<p>So for all you cat people. My 4 year old male (fixed) cat has started peeing around the house. It is weird - he backs up against the wall and pees on the wall. He doesn’t do it every time - uses the litter box sometimes, not other. Right now I am thinking I will have to get rid of him which makes me sad. But I can’t have my house smelling of cat pee. Any ideas?</p>
<p>There is this stuff called feliway and it discourages things like spraying and whatnot. You spray it where you don’t want the cat to pee and then see what happens. It works to stop cats from spraying, fighting with eachother, and from scratching up sofas. You can buy it from amazon or your local pet store might have it. Maybe ask your vet what to do.</p>
<p>Your cat is spraying for some reason. We have the same problem with one of ours. If he sees one particular stray cat outside, he gets really upset and sprays. We’ve been using Feliway and it works somewhat.</p>
<p>You probabably need to find out what’s causing him to do this to figure out how to stop it. Good luck!</p>
<p>Has your cat been checked for urinary tract problems? Any recent changes in your house (addition of a new pet, major remodel, etc.)?</p>
<p>Here is some helpful info from the Cornell Feline Health Center:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.vet.cornell.edu/fhc/brochures/Housesoiling.html[/url]”>http://www.vet.cornell.edu/fhc/brochures/Housesoiling.html</a></p>
<p>Switch to friskies special diet. I have a female that peed where she shouldn’t, and she did have a urinary problem. Twice. I switched to special diet & she’s been fine since. It’s very common in cats apparently and can actually be fatal in males.</p>
<p>have you taken him to a vet? I know that this can definitely be a sign of illness.</p>
<p>We have had an additional cat in the house since October (my sons cat). But I have realized he has been doing this for a while (before the new addition). I couldn’t figure out why out 2nd bathroom had been stinking. The carpet and wall was wet round the toilet and I pulled the carpet up and ripped the wallpaper off trying to figure out where the wet was coming from. Never found the source but the wet went away - because he started going elsewhere in the house. We actually have to use a huge rubbermaid container as a litter box for him because he pees backward standing upright and would be in the litter box (even the high walled ones) and the peee would land outside the box.</p>
<p>I guess I will take him to the vet and see what she says.</p>
<p>It’s always a good idea to get a vet to check him over to make sure it’s not a UTI, but from the sounds of it, he’s spraying because he’s upset by something.</p>
<p>As I mentioned, one of ours sprays when he sees the stray cat, our other one sprays in the litterbox, just like yours does. We’ve had to create a litterbox with a back on it so that when he sprays, it stays in the litter box instead of going over the top. We have no idea why he sprays (we think it’s because his brother is mean to him), but we are happy that he does it in the litterbox and not all over the house.</p>
<p>Your vet will have suggestions to help, but ours would just tell us that we needed to get rid of the cause, and we can’t figure out how to get rid of that stray cat because we can’t catch him.</p>
<p>Again, good luck and I hope you don’t need to get rid of your cat because of this.</p>
<p>One of the signs of urinary or urethral problems (stones, blockages, etc.) is urinating in odd places. Male cats can have it worse because of their anatomy. We went through this with our cat. The vet prescribed a special (expensive) diet. Sometimes it would get better, but invariably we would have to go back to the special diet and mess. </p>
<p>We lived that way for four more years. I couldn’t stand the mess/odor anymore, and the cat was miserable so I took her in and had her euthanized. I should have done it much sooner.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>
Me too. I had a female cat several years back that started doing the same. It seems like once they get in that habit it is really hard to stop them. </p>
<p>With her at first it was almost funny - if we had been away she would pee on our suitcases when we got back - “payback” I guess. Learned to unpack and put away the cases very quickly. Then she just started peeing all over the place. She would actually go to her litterbox (which we kept very clean) then decide hop out and go pee elsewhere instead. We banished her to the garage while we tried to decide what to do and she got out and we never saw her again.She was always a house cat so I felt really awful about it and still wonder what happened to her. So I know we need to actually make a decision this time and not let that happen. She was my cat and I was really fond of her, hence the procrastination and the bad outcome. This one is my husbands shadow (doesn’t even like me) so it will be sadder for my husband than for me.</p>
<p>My cat peed on two of my daughter’s suitcases and all over the carpet near the catbox. I finally got him to stop doing that by taping aluminum foil onto the carpet where he had been going, and I changed the kitty litter brand. He still does it sometimes when my daughter is home (she is in boarding school - her presence obviously upsets him). Does anyone know how to get rid of the smell??? The suitcases still reek. I tried putting them under the hose and using dishsoap. I tried Febreeze - actually I soaked them in febreeze more than once. I also tried some fermone stuff that was “guaranteed” - it didn’t work. The male cat smell is still there. Same with the carpet although it seems worse in the suitcases. I thought about buying new bags but my husband can’t smell it and either can my daughter. It seems that I am the only one who notices it.</p>
<p>Try a solution of Oxyclean - it saved my Tempurpedic mattress when our baby cat peed on it. Nature Miracle works on pet messes, but I did not find it too efffective when it came to cat urine smell removal.</p>
<p>I found that the best way to get rid of the ammonia smell on our living room carpet was to throw out the carpet. :mad:</p>
<p>Spraying on vertical surfaces is marking behavior. It has to do with territorial issues. The cat that sprays on your suitcases when you return from a trip is renewing his territory, not getting revenge. Is this cat neutered? That makes a difference.</p>
<p>If this is new behavior, you should look for what changed in the environment. If it’s old behavior, you may be unable to get rid of it, as it’s both habit and likely to happen again in the same spots. </p>
<p>Kilz primer will cover and destroy the smell (don’t ask how I know this). You need to get rid of the smell everywhere at once AND also provide an acceptable place for the cat to spray (like the interior of a litter box in an easily cleaned room). Even that may not work very well.</p>
<p>I’ve heard about cats that will spray when their owners come back from vacation, but luckily, we’ve never had to experience it.</p>
<p>I’m surprised that nature’s miracle hasn’t worked for some. I know that we had a problem with one spraying on the couch. We cleaned it with nature’s miracle, fabreezed it, and then sprayed it with Feliway and he quit spraying in that spot.</p>
<p>I think it’s sad when people have to get rid of their cats because of this because I can’t imagine ever getting rid of ours. But, I can see how not being able to get the behavior to stop can cause one to make that very hard decision. If we had continued to have a problem, I think we would have had to consider making ours an outdoor cat, as much as we would have hated that.</p>
<p>In my cat’s case it was a young male peeing - not spraying. He was neutered at 8 weeks. Has never sprayed. But he seems to not like my daughter and behaves this way only when she is around. I’m not planning on getting rid of either of them :)</p>
<p>He has mostly gotten over peeing on the carpet although he did it once when she was home for Thanksgiving, but not at Christmas - he was terrified of the Christmas tree btw. But we keep her suitcases in the garage when she is here. I unpack them for her as soon as she arrives and the cases are stored immediately. Then when packing up we keep them in the living room and the cat is supervised 100% of the time when the suitcases are there.</p>
<p>I would love to be able to just replace the carpet and the suitcases - but with job furloughs I can barely feed everyone… btw Costco cat food is great! It’s cheap, healthy, and lasts forever!</p>
<p>If my cat was just doing it occasionally then it would not be such an isssue. But it is becoming more frequent (and I only know when I catch him doing it). When I manage to discourage him from going in one place he just starts in another. And he is peeing, not spraying (he is fixed). He always pees that way (standing up and peeing backward on the vertical surface), even when he useds the litter box. I may try seeing if he can survive as an outdoor cat. Not sure he can though. He is very clumsy and a bit dim. His mother nearly killed him when he was a kitten by picking him up by his head with her teeth (she ate his other sibling - we never knew if she ate him because he died or he died because she ate him, we just found a half a kitten one day). He was paralyzed and the vet gave hin a steroid shot and said to bring him back the next day if he was still alive. She was amazed he survived. He slowly recovered though could not walkin a straight line for the longest time. His clumsiness and slightly odd temperament has always been rather endearing. But this is not.</p>
<p>Stressing out big time about this.</p>
<p>A friend of mine actually went to a large cage for her cat when it was clawing the furniture; it was in the cage unless supervised, like a puppy. It had a bed and perching shelves. The cat seemed very happy there. </p>
<p>If you used a cage in an easy-to-clean room (spare bathroom? corner of the basement? garage?), you could confine the cat when you couldn’t supervise it. You could make the cage very rewarding for the cat by feeding it in one part of the cage.</p>
<p>Fixed cats also spray. They are less likely to do it, but they still do it. Both of ours are fixed but they both spray sometimes. If your cat is backing up to a wall and standing there peeing, with his tail and body shaking, he is spraying. The one we have who sprays in the litterbox, will turn around and spray the backing that we have there, and other times, will pee directly in front of the box in a squatting position. There’s a definite difference between the two actions. If yours is really peeing and not spraying, he needs to be checked for a UTI for sure.</p>
<p>Ewww…that was a little too much info about the poor half kitten.</p>
<p>dmd, I have to disagree - caging a cat is not a good approach to deal with its behavioral problems. We cage dogs because they are descendants of den animals, so they are OK with tight spaces. Felines are NOT den animals, and any cat that is being confined to a small space might have more psychological problems down the road. Even cat shelters move away from caging their cats and let cats roam freely in rooms (I know because I used to volunteer in cat shelters). I’m shocked that someone would cage a cat because it was clawing furniture; I hope it was the last resort kind of measure because all behavior modification attempts failed.</p>