If you love your cat dearly, but are finding it difficult to take them outside during their potty time. It can be quite a hassle. When you get your cat litter trained and then they start urinating in the home, you may want to consider putting down a cat for urinating.
When my cat started urinating on my expensive sofa, I knew I had no other option but to put him down. He was just a kitten, but for some reason he thought my hundreds of dollars sofa were an appropriate place to relieve himself. It was heartbreaking to me, but at least he went quickly and without much suffering.
Dealing with a cat who’s peeing outside their litterbox? Yeah, I’ve been there. But unlike me, hopefully you found this article before you ever had to consider putting your kitty down. So if you’re an angry cat owner who’s already fed up and is considering it, step away from the computer right now. Seriously. Go to the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich, get your head together and relax…okay, come back here still reading? Good…now let’s discuss this subject and any other behavioral problems with your cat who won’t stop urinating outside the litterbox.
When your cat is urinating all over the house, it’s a little bit like when you have to take a poo. You feel embarrassed and worried that everyone around you will be able to smell it, but it’s just something they’re going to have to deal with.
The best thing you can do is just put your cat down and let them go wherever they need to go. It’s not your fault that they’re not trained properly, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of how many times you’ve had to clean up after them in the past.
Your cat doesn’t want anyone else in their space, so don’t let them come near you or try to cuddle up next to them—they will only take this as an invitation and start doing it again! If someone else comes into the room while your cat is doing this, they will probably think they got invited too—so try not letting anyone into your house until the smell has gone away!
The first thing to do is put down the cat.
Next, you’ll want to find out why it’s urinating. This can be difficult, because cats are very secretive about their bathroom habits. They don’t want you to know how much they’re going!
In order to find out what’s going on with your cat’s peeing, you’ll need some things: a flashlight (to shine under furniture), a magnifying glass (to help you see better), a pair of tweezers (for holding things), and some rubber gloves (so your cat won’t bite your hand).
Once you’ve gathered up all these items, go over every inch of your house looking for clues as to why your cat is peeing in all kinds of places. Look under couches and beds and tables—even behind doors! If there’s any chance that your cat might have peed there before, get down on the floor and scour the area with your flashlight, magnifying glass and tweezers.
If you find any spots that look like urine—or even if it looks like something else—put some gloves on and pick up whatever it is with your tweezers, then place it in a plastic baggy or envelope so that nobody gets sick
Putting Down A Cat For Urinating
I once tried to use telepathy to talk to my cat. Olive was less than six months old then, a sweet and compact ball of fur-love with a habit of peeing on my bed. And my roommate’s. Frequently. According to one of many Google search results, I could stare into my cat’s eyes and ask her to please explain her “inappropriate elimination.” The answer would not come in words (duh), but it could come “in images and feelings.”
But there were no images, other than that of Olive peeing later that night on a pile of towels I’d stupidly left on the floor . . . by the washing machine.
Over time, cleaning up cat pee and trying to anticipate where she might inappropriately pee next (easier to win the Powerball, btw) became incredibly stressful, not to mention expensive. Too often I came home eager to cozy up in bed only to find yet another smelly wet spot. I’d strip the bed and douse the mattress in vinegar, cover it in towels, and drift off into a damp, pickle-scented sleep before treating it with some Nature’s Miracle Urine Destroyer, the be-all end-all enzyme cleaner, the next day, Olive helpfully watching along, like Who, me? I had to divulge my feline baggage every time I dated someone new or changed living situations. Giving her up was not an option for me, but I was getting exhausted trying to figure this crazy pussycat out.
Had my telepathic endeavors worked, I would have learned Olive was either sick, stressed out, or vengeful at various points in time. When a cat goes to the bathroom where she shouldn’t, she’s almost always trying to tell you something’s up. But what? That’s the infuriatingly tricky part. It took a lot of patience and problem-solving, but eventually I figured out how to curb Olive’s peeing problem, and I can safely say we’re both much happier for it.
Start with the vet. Illness is the first thing to rule out when a cat starts peeing outside the box. A trip to the vet when Olive was a couple months old revealed that she had a bladder infection. This was treated with antibiotics and a switch to a prescription diet (Hill’s c/d Multicare is a commonly used food to aid bladder health). She got better—yet my bed remained a target. If your cat has started to exhibit this behavior, get her in a carrier and get her in to see the good doc.
Then check the status of your box. Whether or not your cat is peeing where she shouldn’t, vets recommend having one litter box per cat, plus one. (Some math for you: Got one cat? You need two boxes.) Also: Do you like using Porta-Potties? No? Neither does your cat, so ditch the hoods and clean the boxes daily. Cats can be finicky about choice of litter too, with everything from scent (or non-scent) to potential ouch-factor on their paws a possible deterrent. Olive digs Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract, which helpfully offers a 100 percent litter box use guarantee (that I’ve never had to use!). Prepare to experiment. Cat Attract was literally our 14th brand of litter. And there’s no way to know if she’ll love it forever or change her finicky feline mind, like, tomorrow. Cats!
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Help her relaaaaxxxx. Cats, like you, are sensitive creatures. Things that can set them off: moving the furniture, bringing a new person or animal into the house, a squirrel lurking outside (three months ago). And a stressed cat can be a cat that plays fast and loose with the litter box. While many stress factors are out of your control (see: squirrel), you can help alleviate the tension with regular play (laser pointers are great for lazy people) and catnip. Olive’s vet recommends 15 minutes of play a day. Feliway products—a line of room sprays and outlet plug-ins that release an odorless pheromone that’s said to help calm cats and help them feel more at home—work for many (not us, but many). Hill’s, the food brand, has a “Feline Stress” blend infused with kitty Prozac. There’s also actual Prozac. A small dose of the exact same formula that’s prescribed to humans can curb inappropriate behavior and act as a “reset,” meaning your cat might not need to be on it for the rest of her life. (But don’t just give her yours. Get the girl a script of her own from her vet.) There are more natural ways to go about this, too—I’ve had luck with Bach’s Rescue Remedy for pets, an anti-stress essential oil made with natural flower extracts that’s easily added to food and water.
I’m happy to report that things are pretty copacetic with Olive now. I have a waterproof cover on my bed, just in case, but she hasn’t expressed her, erm, dissatisfactions there in quite a while. The last time she peed outside the box was back in April, when I returned from a weeklong trip to California. The message was pretty clear: Don’t leave me like that. And: I’m still in charge, bitch. At least it was on the couch that time.
Listen: It’s a cat you’re dealing with. Sometimes the best you can hope for is, well, just a bit better.