my cat is pissing in the last chance saloon - is there anything else we can try before we think about rehoming him?

[FloraFinching]

we rehomed a boy/girl pair of 4yo cats about 9 months ago. All was well, until Boy Cat was beaten up by the local tom about 3 months ago. Since then, he has been spraying in the house. In every room downstairs - up the bookcases, up DC's toyboxes, over handbags, shoes, on the dining table .

we have done the following:
-vet check including blood test and urine sample
-feliway
-tinfoil/lemon peel on the wee hotspots
-zylkene
-having 3 (3!!) litter trays indoors in a selection of venues.

He is still spraying 1-2 times daily. And we have carpets.

I love this cat dearly, and expect to deal with a fair bit of mess, but I am 7mo pg, with a toddler and a job, and am spending a goodly portion of my "free" time on my hands and knees scrubbing pissy carpets.

We are seriously thinking about rehoming him, but I want to know we've tried everything first. Ideas????????????????

I sympathise. I had an issue with my eldest cat a few years ago. One of the things we tried was feeding him where he was spraying, which is supposed to be a deterrent. I also read that the smell of apple is supposed to dissuade them from peeing. I'm sorry to say that we resorted to restricting his access to the house in the end so he could only be indoors if we were. He's always been happy to be out and about and it did resolve the problem.

thanks max. I'm cautious about increasing his time outside as I think his stress is related to the presence of the evil tom, whom we cannot seem to keep out of our garden. In fact I was wondering about going the other way, and locking his cat flap at night.
I just wish I knew what was going on inside his poor little head.

It's so demoralising isn't it? Our problem stemmed from the cat being shut in for 4 months as a result of breaking his foot and a local tom cat who was causing problems in the area. On top of that, he would only use a clean litter tray - if he'd been in it once, he wouldn't use it until it had been emptied. And as we were both at work all day, it was unavoidable.

Is it worth trying to confine him to one room to see if he masters the litter tray situation?

Have you had him neutered?

Also do you have a cat flap, I ask this because I found that I was getting other cats come in at night and my tom, was remarking his territory during the day.

In the end I had to limit where he went for a while, kept him in the conservatory, and gradually let him in the house, whilst I was there. Also shut the cat flap at night.

yup, he's neutered.

He does have a catflap, and free access to the outside, as prior to The Big Fight was much happier this way. I think you both might be right about limiting where he goes for a while, although we'll have to think about the logistics as I would like our poor put-upon girl cat still to have as much access to the outside as possible.

I am also quaking about the problem getting worse before it gets better, as he will not be happy to be kept in.....

We had a similar problem with our two lovely boys (alsoadopted, pair of brothers, at 11 months). They got a fair pasting before establishing their territory and I suddenly found that - at 4 months pregnant thank you very much - I was scrubbing spray off our upholstery. I assumed that since ours were neutered they wouldn't do that...as it turns out, I was right. We had a tom cat coming into our house and repeatedly spraying - around the food, on the sofas, on the bookcases, all over the ground floor of the house. I actually caught him at it! The only thing that we could really do was to get a microchip cat flap to exclude the other cats from the house. This has the advantage of making your house much more secure which should help alleviate any behavioural problems by helping your boy to feel more relaxed in his own house, but I should warn you - there's a time delay on the flap, which can mean that if both your cats are being chased then one of them may be forced to defend themselves regardless :(. We didn't realise this until we had had ours fitted, but the issue seems to have settled down.

Ours took about 6 months to establish themselves in the neighbourhood, so my best advice would be to give the boy a bit longer and consider investing in a microchip flap.

Hope this is helpful, must stop anyway since I'm now typing with one hand - have a kitty wrapped around the other!

thanks first time.

This weekend I changed the brand of litter we use, and this seemed slightly more appealing to him - no wee for 2 whole days! However, he pissed on the kitchen floor when I got in from work today . Sadly, it is definitely him and not the marauding Tom. I've caught him in the act tens of times.

Good to hear positive feedback about the microchipped cat flaps though. It's something we've been thinking about.

well, after a disastrous attempt at keeping him in
(very stressed kitty) we rehomed him today.

I am in floods of tears (partly hormonal no doubt, but I really hope that in time we will all be happier.

Still feel like a big bastard though