OK, stay tuned, it's a saga, but I am desperate for advice. For context, I'm in Australia, which impacts on decisions about the cat, but probably not the cats behaviour. Anyway ...
We had a cat for 17 years and he died two years ago, leaving us with our two little ageing dogs. Then a friend tagged me on Facebook with a pic of two kittens (assumed to be siblings from the same litter) who'd been found dumped in a box at a local school. So we decided to take them in.
For the first year we had them, they were outside cats during the day and inside at night, with a litter tray. They fought a little bit - would chase each other around late at night and it would sometimes turn serious, but mostly no issues. Both happy and well.
In December last year the male cat went missing for 7 days, we presumed he'd been killed by a snake (summer in Australia, we live near bushland, deadly snakes aplenty) but he then turned up in our garden looking skinny but otherwise not worse for wear. Things then continued as normal. But about 6 weeks later, in January this year, we woke one morning to find him paralysed and on death's door, he had apparently been bitten by an eastern brown snake the previous day and was rushed to the vet and spent 5 days in intensive care. That cost us a small fortune (currency conversion tells me about 1000 pounds).
When he came home his sister cat behaved like she didn't recognise him, hissing, growling and attempting to attack him. We basically kept them separate, and re-introduced them slowly, and all was ok-ish. We then decided that to avoid any further snake incidents, we would make them indoor cats, and spend about 500 pounds building a cat enclosure which is accessed via a cat flap through our back porch. It is very large - the size of a garage basically with climbing areas, scratching posts etc. They have two litter trays out there.
All seemed ok with them becoming indoor cats. The male would always try to duck out if anyone was leaving the house, but other than that they seemed ok. Until he took sick a month ago and again had to be rushed to the vet, where he had surgery for stones in his urethra which are apparently caused by stress. That surgery and rehab was another 500 pounds. He was eventually sent home with a new diet (1kg bag of food costs 20 pounds) but as soon as he came home he started peeing everywhere. He will pee in the litter tray, but also pees on clothes, books, papers etc. Further discussions with the vet led us to letting him outside again during the day, which he loves, but he has continued to pee pretty much everywhere at night. Last night it was on a basket of clean washing, some papers my husband has been marking, and in the kitchen sink.
Back to the vet today and they are going to start both cats on the cat equivalent of anxiety meds. We are going to trial 3 additional litter trays throughout the house, with the vet theorising that the male cat now thinks that the enclosure is the female's territory, hence the nervous weeing everywhere else.
If this doesn't work - the vet suggests giving it a week - then the future is bleak for my boy. We would try to rehome him, but the chances of someone wanting a cat with known urinary tract issues, behavioural problems, and requiring a diet equivalent in price to caviar are not great. We do love him dearly - he sleeps between my husband and I every night (except when he gets up to pee on stuff) and is very affectionate, but none of us can live like this in the long term.
I am looking for ideas, suggestions, theories, on what might work, or perhaps more what actually did work for you in a similar situation.
Help please .....