Please help! Cat pees all over house when left home alone.

[ryanmacbern]

Sorry for the long post, but I think the details are important in this case.

I'm at my wits' end. My wife and I currently have four cats. The first cat we got (Marty) seems to have separation anxiety. If we are gone for more than 24 hours he tends to pee somewhere he's not supposed to. We've been dealing with this problem for years now.

The last advice we received (from a vet) was to block off the areas where he pees. There were three main areas, and we had blocked off two of them (and that seemed to be helpful). When we recently left for a week to visit family for Christmas I decided to finally block off the last area from him and hope that he wouldn't find a new spot.

As usual we had a cat sitter who came every other day for about an hour to give them attention, etc. She knows our concerns and reported no pee during her visits. Well, we just returned home and stepping through our front door was like being slapped in the face with the smell of cat pee. The usual spots are tile which is easy to look for the dark grout and easy enough to clean. This time he has decided to pee on our wood floors (he never peed on the wood floors before) and he found about eight different spots to do so. It's very difficult to notice those spots so I don't blame our cat sitter for missing them.

The extra wild card here is we recently added two cats to our home. We had 3 boys and one recently passed, so we added 2 girls. Marty never seems to get along well with any other cats, but he has seemed especially upset by the girls.

At this point I feel like I want to put Marty in a cage or fenced off in a room alone while we are gone for extended periods. I'm not sure if that would be a bad choice or not. I know some dog owners put their dog in a cage when they leave and wonder if that is the best solution for my cat. Google can't seem to find any people that have had a similar situation. I have a large pet play pen meant for dogs for outside that I used to block off half our kitchen. I wonder if putting him in the play pen for a week at a time would be a viable solution.

Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks! -Ryan

[Lilith]

Hi there. I had a similar experience a couple of years back, and though there will be far more knowledgeable people than me who can help you, I thought I'd add my two cents lol.

I had 4 cats at the time, 3 girls and a very elderly lad, Finn. Ironically he'd come to live with me as a feral tom and after neutering I'd had to gently train him not to spray everywhere. I think the success with this was due to his falling testosterone levels. However, now he was faecally incontinent - possibly because of worsening arthritis - despite medication, squatting to pass a motion was perhaps awkward; he'd leave the tray before he'd finished - or sometimes he'd just be caught short. Unlike your Marty he was a confident boy and thought himself the kingpin of the household.

To my horror I had to go into hospital, totally unexpectedly, for a week. My ex, who Finn knew and liked, very kindly visited the house daily to care for the animals, but they'd been used to having me there 24/7 and when I returned it was, as you found, to a stench you could cut with a knife and fork. Finn had surpassed himself. He'd weed in his tray ok but as for anything else...he'd even managed to do it in my bed! My ex wasn't best pleased....The cats seemed to be in a state of shock - it took a while to convince them that I'd returned. That's the trouble - you can't explain to a cat that you're going to be away for a week. After my return Finn went back to normal - the odd accident here and there but nothing like the regular fouling during my absence.

I'm hoping this may be the case with your Marty - that now things are back to normal, he goes back to normal, or what passes for. I'm not surprised you're getting a bit desperate - at least a mess can be seen and cleared - wee soaks everywhere and stinks for ages, tempting the miscreant back to the scene of crime.

Although I might be tempted to put a very dirty cat into a large crate with all home comforts if I had to be away from the house for some hours, personally I wouldn't do this with a fragile personality like Marty while I was in the house. Is there any way you can manage to keep the other cats content in another part of the house while you 'special' Marty, even say for an hour or two on an evening (sorry if you've already tried this.) I feel he might be a bit confused atm, by the arrival of the new cats and the Christmas holiday, and that with some reassurance he will get back to his old self. I do feel that crating him might erode his sense of territory in the house - but as I say there are more knowledgeable people than me in this field on here.

Edit - sorry, re-reading your post I wasn't sure if you meant, putting him in the crate just in your absence, or getting him used to staying in there for a while.

Poor old chap! (And poor you too - this kind of a problem is a nightmare!) Do hope you get him sorted, give him a love from me

[Kay]

we need some more info here, Ryan, to be able to advise

how many litter trays do you provide for the 4 cats?

do they also have access to outside, and if so, how many actually use the trays?

are you sure he is weeing, rather than spraying? spraying would be a very natural reaction to having two strange cats brought in

please don't consider penning him yet - it would seem like he was being punished for bringing the two girls into his home, from his point of view

[ryanmacbern]

We have three litter boxes. However one of those is Marty's alone and only he can get to it. The cats do not have access to the outside. I'm pretty sure he's actually marking around the house as it's always against a wall or some sort of vertical surface. It's difficult to tell because it's usually a large quantity, but our cat behaviorist friend told us vertical trumps quantity.

Marty would do this even before we got the new cats (although still with other cats in the house). Any extended time away from our house and he would pee/mark usually on our front door (which is no longer accessible to him). Once we're home he may go one more time, but it's usually back to his normal self at that point. That's what led me to believe it was more of a separation anxiety thing, but this time it does appear to be more of a territorial thing, or perhaps a combination of the two.

Our house is a fairly open floor plan, so in order to separate the cats while we're gone we would have to shut them in a bedroom. We've tried a fence at the top of our stairs to separate the upper level from the lower level, but the two girls always manage to find a way over it. The two boys (including Marty) do not climb.

Maybe when we're away for several days we should close him in our bedroom. That's where he spends most of his time and is kind of his territory.

[Kay]

it does sound like territorial marking, so giving him exclusive access to your bedroom might help a lot - and reducing his anxiety level is another must - they say the sense of scent is the last to go with old age, so somewhere which doesn't smell of the other cats would be the objective

have you tried Feliway or similar products? there are more and more calming products on the market these days, with so many multi-cat households around

anxiety when you're not around can't be helped, but is there a chance the cat sitter let the girls encroach on his space more than you do?

and a final point - excessive urination can be a sign of kidney disease, which is very common in older cats, so a vet visit might be in order, if he hasn't had a blood/urine test recently

[ryanmacbern]

We have tried a Feliway wall diffuser before for several months at a time in various spots and did not notice much improvement if any. We also tried using a calming collar and it did not seem to help either.

There is absolutely a chance that the girls are encroaching on Marty's space more while we're away. We kind of police them a little when we're home, so if we're not here to do that, they could be bothering him more.

When we're home Marty has a perfectly appropriate amount of urination in his litter box and nowhere else, so it's quite apparent to me that it just a behavioral issue, but we can certainly get him checked out to be safe.

I think we will try closing him in the bedroom when away. We'll have to figure out how to setup his litter box and food when closed in there. The tricky thing is our bed is like the neutral zone for the cats. It is the only place where all of them will lay down in close proximity together without any issues and they all love to sleep with us at night, so I'm not sure we'll be able to make it exclusively Marty's space when we are home. Do you think left-behind smells from the other cats will be a problem if we shut him in our bedroom when away?