To get rid of my fucking horrible cat? (long - sorry)

[ilovedarthmaul]

She is a house cat that goes in the garden sometimes and we got her from the cats protection league 8 years ago. She has NEVER wanted fuss/strokes etc - she wont come near anyone (well she does a bit with me but i suspect thats only cos i feed her!) At first we thought it was because she is settling in but she has never got any better. Over the last 8 years she has systematically DESTROYED our house.

She pisses EVERYWHERE - she wont go on a litter tray at all (we have tried everything we can think of) - she scratches the walls/lead off the doors - even when the doors are fucking open! and rips the carpet to bits. Ive come in today from work and she has pissed on the settee - ive washed the cushion covers but its sunk into the hard/foam bottom bits - im soooo fucking mad - i cant afford new cushions or settee but dont know what i can do to get it out. If there are DC teddies/soft toys on the floor she pisses on those so they have to be thrown away - if i have folded washing up and put it on the arm of the chair/bottom of the stairs she will piss on that too. She climbed onto our dining table the other day & pissed on that as well. - Where we eat!!!!!

i should point out that we have had her checked by the vets and she hasnt got anything wrong with her (cystitus/water infection etc) and her litter tray is ALWAYS clean. I try & put her out in the garden as much as possible but she was attacked by next doors dog last year so i daren't leaver her out whilst im at work.

i feel like crying - im terrified that our house STINKS and we are used to it.

Im not an animal hater - so please dont flame me - i just get no joy out of her & a shit-load of stress and work!

I dont even know if anyone will take an incontinent, grumpy, horrible cat anyway but if they would would i be being unreasonable?

thanks for listening - feel slightly better after my rant!

am off to pick DC up now & think about how i can get the smell of cat-piss out of my sofa!

Darth x

I think rehoming her as a feral cat is a good idea. Although you say she's a house cat ... Do you think she'd be happy rehomed somewhere like a shed or a stable, where she just gets shelter and food put out for her?

There is no smell like cat piss :-( YANBU i'd be rehoming her personally.

Unfortunately vets do 'put down' healthy but unwanted cats and dogs, this happens every day So I expect it would be an option if that's what the OP chose :(

I'm not going to say it's the right thing to do though, because it's not. Another home might be a good option, though in these cases given the age of the cat and the problems described, you have to ask yourself - if you don't want her, why should anyone else?

My older dog suffers from incontinence, so I know what it's like to be washing and cleaning all the time, and worrying about your house smelling of wee (though I second the recommendation for the 'simple solution' cleaning stuff, this works better than anything else we've tried). It's not nice and I do feel I can't really invite people round because of it etc. But I would not in a million years consider 'getting rid' of him, he can't help it after all. And he is part of my family, not something to be thrown out when he becomes inconvenient!

Haven't read the whole thread so sorry for repeating. Our cat used to wee everywhere. We moved house at christmas and it seems to have stopped, no idea why but not going to complain!

We had feliway with limited success - it comes in a diffuser and a spray, you could spray it on her bed? We got the smell out with a pets at home own brand odour remover, worked wonders.

Hope you find the best solution for you and the cat.

feliway diffuser and clean up her accidents with biological washing powder, let it dry and dab with meths. She will return to the same spot if she can smell herself and alot of cleaners have ammonia in them so make the problem worse.

Cats are a law unto themselves, yours does love you, but she'll never let it show

It is disappointing when our pets aren't what we want them to be, but the are living creatures with personalities, some are good, some are shit - just like people.

I had a horrible cat once, it did all sorts of vileness and would never let me touch it. A friend of mine took her and she settled in a lot better.

The cat may not be the sort to live with a family, you could try and find her a new home yourself do you know she will have a good home, sounds like she would suit an older childless owner who is at home all day?

One of my dogs (cat thread, I know, bear with me...) was a total nightmare, more problems than I could list but including urination and aggression. I kept her for years, agonizing about whether to get rid, trying everything I could think, vets and behaviourists and idiots who knew nothing giving me advice.... Eventually she came way too close to biting DD1 (unprovoked, it was the dog who went to DD1) and she was gone 30 minutes later (back to the rescue she came from, who I had been working with for years). My point? I never looked back, never regret it, my life is a million times better without her. Harsh but true.

I second serenswan's posts. This is a living creature who is helpless.

Please don't compare rehoming a cat to getting rid of children.

I think the point, to avoid people getting all indignant, could be put like this:

If a person consistently behaved inappropriately and destructively for 8 years, the people close to them/responsible for them would treat it as a problem that they needed help with (mental health, stress etc). Whereas the OP talks about the cat as if she's wilfully evil and shows no compassion or empathy for the cat who is clearly very stressed or unwell somehow. No, obviously getting rid of a cat is not the same as getting rid of a child, however it's a helpful comparison to draw to show how the OP could (and maybe should) view the situation differently.

Sounds like time to say goodbye to me-I have two cats and I wouldnt put up with what you have.She must either become an outdoor cat or I am afraid she may have to be put down.

I don't have anything useful to say that hasn't been said, I've been in the same boat, our old cat used to live in the laundry room sink. She'd piss and shit there, when the catflap was 5 foot away from her. If you caught her shitting in the sink and you yelled at her, she'd just look at you and then when she'd finish leg it outside like her life depended on it. She was a purebreed and there was no way on earth she was the full ticket.

But I can offer you this: if your cat is scratching a particular spot of the wall or the door, sellotape a big piece of tin foil to it. Cats hate tin foil. Ours used to do the corner of the wall until we covered it in tin foil and he got the shock of his life when he tried to scratch the foil!

Oops just to add, we tried everything with her and nothing worked, but sadly a few months after she started doing her sink thing she disappeared, and we found her dead in the garden a few months later :(.

Poor cat sounds really unhappy.

Could you have more tests done before you have her PTS?

My cat has just peed in the corner again today but I tured down the vet's offer of having her PTS. She is old, ill but still has a great life so I will put up with it. It doesn't sound like your cat has any happiness.

Rehousing a cat is a hard decision, but this cat sounds like it would be happier elsewhere in my opinion.

The cat I had was not suited to the busy house I had at the time, when she went to a new home she was like a different person (cat)

I still see the cat from time to time.

I think sometimes it can be kinder, as long as due care is taken when selecting a home.

8 years, I'm impressed you stuck it that long.. I have had ups and downs with my pets, but they got better over time. I would get rid, you are not unreasonable. Get a goldfish (just kidding)

Shed with cat flap sounds good. I love my cat but would struggle with one like you describe.

This is not a happy cat, nor a happy OP.

The options as I see them are:

1. Full vet work-up (including scans / x-ray) to rule out once and for all any physical issues, and treat as appropriate if anything comes to light while using the cleaning suggestions above to discourage repeat peeing in the same place(s).
2. Session(s) with behavioural specialist to try to pinpoint cause of stress, assuming 1. has ruled out physical issues. Will almost certainly include use of Feliway diffusers / sprays as mentioned above.
3. Adapt outside space (garden shed? Wire run with kennel-type structure?) to limit cat's opportunities to soil inside the house, with possible side effect of reducing stress if it is caused by human-cat interaction.
4. Rehome as farm / barn cat.
5. Return to CPL and hope cat is rehomed responsibly.
6. PTS. There are worse fates than this - being passed from pillar to post; mistreatment due to ignorance or worse. It can be far more responsible to have a potentially un-rehomable animal put down than risk an uncertain future for it, and the fact is that most people with the skill, time and environment to deal with a cat like this usually already have one (or more).

Only the OP can decide what is the most feasible option for her circumstances.

You have my sympathy OP. We took on an elderly cat some years ago who we were assured had lived with other cats (we already had two). She may have done, but she sure as hell didn't enjoy living with our pair. She started stress-pissing and it was hell on earth. We perservered for about 18 months hoping it would improve as they got used to each other but if anything it got worse. Fortunately she was in every other way a sweetheart - very affectionate and non-destructive - and eventually we made the difficult decision to rehome her to a friend who had no other pets. Tigs (cat) settled down beautifully and the pissing became a thing of the past; we had to chuck out the 3-piece suite and sitting room carpet after she went to her new home.

If you haven't lived with it, you don't know just how stressful, soul-destroying, time-consuming and embarrassing (when visitors call round) it is to deal with.

The cat protection will take the cat back, when any cat comes through their process, they make a commitment to that cat, they do say when you get a cat from them, that they will take it back should your situation change.

Rehoming a cat is not like wanting to rehome your children and IMO it is not a helpful comparison at all. But lets agree to disagree on that because ultimately I take the point that clearly the cat has ishoos that need to be sorted and as an animal lover myself, absolutely this cats welfare should be paramount and the right thing should be done for the cat.

But if I were the OP, I would rehome it and think nothing of it.

That said, it's probably not a horrible fucking cat either!

www.fabcats.org/behaviour/index.php

I second biological washing powered to get rid of pong, I am sure I used to mix it with a little surgical spirit too.
I had a cat who was like this; he lived with my mum for a while when I was in a flat and couldnt have cats he was so much happier and stopped, when he moved back with me in my new house he started pooping under the stairs. I kept him but he was hard work, he died at 16 after a nasty stroke. I just dont think he was every happy with me as my other cats lived with him at my mums and their cat too so it wasnt them he didn't like I think its because they were in all day and he had a lap to sit on and I was out working and he got lonely. Sounds like your cat isnt very happy.

Yeah cats are just disposable innit.

Would you send one of your children "back"?

Bored again Aribura?

Yawn.

Here we go

You say there's a dog next door that has attacked her in the past? This could be a stress trigger. TBH it does sound situational/environmental rather than medical.

I reckon she is the kind of cat who would be happier with an adult only family, well away from dogs etc where she'd be 'pampered' IYSWIM.

Also in females the hunting instinct is strong and if she's too scared to go outside and hunt this might stress her.

If I hadn't got kids/other animals I'd take her.