Bright yellow urine

Question
Nolly, my 10 year old just peed on a white bed pad and it was bright yellow.  I feed wet, plus science diet kd.  I am assuming she drinks water enough, but to my chagrin I do have 11 cats and it is a bit hard to keep up with daily and/or regulate.  She shows no sign of pain or discomfort, her regular self if you will and she has not lost any weight.  What could it be?

Answer
Beverly,

Kitty urine is normally quite concentrated so what seems quite yellow to you may actually be perfectly normal. Bear in mind that today's domestic cats did evolve from Egypt where there wasn't much fresh water to be had so their kidneys became really efficient at concentrating the urine much more highly so that their bodies could make use of the small amounts of water available to them. When it comes to cats the more moisture in their diet, the better off they will be because cats are designed to get the majority of their water *from their food* as opposed to drinking loads of water (although obviously you still want to provide as much fresh water as they want to drink each day). Many cats who are eating a diet made up entirely or even mostly of dry food are actually dehydrated for much of their lives because cats don't have the same drive to drink water that other mammals do because of how and where they evolved from. Our babies eat a diet that's made up about 95% or so of high quality canned and raw diets that I also add water to in order to ensure that they're getting the moisture that they need to thrive. Generally when I mix water into the canned food I make the food the consistency of gooey icing that would be slightly difficult to ice a cake with and they seem to accept that well.

That being said, if your only concern based on Nolly's eating, drinking and usual litterbox habits is that she peed outside of the box just this once and it was brightly colored I wouldn't be too concerned... It's quite possible that your kitty peed outside of the box as a way of communicating with your other cats which happens from time to time in even the most well mannered multiple cat households where everyone is spayed and neutered.

My personal feeling is that any time a kitty eliminates outside of the box it's a good idea to have them seen by the vet *just to be on the safe side*. Your vet will likely want a urine sample just to test for infection and to see how well her kidneys are (or aren't) concentrating her urine. I always like to rule out medical reasons for inappropriate elimination before assuming that the issue is entirely behavioural.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me again at any time - I'm more than happy to help in any way that I can.

Kind regards,

Ali