please help, my cat won't stop urinating outside his litter box

[Lenora Grackin]

I am getting very frustrated and need some good advice about my cat.  Caramel, my cat, is 6 years old.  We got him as a kitten from a farm.  When we first brought him home, I made a mistake and put him down on the dining room carpet, where he went to the bathroom.  I cleaned it up using a paper towl, since it was so small, and thought no more about it.  Caramel learned to use the litter box easily and we had no problems.  Within  a year or so, he started peeing in the dining room corner every time he got stressed, such as having too much company in the house.  We took to putting him in a separate room when we had visitors in an attempt to keep him calm.  His litter box is in our master bathroom, along with his food and water.  The master bath and bedroom are fairly large, so he has plently of space.  I have cleaned the carpet with every kind of urine remover that I can find and the smell is still there.  We did not realize he peeing there for a while, so I am sure it is soaked well into the pad.  He had never peed anywhere else in the house, but he kept returning to that spot.  Eventually, he was peeing there even when he wasn't stressed, it had become a habit.  I tried placing a litter box in the dining room, which is on the main floor, and the main litter box is in the master bedroom on the 2nd floor.  Well, he wouldn't use the litter box in the dining room, he would just pee next to it on the carpet.  I tried using some pheramone spray in that area, but that did not work, and there is no way I can keep up with spraying it there every day anyway.  Because the dining room was really starting to smell, and we cannot at this time afford to replace the carpet, we started confining him to the master bedroom/bathroom all the time.  This appears to have stressed him out and he is now peeing in a corner of the bedroom.  His litter box is easily accessible and clean.  I do not know what to do.  I know he is stressed, but I do not know how to fix this problem.  We all love him very much. I grew up with lots of cats and dogs around and never had such problems.  Our cats were outdoor cats, however, and they seemed a lot happier and less difficult to deal with.  Please help me out, I do not want to have to get rid of him, but I will if this cannot be addressed.  I refuse to live in a house that smells of cat pee!

thanks!

[pokeyAC]

When our cats were stressed out after a move we got a Feliway diffuser.  You plug it in and it releases pheromones that are supposed to be calming.  It helped quite a bit.  I have also heard there is a type of litter that is scented that attracts the cat to urinate on the litter instead of somewhere else.  You might also ask your vet if they have any suggestions.  Cats love to have lots of territory to explore, and I'm sure your cat is not happy being confined to a much smaller space.  Maybe he would also like some new stuff to climb on so he can see things from a new perspective.  If all else fails, have you tried those pads they have for dogs that are absorbent on one side and waterproof on the other.  Perhaps the kitty would pee on that if it is over his favorite spot on the carpet and then it would be easier to clean up.  Good luck!

[laura-belle]

With our cat the peeing outside the box behavior turned out to be due to bladder stones (the feline equivalent of kidney stones). We thought it was stress or behavioral for over a yeare before we figured it out (and we only figured it out because he started peeing blood). The behavior went away as soon as we had them removed. You might want to have the vet check for crystals in the urine.

The only thing I ever found that helped before we figured out the real problem was to put something else on the spot that he liked to pee on; we had shoes on our stairs for a couple of years because of this.

If you are at least a bit handy, fixing the smell is possible without replacing the carpet. It will take a couple of days (only a couple of hours of work, but the spray stuff has to dry before you put everything back). Basically you need to replace the carpet padding and seal the subfloor.

In more detail if you are interested: You will need to pull the carpet up from that corner, spray it thoroughly from both sides with Nature's Miracle or similar and let it sit for awhile and then soak up the worst of the wetness and let it dry. Meanwhile, pull up all of the stained looking/bad smelling carpet padding from that corner and toss it. Run down to a carpet store or Home Depot and get a big enough price of same thickness carpet padding to replace what you just tossed (the carpet store might just give it to you for free out of their scraps, but it shouldn't cost more than a few bucks regardless). If the cat pee went through to the subfloor (if there are stains or it smells bad) spray that with Nature's Miracle, let it dry, and put sealant primer over the stain (the spray paint kind is fine) and let the paint dry. Glue the new carpet padding down (purists will tell you to use some kind of construction adhesive but hot glue will work fine for a small area) and put the carpet back down--use your feet in tennis shoes to get the carpet hooked back onto the tack strips.