One of my cats has recently developed some atrophy in her hips and leg muscles. This means that she’s taken to peeing on the living room rug because should couldn’t easily make it upstairs to the catbox. At first I thought this was her just misbehaving until I watched her gait progressively become less sure and agile.
I’ve brought her to the vet and they’ve given her a steroid shot, but now there’s still the problem of multiple instances of cat pee in my rug.
I have company coming over this Saturday and I really would like the house to not smell like cat pee. Is there a way to salvage the rug? It’s an Oriental rug (not expensive) that matches my furniture perfectly and “really ties the room together.” I’d hate to have to throw it out.
I have a Bissell steam vac that my former roommate left behind. Will that work? Other suggestions?
There’s this enzymatic liquid cleaner you can get at pet care stores that removes stain and smell. And it doesn’t attract a repeat offense the way an ammonia based cleaner will. Can’t remember the name. It’s in a white bottle with red text. You can put it in your steamer too.
White vinegar and sunlight. Douse and blot the peed-on areas as much as possible with vinegar.
Then, if possible, put the rug out where it will dry in the sunlight. Once dry, the vinegar smell dissipates and you cannot smell the urine any more either.
This really, really works - you can google it.
Alternately, soak the pee spots with vinegar and use your Bissel to vacuum up the residue with clean water. Until the rug is dry you might have a faint vinegar smell, but that is definitely preferable to cat pee. And I hope your old cat will be OK.
I use the plain store brand or generic white vinegar from the grocery store. Nothing fancy.
No, I don’t have legions of incontinent or untrained pets. But I spent about 20 years in animal rescue and fostering, and have quite a bit of experience with neutralizing pet odors and stains of various kinds.
Just wanted to say the vinegar solution seems to be working! The baking soda was noticeably pulling up much of the cat urine. I put a layer of pet carpet powder down just for good measure, and it seems that the smell is gone. Thank you all!
Now I just wish I could have a non-judgmental person come by for a sniff test.
You really should have a catbox somewhere downstairs, particularly with a disabled cat. Even if the pain is no longer bad enough that she can’t make it upstairs, you’d be doing her a solid by saving her the wear and tear of having to navigate the stairs more often.
There are lots of ways to tastefully disguise a litterbox and still keep it easily accessible by the cat and easily serviceable by you, if that’s why you don’t have one downstairs. And it sure beats having to deal with the inevitable accidents - that steroid shot won’t last forever, you know.
Nature’s Miracle is crap now. Years ago it was an excellent product but a few months back I bought it (at twice the price it used to be at Petco) and it was completely useless. It didn’t even have that pleasant citrus scent anymore.
Bissell has a good cleaning solutionspecifically for pet odors I recommend highly. I have six cats and four dogs, so I go through a lot of it.
The other thing I’ve found is to get as much of the urine up as you can, and for that the puppy pee pads are fantastic (or “chucks”, the human version. I bet diapers would work too) Take the pad and press it over the wet spot until you get no moisture coming up, then add some clear water and blot again, then do your spot treatment and let it air dry.
When our elderly (now departed) cat developed difficulty walking to the litterbox due to atrophy in her hind legs, we put a disposable litterbox (the best ones are found at Petco) with wee-wee pads underneath at the exact spot she tended to land on her trip to the box. We have no stairs but the regular boxes are at the end of a long hallway that was just too much for her.
After she passed away, one of our other cats developed feline cystitis. In his urgency to go pee, he also would not make it to the box down the hallway. Again the disposable box, placed where he would land, did the trick until the problem cleared up.
Yes, it’s not very nice to have a litter box in the middle of the family room, but better than having to clean up cat mess from the hardwood floor several times a day. And on the rare occasions anyone came over to visit, the box was easy to throw out quickly, then replace when they left.
