, her litterbox is always where she can reach it (even if it means me bringing it to her) and I've learned to understand her. I know the different "meows". I know if she wants a treat, wants to go bathroom. wants to be left alone, is angry, or in pain, or wants a cuddle or a good game with meowmy.
I think like me and Joji , you and Mimi are bonded. You are doing a great job.
 
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cinderellie

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Yes, I believe it's UTI that she's recently developed because last time she was at the vet's she was checked and was just fine, her peeing was just her way of acting out at the time, but today I woke up to find 4 pees on the bed, two of which had blood in them, for the first time. Our vet doesn't open back up until tomorrow, so we'll be bringing her in the first appointment we can get. *sighs*

My mother's trying to scritc her right now, and she's growling up a storm, better go rescue my mother before she gets torn to shreds.
 
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cinderellie

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Well, we took her to the vet's today and we got her anti-biotics, they unfortunately couldn't take a urine sample for the UTI test, because she's got too much fat to find the bladder without much difficulty, especially as there was basically nothing in it as she peed a few times on the drive to the vets


Anyways, if in two weeks time it hasn't cleared up we're to take her back and leave her overnight so that they can get a proper sample from her. Until then, we have to fight to get anti-biotics down that kitty's gullet! As if that weren't a hard enough task with a normal cat, let alone psycho kitty from hell!
 
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