I would say, as the weather warms up consider transitioning him to outdoor life, providng a “cat house” - a small insulated den for next winter. Urban Cat League of NYC has some suggestions for all-weather cat shelters. I can understand not wanting to summarily chuck him out in the snow, but if he did live outside before, he can live outside again. Properly acclimated, he will grow a thick coat of fur and just needs protection from the wet.
In the meantime, you might also consider confining him to the basement for the time being, if that’s an appropriate place to be. It’s not ideal, but you have your quality of life to consider. He’ll be safe, warm, and have visits from the family.
I was going to recommend the latter bit. I believe it will do less harm to your cat (and to your family) to confine him to the basement permanently than it will to give him away. But it would be even better if you could transition him back to being an outdoor cat. A cat hutch would work, or even better (if possible) a pet door that goes straight from the basement, up the stairs, and out the door. He wouldn’t be allowed in the main part of the house, but would be allowed outdoors anytime he wanted, and if it gets too cold outside he could always come in. And you can always “cat-finish” the basement (put down some snuggly rug remnants that are cheap and just let him pee on them if he wants to, change them out if they get too stinky).
Anyway, it’s just an idea. Don’t make any major decisions until you find out the cause behind it. I also recommend getting the imaging done instead of the xray. I had a decent sized kidney stone a couple years back, and the ER doc wasted several hundred of my perfectly good dollars on an xray that didn’t conclude anything.
I like the idea of Max outside or in a different situation if he just won’t quit peeing. I had a male cat who was peeing, too, and I ended up giving him to a family that wanted him - I simply wouldn’t have a cat in my house who would just pee anywhere.
Retrain him. We just went through this with one of our cats. I had a vet’s cage, and built an extension off the back so that she could lie down/eat in the cage part, and her litter was a few feet away.
She hated it. Goddamn, how she hated it. The first time, we left her in there for 3 days. It worked like a charm…for the next 5 days.
The second time, we left her for 3 more days. Worked again, for 7 days.
The third time, we left her alone, with almost no contact with her humans or her sister kitties, for 5 days. I would feed and water her, and change litter, give her a skritch or two, then leave.
She would howl for hours. She was miserable.
That was 6 months ago, and we have had no repeats of the problem. The cage is still in the basement, though, in case.
I’ve had equal luck with attitude adjustments. I always picked my cats up by the nap of the neck so they retained the kitten handle. If I picked them up and gave then the evil eye and a thump on the head like I was testing a melon they got the message. The next step was isolation.
Okay, if I read this right, the problem started when he had a urinary tract infection, and since then he’s had one other one, but antibiotics have fixed it, but he’s still peeing outside the box. So there is at least one medical cause.
Cat has UTI, peeing hurts, he associates hurt with litterbox. Pees elsewhere, hurt goes away. Having a little cat brain, he associates the hurt going away with peeing elsewhere, not with those pills you forced down his throat.
If he’s okay medically–and if he had two UTIs, I would worry about that a bit, and maybe change his food–then I would suggest a new box, a different kind of litter, and confining him until he’s convinced that going in the box won’t hurt. I had a cat who had to spend six months either in a small room with a concrete floor and a litterbox, or else carefully supervised, and by carefully supervised I mean in somebody’s lap, but eventually he became a gentleman again.
Also there’s a Nature’s Miracle just for cat odors. I remember it working pretty well.
I don’t have a solution, but my male cat had a UTI and blocked last year and he started peeing on the sides of my litterboxes (spraying) instead of squatting and peeing into the litter. I use huge 37 gallon Rubbermaid storage totes for litterboxes which have really high sides, so I can use Nature’s Miracle and clean the sides when he does this. He never went outside the boxes, but my point is that a cat that has had some sort of infection may hold onto undesirable habits after the infection has been healed. The cat may still associate the litterbox with painful peeing.
I hope you find a solution that works! I don’t like outside cats, but it may be what works out best for you.
PS - I put my cat on a canned only, grain free diet and so far he has had no more urinary problems. Cats tend not to drink as much water out of a water bowl as they need, so the added water in canned food helps get more water into them. Dry food is bad as it has no water, and even if it seems like they drink from a water bowl frequently, they may not be getting as much water as they need.
My mom’s cat had a ton of problems with this, especially after they moved. Stress was a huge trigger, but she definitely had a few infections in there too. All in all, she was conditioned to avoid the box by a combination of accidental factors, so she had to be reconditioned back to normalcy.
It took a long time, but they finally managed to get her back on track by a) removing stress as much as possible - getting an automatic scheduled cat feeder, for example, mellowed her behavior out a ton since the smallest change to her schedule seemed to cause anxiety; b) avoiding triggers - for her, accidents became most common on this wool rug they bought, so they got an electric collar with a proximity detector to keep her away from it; c) going on the prescription diet for her urinary tract, and d) heavy use of enzymatic cleaners.
I spoke with my vet once again. He also recommended a lot of the same things. Based on what he and you all recommended we have been/will be doing the following:
Litter
We bought two new litter boxes as we only had one. We are also trying new dust free litter. No success with the new litter yet, but it may just take some time. I need to rub their paw in it again. We have also been more vigilant in cleaning out the boxes.
Cleaning
We have been putting a lot of renewed effort into cleaning up the spots Max had already peed on. We have been using a cleaner meant for cleaning up pet urine, throw, etc. My husband is at the pet store now buying Nature’s Miracle. They even have a special blend meant just for cat urine.
I want a black light to detect urine but I’m almost afraid of what it’ll find. Any thoughts?
Meds
Max is tolerating his anti-anxiety meds much better. Instead of being a rather bitter pill it’s now in a lotion form that’s rubbed onto the inside of his ears, so we have been able to give it to him on a much more regular basis than before when they were nasty bitter pills. I can’t be sure but I think they’re really helping him.
Food
We are still allowing the cats constant access to dry food but we also added in an additional can of wet food. So they now get one can of wet food in the morning specially formulated for urinary tract health plus one other can in the evening.
I’m almost afraid to type this but Max hasn’t had an accident in about 3 days now, since I first started this thread. Previously the longest he had gone without an accident was 2 days. He’s still upstairs but not allowed in the bedrooms. All the coats are away but he still had access to the couches and the rare pillow/blanket accidentally left on the couch.
How much did that lotion cost?
I’m having problems with my cat. I know that it is because I have a dog living with us now and she doesn’t like the dog.
Since the 14th when I started this thread, Max has had only 1 accident on a plastic tarp we had put down for painting. I threw out the tarp and moved on.
I’m not sure what exactly worked since we tried so much, but I’ll take it!
Zebra, the lotion came as a prescription from the vet. It cost $26 for a month’s supply.
Sorry for your troubles. It definitely sounds like a behavioral thing and honestly, veterinarians are not skilled in this area. I would bet anything that it has to do with the move AND I’m quite certain that he’s not happy with the litter-pan(s) situation you currently have. Since there are two cats in the house, there should be AT LEAST two very large litter-pans WITHOUT covers. The larger the litter-pan, the better, especially with boys. It’s important that you kept those litter-pans clean by scooping every morning and every night. Also make sure the litter-pans are very easy for the kitty to get to. Don’t keep them in the basement if it means your cat has to go downstairs to get to them. Something like that is enough to make a cat pee elsewhere in the house. Make sure you’re using a litter that has little to no dust and doesn’t have a very strong perfume scent. Right now, you should be adding a litter called “CAT ATTRACT” to your current litter, this litter is guaranteed to make your cat go in the litter-pan. If the areas that have been previously soiled in the house are not throughly cleaned, your kitty will keep treating them like a toilet. Throw out what you can and bleach what you can. There is also a product called Nature’s Miracle that you can use for things you can’t bleach. If you can smell urine in any of the areas he’s soiled, then he will surely pee there again. You may need to go to very extreme measures and start over with him by “caging” your kitty for at least a week so he will be retrained to use the litter-box. Purchase two large dog crates (they’re much cheaper on Ebay than the pet store) and connect the two crates together to make one very large enclosure. Place the crates up on a table to make life easier for yourself and so the kitty is not on the floor. You can also make shelves by cutting wood to fit the cage from front to back and put screws on each end of the wood to sit on the bars to hold the shelves in place and use pull ties to secure the screws to the cage so the shelves don’t move when he jumps on them. Make sure you use the CAT ATTRACT in the litter-pan with your current litter and I’m sure your boy will be using the litter-pan…make sure the litter-pan is large. When you release him from the cage, make sure the very large litter-pans in the house are easily accessible and also have the CAT ATTRACT in them. This all may sound like alot of work, but honestly it’s not and it’s a small price to pay to have your home back. Good Luck!
We have two cats. Frankie suffered with a persistant bladder infection. While on meds we isolated her in kitchen. Once her infection was cured we got a second litter box and filled it up with the good ARM and hammer litter. We eased her back into life with the family. I as convinced that we’d have to put her down. She is 15 years old. Luckily this worked. If it hadn’t. We would have had her put down. You can’t live with cat peeing all over the house. At some point humans become more imoortant than the pet.
We’ve been dealing with peeing issues with our 12 year old cat this past year. Used to be, he’d pee on empty plastic bags when he’d find them, so we’d hide them. Then he’d pee in the closet, so we’d close the door. When he started peeing on my bed, we got him checked out. It seems he had a bladder stone, so we sold our firstborn and the cat had surgery to remove it. The situation improved immensely, until he started peeing here and there again - nowhere near as bad as before, but still! The vet figures the cat’s got a kidney infection. Problem is, he’s got to be on the antibiotics for two months straight to truly knock it out, and the antibiotics make him really sick. Poor kitty!
Anyway, this behaviorist at our vet clinic suggested putting old towels in the litter box, the logic being that if he enjoys peeing on soft stuff, he might as well be encouraged to do it in the box. The vet figures the peeing wasn’t the result of a behavioral issue with our cat, so I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s probably worth a shot.
