Cat has peed on my bed again!

[CormorantStrikesBack]

So he did it last year the day after I came back from a holiday while I was in the bed. General advice then was that he was doing it as I’d been away. To keep an eye on him and if he kept having a wee in unusual places to take to the vet. Well he didn’t do it again until yesterday.

so last night I jumped into bed, pulled the duvet up round me and thought what’s that smell, realised the duvet cover was damp/wet in two patches and it’s cat wee.

Adult Dd is currently away on holiday so not sure if he’s missing her. And we did run out of cat biscuits for 24 hours on Tuesday as I bought Scrumbles dog biscuits by accident rather than cat biscuits and the cats would not touch the dog biscuits. They had extra packets of wet food instead to keep them going but not sure if one of these two events has annoyed him to the extent he will wee on the bed.

Or he’s been lazy and can’t be arsed to go downstairs for a wee. So I’m trying to work out where I can fit a litter tray upstairs and get another. In the mean time I’ve also ordered a plastic sheet to cover my bed with!

He tends to sleep on my bed all day. I just don’t understand why he would wee where he sleeps! That’s not normal.

Ideally I don’t want to have to keep the bedroom door shut because we have a damp issue in the bedroom so I need airflow.

anything else I can do?

How old is your cat? It might be the start of some kind of kidney disease/depreciation. Not exclusive to old cats but something a lot of ageing cats suffer from. Has his water consumption noticeably gone up?

Our cat is 19 and his kidneys are starting to decline. He will pee on anything lying on the floor, like rucksacks, piles of clothes, suitcases, trainers etc. so we have a rule of making sure upstairs doors are kept shut and that things are lifted off the floor in the kitchen overnight where he sleeps. Hard when you have two teenagers who dump their kit all over the shop!

With our cat, I think sometimes he gets caught short (despite having a cat flap), other times I think he just can't be arsed going to the cat flap. I don't really want litter trays strew about the house so we manage as best we can.

I have an impressive cat wee sensor. I can smell it at 100 paces. The rest of my family appear not to have been cursed with this (surprise surprise!)

He’s only 3yo. If it was happening more often I might think it’s his kidneys but at the minute I think he’s either being lazy or an arsehole. Possibly both 😁

You can buy urine testing strips on amazon etc and rub them on the damp patches to test for infections. I’d buy some Cystease for stressful events like one of you going away without written permission off the cat and a dispensation off the Pope.

Your bed has your strongest scent so I think it’s punishment for biscuits and allowing DD to go away. Wash bedding and duvet straightaway to get rid of scent.

Bugger, if I'd known that it could have saved me a £130 vet's bill. Although it turns out that you can't use a human testing strip on a cat, as the parameters are different.

Really? I looked at the ones in the vets and they look just like the ones used at work by the RGN. I wonder if you can get cat ones online.

Turns out you can get cat/dog ones

https://www.amazon.co.uk/One-Step-Infection-Diabetes-Parameter/dp/B09MLTHB5C/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2PZ20UVBS2W0B&keywords=cat+urine+testing+kit&qid=1699519918&sprefix=Cat+urine+testing%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-5

I nabbed some from work and it lit up like a Christmas tree. But according to the vet's one's, it was normal. I mentioned that they were different to the vet. And she laughed and said that staff use the cat sticks if they think they have a UTI.

Typical. We can use cat ones but cats need their own special ones. As it should be 😹

My Mum's cat does this. The vet (who is also a very prominent feline behaviourist in this country) said that, aside from your cat trying to tell you it's unwell, it can be two reasons. One, the cat adores you and peeing on your bed means it's 'claiming' you for itself - as in, scent marking. Same reason your cat rubs around your legs, or rubs its cheek on things. Some cats are just more territorial than others.

The second reason is punishment. Such as punishing you for being away. Or forcing the cat to do stuff it doesn't want to do. It's happened to me once, also.

The only thing you can really do is the plastic sheet cover (which my Mum does), or ban cat from bedroom by closing the door. Which will make some arsehole cats (like my Mum's) ramp their behaviour up tenfold.

So long as you've ruled out illness, it' unfortunately just cats being cats. They're complex little creatures with a great deal of inbuilt arseholery! (I have four. Two are arseholes. But I adore them all!)

You can also get litter that will change colour depending on the problem. But it's not cheap.

Cats have no concept of "punishment" - they behave in certain ways because they're stressed or scared or insecure.

Assuming the cat is physically healthy, urinating on beds is commonly a sign of anxiety and stress.

I would take him to the vets for a full MOT and maybe try a urinary supplement to keep things ticking over.

Hmmm, I wonder if it was firework related then. It was none stop for three nights here which could have stressed him out. I’ve ordered a feliway plug in, willlook for some cystase capsules in the cupboard or buy some more.

I’ve washed the duvet cover. I’ve scrubbed the actual corner of the duvet with some pet urine enzyme spray stuff which I hope will be enough because I can’t get to the launderette for over a week and it won’t fit in my washing machine. I’ve also ordered a plastic sheet for the bed to cover it up during the day when we’re at work.
🤷‍♀️

The culprit

One of my cats peed on a sofa in my furnished rented house a couple of times - never anywhere else in the house, and never done it since in my current house with new furniture. I always theorised maybe it smelled of something from before I lived there, perhaps another cat once peed on there or a kid had an accident or something. Could there be anything like the mattress, a blanket or pillow, that could have had an imperceptible bit of a pee smell? Or even some sort of chemical that smells like one of the notes of pee, like a scented laundry additive?

Maybe. But I did get the whole duvet washed at the launderette after the last incident. Which I’d have thought would have got rid of any smell.

What a beautiful boy he is!! 😍😍😍