$1200 down the drain...

Question
Ooooh, I am hoping you can help me. Back in October, my kittens went into heat. We got their brother neutered, thank God, just in time. Well we now have the kittens spayed. My problem is, the kittens had started urinating on the $1,200 leather furniture. We are unsure why. The litter boxes are kept clean. Even after we had their brother neutered we got him urinating as well on them. Well when the girls got spayed they had to spend the night there. We found out they weren't the only ones pissing. My boyfriend and I have tried everything. We have 14 cats. Yes, 14. At first the urinating, had happened one or two times since we had the kittens, before they were allowed free range of the house. I'm guessing by the other cats, but it had stopped. Now, there is urinating all over the house. We are to our wits end, and my boyfriend wants to get rid of the cats. We steam cleaned the floor, several times. Went over problems spots excessively. My boyfriend has scrubbed the couches with lysol, soap, leather cleaner, hot water, pinesol, and we've spent over $100 on supposedly "anti-marking" sprays. The crap doesn't work! Also the way the couches are, there are just crevices to seperate the seats. They aren't removal cushions so I know urine gets trapped there, and washing it doesn't help because the crevices can't adequately dry out. My boyfriend got so fed up, he put painter's plastic on the furniture (for paint to keep from getting on the furniture) and sheets and blankets. They STILL piss! I don't understand. What should we do? My boyfriend is wanting to go so far as to set up video surveillance! Any help or advice would be appreciated!  

Answer
Lacey,

I am assuming that all 14 cats are neutered or spayed?

Yes, you clearly have a major problem.  There may be a few things you can do to help, but the simplest thing is to get rid of all the furniture where the kittens pee'ed inappropriately.  However, I am not sure you want to do that.  I am not sure how effective any of the below suggestions will be.

Before I get started with suggestions which may or may not work (as this has been going on for 6 months now), is you should probably read the article pointed to by the link:

http://www.netcat.org/housesoiling.html

It is written by a veterinarian who is also a cat breeder.

The reason the anti-marking sprays may not work is that not all urination is marking!  I would confine all the kittens to someplace they cannot get to the furniture with plenty of litter pans and the type of litter you want them to use.  Give them no choice.  They either go where you want or they have to walk in it!  We have confined errant kittens to a cage and had nothing but litter pans on the cage floor giving them, essentailly no choice but to get it right.

Also, the cleaners you haver used will not help (BTW Lysol and, I believe, Pinesol contain phenol which is poisonous to cats).  What you need to get is an enzyme based cleaner specifically for pet odors and stains (available at most pet supermarkets).

You also need to make sure the litter pans are all scooped daily and changed and washed at least once a week. Our rule of thumb is one litter pan for every 2 cats, rounding up for an odd number, e.g. 2 pans for 3 cats or 3 pans for 5 cats.  One of the problems is that cats have a variety of hierarchies including one for litter pans.  If you do not ahve enough pans, it is possible one or more of the cats may be preventing some of the kittens from doing their business in the litter pans, so they will use something more convenient.  It is also quite possible that the allowance of the kittens to run the house has set up the applecart, so to speak, and this will also result in some inappropriate bathroom habits. It would also be a good idea to have litter pans in various parts of the household so that there is no one territory where dominant cats can prevent "lesser" cats from using the litter pans.

Where you do not want urinating behavior, you can try a Feliway diffuser.  Feliway is a pheramone based product that sometimes seems to deter inappropriate urination local to its area. I would not guarantee its effectiveness in your case.

Another tack you might try taking is to retrain your cats to use the litter pan.  Clicker training is an effective way of modifying behavior in cats and could work here.  I would look at:

http://www.clickertraining.com

which is Karen Pryor's web site.

Good luck and best regards... Norm.