Cat weeing everywhere!

[kate261183]

Hello,

I am having trouble with my cat. She is approx. 11 years old and I got her from a rescue place when she was about 10 months old. She had been ran over and left at the vet with an amputated leg and various anxiety problems. It took me a long time and a lot of work to get her used to me; I used to drag her out from behind the sofa for fuss twice a day. She is still very timid and runs away from most noises or people, only coming to my bed at night for fuss. She has always been a house cat as she seems too scared to use the cat flap although if the door is left open she will venture out onto the patio for a few minutes if no one disturbs her.

We had our daughter 18 months ago and since then she has been weeing around the house. We originally thought it was other cats gaining entry to our house so started locking the cat flap, however, we recently went out and our other cat was locked out making it impossible for any cat to gain entry and upon return the house smelt really strongly of cat wee. She also went through a phase of weeing on the bed a few months ago, ruining our mattress. This now seems to have stopped.

I have taken her to the vet who has checked her over and found no health problems. I think it is something to do with her stress and anxiety although the plug in Feliwave things didn't seem to make much difference. I have also added a litter tray upstairs so we now have two in the house. She does use them which makes me think this is definitely behavioural.

We are having another baby in August and I am worried about this getting worse, not to mention the fact that my house is starting to smell and I don't want my children running around in cat urine.

what should I do?

[Crewella]

This does sound anxiety related. I'm afraid I'm not all that experienced with this issue, but there is a good advice page here:

http://www.catchat.org/index.php/cat-to ... ay-indoors

[Lilith]

Hi there and welcome. This is a tough one; the arrival of children does seem to make some cats anxious and they forget their house-training, compounding the problem, as of course you don't want small children crawling or walking into a patch of cat wee, to say nothing of the smell - I live alone and am not houseproud lol but even I wouldn't like it; it would drive me nuts - even though I've coped with sprayers, male and female, in my time. Yuck! And your girl had a rotten life before she came to you too; you must hate seeing her unsettled again.

That link Crewella provided is excellent, can only add (though you probably know this already) that privacy helps, a quiet and private tray, and places where, no matter what, the cat can hide or roost and not be disturbed. Your little daughter won't be at the most reasonable of ages and might need telling a few times that a certain place is 'Cat's territory' - easier said than done I know! Toughest job in the world, 24/7 motherhood. I never tackled it myself...

I do hope you manage to resolve this problem; wishing you and cat and family all the very best

[Crewella]

Just to add (my apologies for going slightly off-track on your thread!), I'd not looked at that link for some time and was rather surprised to see a very familiar looking back end in one of the pics!! My Daz obviously has a doppelganger out there somewhere!

Daz salad.jpg (98.94 KiB) Viewed 1418 times

I hope you do manage to find a solution - keep us posted.

[Lilith]

Has Daz got a 'mouseful' of prey in that pic?

[Crewella]

He has indeed ... along with a nice healthy side-salad!