Cat went crazy

[zcm]

Hello.

My cat likes sleeping on the ironing board. Today I was ironing, and the cat became very interested in the board. I thought it was because she likes to lie down on the freshly ironed clothes, but she was acting strange and smelling the board, very agitated... when I tried to pick her up to put her on the floor, she started hissing and growling at me!

I managed to distract her and lock her out of the room.
Then I inspected the board. There was a small yellow stain, I thought at first, maybe I had been careless with the hot iron and burned the cloth a bit. Maybe the burning smell attracted the cat? But then I got closer to it, and smelled it, I realized she had actually left a small urine stain on the board. The warmth of the iron probably changed the smell or something, and made her go crazy?

Is this normal? Did she perhaps think there was another cat around? She normally has no problem with me using the board, she tries to jump on it and get in the way, but she has never been aggressive about it. Why did she turn on me?

Thanks for any input.

 

[momofmany]

There are few smells stronger than heated cat urine. I'd put the smell close to the smell of skunk. Even if she was the cat to leave the urine on your ironing board, the heat from the iron exaggerated the smell and she most likely responded to that. The smell does change when heated, and she might have threatened that there was another cat around.

Take off the cover and wash it completely. You might also want to wash the face of the iron to remove anything that might have stuck to it.

 

[zcm]

Thank you, I will do that!
Interesting how animals react to these things, it was such a small stain and I had to get really close to the board to pick up the scent.