Help with peeing!

[darumafan]

I'm desperate for advice about random peeing. My 13 year old boycat has always scented anything outside, everything is his and needs to be sprayed on. That's OK, we can't and don't stop him.
However, he has now started either spraying or peeing inside. There are at least two places in the lounge that he is repeatedly doing it. He has also done it in the hall but by keeping the door shut we can stop that.

We have cleaned the carpet with biological washing powder, proprietary odour removal sprays and I have also used the steam mop on the carpets.

We have a feliway diffuser plugged in but he has peed on that!

We are a multicat household but have been for his entire life. We now have 4 cats but have had 6 at one point. He is used to being around other cats and if anything is probably the dominant cat now.

He has unlimited access to outside during the day and we let him out whenever he asks in the evening. It's only once we have gone to bed that he is restricted to being indoors. We do have a catflap but he won't go out through it although he is happy to come in through it.

I'm not sure what to do next, he was seen by the vet about 3 months ago and was given a clean bill of health.

My OH said earlier that if we can't stop the cat peeing in the house then we might have to think about our options. Neither of us want to do that, the cat is a much loved member of the house but I can't live in a giant litter tray 😟

Do you in fact have a litter tray inside?

Sorry, should have said that😳 we have a covered tray in the kitchen. All the cats have their own designated food and water bowls and have access to dry food at all times. He has used the tray occasionally but usually asks to go out.

It sounds as if you are doing everything you can.

I'm stumped and if I really knew the answer I would have implemented it in my own house as I always seem to have one and sometimes more of them that do this.

I handle it by dealing with the symptoms rather than the problem as it were. So I have no carpets anywhere and have mostly Amtico flooring as it's impervious to piss. I have virtually no soft furnishings. Even the sofa is piss and scratch resistant. And I'm in the process of replacing my radiators with stainless steel ones so they won't go rusty if pissed on. And I do a lot of cleaning.

And if one of my pissers dies then another one seems to take over. It's as though there always has to be one.

So if you find the answer do let me know.

thecatneuterer
Do you find that they suddenly start to do it? He has only started in the last year or so to the extent that he is doing it now.

Unfortunately, we aren't in the position to replace the flooring yet. It is on the cards when we redecorate the lounge but that won't be anytime soon due to other rooms being higher priorities.

It seems to be primarily at night once we are in bed, we could lock him in the kitchen which is much random pee friendly but the knock on effect of that is the other cats are confined to one room.

Would caging him overnight be very cruel? He has never been caged and I'm reluctant to start now.

Yes, none of them did it from the start. All that did it started at some point for no discernible reason. And at varying ages - some quite young (I'm looking at you Branwell ...).

I don't think caging overnight is the end of the world. Considering probably your only other option if you can't cope with it is having him put down. But then it wouldn't be too bad to confine the other two cats to one room either. Why can't they all be confined to the kitchen at night?

thecatneuterer

They can't all be locked in the kitchen due to their various food bowls being in separate rooms. Our current set up is that the 2 youngest cats eat in a separate room to the older 2. Our only girlcat gets very upset if the boys get too close to her food bowls. The 2 young boycats have the run of the lounge and conservatory at night. This keeps them away from her food but allows them access to litter trays.

It's harder than you would think, trying to keep them all happy and settled. I'm sure that I just have very high maintenance cats!