I did a search of SDMB for this and found related topics, but not this specific one. I have a male cat, neutered, who is unfortunately a part of the minority who still sprays. He is (now) an outdoor cat. He sprays the outside of the house, and we can smell it pretty well inside.
I don’t want to chase him away, but I do want him to stop spraying my house! I’ll note too that I don’t necessarily want him to stay away from the house either; we have a small shelter for him near the back door, and we feed him there as well. But it’s getting warmer out, and I want to be able to open my windows.
What can I do to keep him from spraying, and yet not have him running away forever? Please, no jokes about killing him, torturing him or giving him away-- my five year old daughter named him, and I like him, so those are not options.
I was told that an effective way (if you can catch them in the act) is to push their tail down when they do it. They then spray all over their tail. Needless to say, they don’t like that very much. After a few times, they should stop.
This is what my Mother-in-law did and worked like a charm supposidly. Luckily, I haven’t had to do this myself.
-OT-
If this is something that he just started doing recently, it may not hurt to take him to a vet. That can also be an early sign of a urinary tract infection, which is very common with male cats.
Additional, or perhaps just re-enforcing what you can read there…
If your cat is an indoor/outdoor cat or an outdoor only cat, and the spraying is behavioral rather than a physical problem, you’re going to have a difficult time curbing it if you don’t make them an indoor only cat.
If the spray is still very pungent, you may actually have a problem that your vet did not perform a complete neuter. If he had one ball that hadn’t dropped yet, or if the vet left some in there for any other reason, there may still be hormone producing stuff in there and so both the behavior and the smell might be taken care of by completing the surgery correctly.
And while not comforting for your situation, other cat owners should please keep in mind the following…
[soapbox]
If your vet is comfortable performing the surgery, there have been studies in early neuter/spay which show that performing this surgery as early as 8 weeks of age is perfectly fine and causes no health problems. The cats develop to normal size and you never have to worry about spraying. If you wait until after this behavior has started to have your cat altered, you will have a more difficult time stoping this behavior.[/soapbox]
This is not to say that once a male sprays he will always spray. My male (you can see a picture of him in the photo album linked to my profile) was “at stud” in a cattery for 4 years. His nickname was “fire hose”. Living in my apartment with me and one of his daughters, he hasn’t sprayed a drop in years. He is just as fastidious in his litter box habits as his daughter is.
I should note that I did do a web search, but the answers I found were either spend loads of money on a chemical (which we tried, and did not discourage him while he was still an indoor cat) or follow him around all the time, which is tactically impossible.
I was hoping for a more home-grown remedy. I may try spraying lemon or orange juice around the house, but again I don’t want him hating the house!
Also, he is healthy; a urinary tract infection was my first thought, but he checked out clean.