elderly female cat keeps urinating on the bed

[thatfilmgirl]

Hello all! I'm having some issues with my cat, Priscilla. She just turned 15 and has hyperthyroidism and is taking felimizole.

So here's the story:

My brother came home with his year old ferret.

• Ferret has visited with us before when he came home for a month and this problem did not occur.
• The ferret is in his cage in our two story family room. The way our house is set up is that we have two story family room and two story foyer. My room is on the second floor separated from the house slightly with this bridge and so if you were to look down over the railing you would see the ferret cage.

After a month of being home, Prissy started urinating on my bed. She did this three days in a row before I was able to take her to the vet.

• the vet did blood work and said that it's probably stress from the ferret and that I should not let the ferret in my room or hold/touch/etc.
• We didn't have issues Friday or Saturday but then she urinated again on my bed Sunday.

• Our younger cat, Sammy (male, 4 years old, twice her size) has started laying around more on the bridge in front of my room. Him and Prissy had also stopped playing.
• Sammy likes to chase her around to get her to play and she sometimes indulges him and often times doesn't. We also noticed Sammy chasing prissy had gotten more aggressive. Sammy hasn't had any issues with the ferret but he does like to watch.

To try remedy this I ended up purchasing two Comfort Zone diffusers.

• I have put one in my room and one in my office area at the bottom of the steps where Sammy likes to sleep and play on the cat tree to test it out.
• We've had these going for three days -- today is day four. I found that prissy had urinated on my bed again today.

She also seems to have urinated on my mom's work clothes that were outside the laundry room where the cat litter is, but I don't think it had anything to do with this behavior (I suspect Sammy may have caught her while she was going to the litter box).

The vet says to give her a month to adjust and if she doesn't, he has prescribed her valium. I don't want to give her more pills if this can be avoided. The only other disruption we've had is that my grandmother has gone on vacation and her door is closed (Prissy likes to spend time in there).

We have thought about getting another catbox and maybe putting it in the basement and locking Sammy away at night or maybe getting a small box to put in my room (but I really don't want to do that). There aren't any other places upstairs that are able to accomodate and a second box and Prissy has had no problems using the one downstairs (she meows at me and makes sure I follow her to show me that she's using the box soooo I don't know).

She's only ever peed on furniture or clothes *ONCE* before and that was several years ago when my parents were on vacation.

Suggestions are very much appreciated. Thank you

 

[overwhelmed2]

Have you had her kidney function tested? When cats get treated for hyperthyroidism it can sometimes affect their kidney function - this happened to my darling old Maddie and she would urinate wherever she was because of the pain in her kidneys. In the end it was kinder to have her put to sleep, she was 18 years old. Hopefully this isn't the case with your cat but it may be worth getting her tested.

 

[thatfilmgirl]

thank you for the reply!  Would that have shown up in her blood work? I feel like the doctor would have run a test when we were talking about it because she was also there for her hyperthryoid blood work. He did say we needed to increase her dose when they called about the results.

 

[overwhelmed2]

Depends, some vets run very basic blood tests - may be worthwhile just giving him a call and checking that kidney function was tested

 

[thatfilmgirl]

I will definitely do that tomorrow. I guess I just assumed since the urination was the main point of my visit unless he thought it was the ferret. Or for all I know she's protesting my gramma being gone and her room being closed.

 

[thatfilmgirl]

Okay i just changed my sheets and she urinated on them in the fifteen minutes i was out of the room. Thank god the laundry was done. She is now snuggled up beside me for sleep after retreating down stairs. I did clean the litterbox.

 

[thatfilmgirl]

I'm sorry for so many updates but we went to the vet again today.

They took a urine sample, blood work, etc and are sending it off to the bigger lab for a full read up. The vet agrees that this isn't a bad idea esp. given her age, but now we're pinpointing that this is probably now a behavior problem.

So while waiting for the results, are there suggestions for retraining her for the litter?