Aaaaaargh! Weeing in the house!

[notjustme]

We've recently had our kitchen and bathroom redone, and coupled with this rain it's completely wreck what small amount of sense ours cats had. We've had not one but two occasions where they've weed on our bed - cue £100 dry cleaning bill, and they've weed on floor, on the bath mat, on the kitchen counter - it's awful!! We have a litter tray, and every single one of them is free to go outside whenever they fancy but they just seem to have lost all grip of normal behaviour :/

What on earth can we do to get them back on track? We've had to shut them out of all the rooms, make sure not a single thing is left on the floor (though that doesn't always matter!), and keep a very close eye on them all to catch them before they decide to wee. It's driving us mental and the house is beginning to smell :(

There's no chance they have a UTI is there? Maybe treat the behaviour in the same way you would if you moved house - only allow them access to one room until they don't wee in it, until allowing them into the next one.

There is something other than bicarb that does a good job of neutralising the odour to cut-down on re-occurrence. I can't find the link at the moment, but I'm sure someone will be along shortly with it.

I can sympathise though - one of ours goes through a phase of this at random points a couple of times a year. Only thing that minimised it was moving his bed and food to the top of the kitchen cupboards - go figure...

At least 1 extra litter tray, and clean everything with a solution of biological washing powder/liquid if you can...

That's what we did when cat started weeing on floor/bed/everywhere (it turned out that he was ill so we forgave him )

we also sprayed hard surfaces etc with a dilute white vinegar solution as this neutralises the smell of cat wee and should encourage them not to soil the same area again

shampooed carpets also - with special carpet cleaner for pet owners

Simple Solution (from Pets at Home) is supposed to work in a similar way to the vinegar, & is also a detergent, but vinegar/bio washing powder is cheaper...

Unless all 4 of them have got a UTI at exactly the same time then I think it's more likely to be the upset of the building work - it was a hard couple of weeks for all of us and they were definitely disturbed a lot :( It wouldn't be so bad if it was just the floor or even the bath mat etc but the bed is the real straw that broke the camel's back - we only had it dry cleaned two weeks ago and they've already done it again :(

I agree that the building work has probably upset them. My vet's advice for any urinary problems is to increase the number of litter trays. I didn't realise from your 1st post that you have 4 cats. So the ideal is supposedly 1 tray per cat...do you have 3 or 4 spare litter trays lying around somewhere?!

On the bright side the smell does definitely go with the bio washing powder and/or vinegar...our cat weed on carpets, duvets and lots of other things (overactive thyroid in an already neurotic anxious animal...never a good combination for bladder control) and everything is ok now, the house cleaned up just fine.