My oldest cat, TC, was a good cat, except for some furniture scratching. Then we got a female kitten. When she started going into heat, he started spraying everything on the floor: books, VCR, wine rack, clothes hanging on the dining room.
We got the kitten spayed, and TC quit spraying. Then, my wife got pregnant (OK, I helped). Now, he’s at it again.
Is there any connection with my wife’s condition and TC’s behaviour? Is my wife emitting a hormonal essence that is triggering something in him? And is there any @!?@#! way to make him stop? He’s ruined an expensive sport jacket, and I’m tired of picking up videotapes that have sticky crystals on them.
I’m tempted to piss on him myself, but I think the point would be lost on him.
Go to see your friendly local vet and have a couple of portions of your cat’s body removed through a rather simple medical event.
Maybe they’ll even let you take them home in a jar so you can pull them out when the cat starts scratching so he knows you mean business.
Separating TC from the little TC’s will do the trick - it has for my two cats. They are my pets and I care for them very much, but no animal will have free will to spray
on my stuff.
Go to see your friendly local vet and have a couple of portions of your cat’s body removed through a rather simple medical event.
Maybe they’ll even let you take them home in a jar so you can pull them out when the cat starts scratching so he knows you mean business.
Separating TC from the little TC’s will do the trick - it has for my two cats. They are my pets and I care for them very much, but no animal will have free will to spray
on my stuff.
If you’re talking about fixing TC, that’s already done. Otherwise we would’ve had baby TC’s when the female went into heat (3 or 4 times before we got her spayed).
Now if there was an operation we could do to his anal glands, where the spray emits, that I would consider.
My parents have a male cat that still sprays, even though he was fixed many years ago, when he was a kitten. They have somewhat-recently acquired a female cat which is spayed, but which might account for the spraying. Still, I’m quite sure that George (the male) has never mated, and hasn’t had any testosterone in him for many years, but the behavior persists. We just learned to stop leaving things on the floor. That’s the easiest (and cheapest) way to deal with it.
“I had a feeling that in Hell there would be mushrooms.” -The Secret of Monkey Island
Whenever you have an inappropriate elimination problem in a cat, the first thing to do is go to the vet. It’s possible that TC’s spraying has nothing to do with your wife’s pregnancy and everything to do with a urinary tract infection.
Otherwise, male cats usually spray for one of two reasons: advertising for interested females, and marking territory. I would guess that you are making changes in your household due the upcoming new arrival - maybe buying baby furniture? Rearranging things? Schedule changes, more people visiting? Sounds like TC is feeling insecure and marking his territory (I don’t know about the hormonal changes it your wife, but hey, you never know. Cats are peculiar creatures.)
Your vet may be able to help by prescribing something like Prozac for TC to help him deal with the stress. Of course, if he is reacting like this to the changes going on NOW, he may be worse once the baby arrives.
Do you have some way of creating a ‘safe place’ for him? Some place that is HIS, where he can go hide out and not be disturbed? I don’t know what your space considerations are, but something like an empty closet that you can put his litter box, food, and water, maybe a shelf or two to lounge on and a box or something he can ‘hide’ in. Leave the door cracked enough that he can come and go as he pleases, but otherwise leave his ‘space’ alone except for tending to the necessary stuff.
If he has a safe place to retreat where he won’t be disturbed he may feel more secure and quit marking everything as ‘his’.
I talked to our vet last night, and she said that my wife’s condition very well could be triggering his behavior. She says there’s a drug that will inhibit his spraying, but he has to be checked out to make sure he can metabolize it. If it works, by the time the baby is here, he’ll have got rid of the habit when we stop giving him the medicine.
Still, after ruining my sport jacket, I still want to piss on him.
