Cat Urinates on Stovetop!

Question
This is really driving me crazy -- I have a cat who pees on the stove in the
middle of the night! In the past two months he had only done it a couple
times, but now there have been perhaps three instances in the past three or
four nights.

I have two cats and while I think I know who's the violator, I can't be sure. If it
is the cat I'm thinking of, he's the same one who used to urinate (and
defecate) in bathtubs and sinks, although he hasn't done that in a while. But
the tubs, sinks and now the stove all have one thing in common: hard,
smooth, white surfaces. Does this mean anything?

I'd try a little classical conditioning but that didn't seem to work in the case of
the bathtubs (he just seemed to stop on his own).

I have no desire to clean up cat urine every morning for the rest of this cat's
life. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer
Hello Brad,

I'm starting to sound like a broken record but is your cat by chance declawed?  Declawed cats tend to associate the pain of the surgery with their litterbox as digging to cover things up causes an extreme amount of pain.  Those cats often look for other places to go.  The choice of a hard surface tends to indicate this as there is nothing to dig and cover.

The other possibility is that whichever cat it is is being disturbed by the other while using the box.  Is one of your cats more dominant than the other?  If so it is likely the less dominant one that is urinating inapropriately and the fix for this is to make sure he has access to a litterbox that the other one doesn't.  The cats time in the box is a very vulnerable time for them and if they are being disturbed they will look for another place to go.

Another possibility is the cleanlisness of the boxes themsleves.  Some cats refuse to use the box if there is even one mess in it, some will only use a box that hasn't been used by another cat.  Cats are finicky as we all know so make sure you have two litterboxes, if they are covered now, uncover them and vice versa.  

Lastly, get a box in your kitchen close to the stove, temporarily of course, and keep an eye to see which one uses it.  I would also recommend getting the Cat attract litter, it has been very useful to me for problem pee'ers :)

Good Luck!

Natoma
Chenza Maine Coons
www.chenza.com