Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with caturine

He peed in the vent. What do I do now?

palindromic — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:22:28 -0800

My cat is peeing in my vents! How do I get the smell out before winter? I caught my beloved cat, Cincinnati, peeing into a floor vent of my rented house. This is an older home (built circa WWI), but I believe the ventilation/air ducts/heating/whatever you want to call it system has been updated fairly recently.

He is going to the vet on Wednesday, so hopefully it won't continue happening, but I think my roommates will have choice, unpleasant words for me come cold weather in a few months.

Can I just pour vinegar into that vent? Will I break the air?

So stinky

gnutron — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 18:53:16 -0800

My dog has cat pee on her. She stinks. HELP. Sometime today, our little dog rolled around in some cat pee in our backyard. We bathed her, but she still stinks. Any ideas on how to abate the odor? Vinegar?

Is our smelly closet a lost cause?

catfood — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:23:58 -0800

We have a large closet in our apartment that has always smelled of cat urine. Despite taking every measure we possibly could to eliminate the odor, it still smells, 2 years later. Is there anything left to try? When we moved into our apartment 2 years ago, we had one closet that smelled *very strongly* of cat urine. We had the apartment management do everything we could think of to eliminate the smell. Below is everything we and the management have done to try & get rid of the cat piss smell.

Saturated the carpet and closet walls with Nature's Miracle, allowed it to soak and then dry.
Washed the carpet and closet walls with water to rinse any residue out.
Bought 2 Oust fans and a few things of baking soda to let sit in the closet to neutralize the odor.
Removed the carpet and carpet pad, saturated the floor boards and wall closest to the door with more Nature's miracle and let soak and then dry.
The management then installed tiles in the closet where the carpet had been (not real tile, those dumb adhesive tiles).
Closet still smelled so I put refills in the Oust fans and let them run until the batteries died.

This closet is supposed to be a combination coat / linen closet, but I do not want to put coats or linens in there because I don't want them coming out smelling like an old cat lady. We even have cats, and their litterbox area never gets to smell like this! We have always kept the closet closed because we are also afraid that our cats might mistake it for a second litterbox.

We've used this closet for storage for things that won't absorb odors (our vacuum, some cleaning supplies, snow shovel, etc), but we're at the point where we need the storage for the coats & linens we have had to pack into our bedroom closet (which is bursting at the seams).

Is there anything else you can think of to get this closet to smell better?

Alternately, can you recommend any non-expensive ways to store linens & coats in this closet without having them come out stinky?

I'd actually like to clean the carpet.

bibbit — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:14:57 -0800

I need a small carpet cleaner - any suggestions? I only need it for stains on an (old) apartment carpet, including cat urine stains. I don't want something that breaks the bank, and I'm not expecting a miracle-worker - I just want to do what I can to keep from getting my security deposit dinged. More specifically: I have two cats, and they've peed a few times on carpet that I think is directly over concrete (no padding). There are a few other random stains on the carpet that are probably too old to do anything about, but I would like to attack them with something to at least see what I can do. And it'd be nice to have something on hand in case there are any serious spills in the future.

The carpet is brown, and short, and old. There are only a couple of rooms of it, so I want something handheld and small, not a full-size thing. Anyone have luck with anything?

Any experience removing cat urine odor from a mattress?

pants — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 14:47:48 -0800

My cat peed on my mattress about 24 hours ago. I removed all the bedding for laundering. Google's results are either ambiguous (both 'vinegar works' and 'stay away from vinegar' advice) or commercial sites. Any success using homemade remedies such as baking soda?

Stained Wood Floor

Macboy — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 05:14:29 -0800

Cat urine and wood floors? Our cat didn't like our new house and left a mark that burned a spot in our wood floor. Any ideas on how to take the stain up?