Long-Term Solution for A Cat Who Marks

December 28, 2019 5:39 PM

What do you do with a cat who will not stop marking in the house?

In 2016, we got a pair of kittens (brother and sister), and about a year later, the boy started marking in the house and basically never stopped. Sometimes it is UTI-related but lately it is not. He has destroyed every rug in the house, peed on countless other items, and we have spent a great deal of money and time on this problem. We have tried everything I can think of, including: UTI-prevention food, Urinary gold supplements, more litterboxes, Feliway, water fountain to encourage more drinking, and finally cat antidepressants (these are still in the early stages so the jury is out; this weekend has been bad and we've been confining him to the bathroom). None of the vets we've seen seem particularly concerned, which pisses me off, but that's another story.

Let's assume the drugs don't work and we still have a cat that wants to pee everywhere all the time. So then what? What do people do then? Rehome? Put down? Cat diapers? Confinement? Something else. I need to understand what people do with cats like this. I have three young children and they can't grow up in a house full of cat pee.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero to Pets & Animals (11 answers total)

Is he neutered? If not, that will help.

Have you checked his anal glands? I had a cat I thought was marking but it turned out to be impacted anal glands. A vet or groomer can confirm this and express them. You can learn to do this yourself, but it is not for the fainthearted.

Just to make sure, are you using an enzymatic cleaner to get rid of the urine? Anything with bleach or ammonia (especially ammonia) will encourage more spraying. Other culprets are latex backing on rugs, as the smell attracts them (more ammonia). Bath mats often have latex backings, so you might want to ditch them if he's marking them. Sometime regular rugs have latex glue too.

Good luck with this. It took me almost a year to solve my kitty's issues. But once figured out the cause all was well.
posted by ananci at 6:04 PM on December 28, 2019

If you really cant deal (no judgement here, sometime it happens) please try to rehome him before considering putting him down.
posted by ananci at 6:05 PM on December 28, 2019 [6 favorites]

Feliway plug-ins stopped our neutered cat from spraying. If they hadn't worked, we would have had him put down. This is a no-tolerance household.
posted by BostonTerrier at 6:15 PM on December 28, 2019

My former spouse had a cat with this habit, and I totally hear you that it's stressful and gross. Putting him on kitty antidepressants worked, but not immediately - give that one several weeks before giving up on it if you can stand it.
posted by centrifugal at 6:19 PM on December 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Our cat outgrew this, but if yours is only one year old, I'm not sure when that would happen. (We adopted our cat around age 4 and he quit around age 6, but it wasn't constant during that time.)
posted by slidell at 7:32 PM on December 28, 2019

In our case the cat was quite elderly, blind and deaf, made it to his litter so maybe 50% of the time, and we pretty much accepted that was as good as it was going to get. He confined himself to one room of the house, which was handy. We had pee pads down all around the box so if he could get close it was good enough, and we just accepted that for the rest, we’d be doing frequent carpet cleaning. It wasn’t great but we also knew it was only likely to be a few more months that he was comfortable and enjoying life, so we just rode it out for the remainder of the time we had with him.

But that’s a very different situation than a young cat in a household with little kids. In your case I’d give the meds a good long trial run, with confinement as needed in the meanwhile to keep things manageable for you. If that doesn’t work,and your vet can’t offer you anything else to try that’s within your tolerance for time and expense, then you may need to rehome. Another household without small children may have the time and ability to solve this behavioral problem and give your cat a long and happy life.
posted by Stacey at 8:04 PM on December 28, 2019

There’s plenty of reason to put down a cat who won’t stop peeing everywhere. Nobody’s going to want a cat with that behavior unless they are a sanctuary with some kind of outdoor facility.

I had a pee cat and after spending literally thousands of dollars on the issue (from vet visits to having to replace the carpet in my apartments more than once), I surrendered her to the Humane Society. It was a very painful decision, but it was an unsustainable situation. Not every cat makes a good pet, and we don’t live in a world where there’s an alternative for those animals.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:01 AM on December 29, 2019 [6 favorites]

I would absolutely try rehoming the cat-- I've adopted animals over the years which were supposedly problematic (attacking people, peeing everywhere...), and as soon as they acclimated to my place, all those behavioral issues stopped. Often it's just an environment mis-match (they need a larger place, a quieter place, a more active place...). Please do not have this animal killed (I will not use the euphemism 'put down' in this context) before at least trying to find a new home for it.
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 9:32 AM on December 29, 2019 [1 favorite]

We have a cat who had this habit and has stopped. We went through the trying everything listed as well and what we eventually discovered is that he wants to be an only cat. We rescued him, his mom and littermates ten years ago; mom and littermates were adopted by others. We also had two older cats when we adopted him. He sprayed from young adulthood as far as we can tell. Then, after our two older cats died, he stopped spraying. We fostered a couple cats and while they were here he started right back up again. I know this isn't an easy answer, but I hope it's some hope.
posted by jocelmeow at 11:14 AM on December 29, 2019

One of my cats was like this (although maybe not quite as severe) for many years in his mid-life. Between vet bills and replacing ruined items, I spent many thousands of dollars on it over the course of about 5 years.

Things only improved after we moved a few blocks away in 2014. In retrospect, I am pretty sure the problem was that our prior house had feral cats around it, and was also quite drafty. The new house is territory that seems to be "officially" claimed by owned outdoor cats (the ownership seems to rotate, but it's only ever one at a time). Also, the new house is better insulated, and has a vestibule near the front door that functions as a sort of airlock.

Obviously, moving house is probably not in the cards for you. But if you think there are outdoor cats marking the exterior of your house that he can smell, maybe there are things you can do to discourage that or mitigate the scents outside.

We also do keep the doors closed to rooms that have been a target in the past. Herman does still slip up once in a while, about every 4-6 months. Which is still annoying and frustrating, but manageable. (Hope I haven't jinxed it now!)
posted by slenderloris at 12:06 PM on December 30, 2019

We had a young cat that peed nightly in weird spots. He was a feral rescue with his brother. Dude goes outside during the day, so we could not figure out what the issue was. It turned out to be his way of expressing displeasure about stressful things: he stopped the nightly whiz on the kitchen table or on a dishtowel he pulled down after the dog was injured and had to be crated for several weeks. We figured out she was harassing the cats in some way while we were at work, so the dog stays in the bedroom while we are out. That stopped 70 % of random incidents. We pick up every possible thing, keep him out of most places unsupervised, and that stopped another 20 %. Growing up and becoming more chill around us stopped another further 5 %. Now he mostly does it with an obvious trigger, like the man who came to drywall our skylight. That's a long way of saying that it may be stress and hopefully the Prozac with start to help.


Things that seem to have helped as well: Dr. Elsey cat attract litter. Thornell Cat Odor-Off (I have tried everything, this stuff has the most consistent results for me and the smell does not bother me, goes away after a couple days. It has gotten rid of permanent, baked-in pee odors). Also if you live in a medical marijuana state, CBD from a dispensary has been great for when we were expecting an upset.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:22 AM on December 31, 2019