Scratchings-and-Sniffings

Urine Marking in Cats Posted: 11 May 2009 07:49 AM PDT Last week we discussed the bane of cats' owners: house soiling. I mentioned the difference between house soiling and its annoying related behavior: urine marking. The big difference is that marking is actually normal feline behavior. It is a form of communication where one cat is saying to another something like, "this is mine" or "this is my area, keep out."  In any case, normal or not, it's not a fun thing for the people in the house. Cat pee is not a pleasant fragrance and house guests detect it the minute they enter your house even if you have gotten accustomed to it.   When a cat marks they usually back up to a vertical area, a wall or door jamb, raise their tail, twitch the tip and let go with a relatively small volume of urine six to eight inches off the floor. Just enough to do the job. Infrequently cats will mark objects, especially something with a new sent. How nice.   More commonly the reason for marking is a new cat, a new person or even the visual citing of an outside cat that visits the yard. Urine marking is much more common in multiple cat households and more common in intact males, although neutered males and females will mark, too.   In multiple cat households the cause is often due to inter cat conflict and both the aggressor and the victim may mark in response.   So what do you do?   The first thing is to neuter or spay every intact cat in the household. Neutering and spaying will decrease marking by 95% in females and 90% in males.   In multiple cat households make sure that there are adequate resources for each cat spread throughout the house. Are there enough food and water bowls? Do you have a litter box for each cat plus one more? Are there toys, perches, habitats and private areas where a shy cat cat get some peace? Adequate resources and proper litter box maintenance can go a long way to reducing social conflict in the house.   If the marking is in response to a neighborhood cat visiting the yard do what you can to prevent your cat form seeing the invader. Ask the neighbor to do the right thing and keep their cat home. Put up window shades and make window perches unavailable. Don't put food out for wild cats. You may even resort to motion activated water sprinklers to discourage visits.   Clean any marked areas with an enzymatic preparation designed to deal with cat urine.   In term of behavior modification you can try to separate or segregate cats that are dealing with social conflicts. Give the spraying cat access to its own area; a bedroom or the basement for several hours a day. Make sure he has water, food and a litter box of his own in the alone time area.   Equip cats with bells on their collars so they announce their presence to each other. It easier for them to avoid each other if they hear the other cat coming.   Use cat pleasing pheromones and provide scratching and rubbing posts to encourage facial scent marking.   You can try to make the area where the spraying is taking place unattractive too. Take a carpet runner and put it upside down so the bumpy parts point up. Place that on the floor where the cat stands to spray. Double sided tape can have the same aversive effect.    Make sure you spend adequate time interacting with your cats, too. This can dramatically reduce anxiety in some cats.   One final last ditch trick is to place a plastic litter box up against the surface being sprayed. This creates a kind of cat urinal. In this case you've thrown in the towel on the marking behavior but at least you don't have to clean and repaint the woodwork.   All these suggestions can help deal with the problem. In some cases you may not be able to stop the behavior altogether, but you can reduce the spraying to acceptable levels. Talk to your veterinarian or veterinary behavior specialist about how to implement a comprehensive approach in your situation. They may  even suggest the use of anti anxiety medications but hopefully the combination of behavior modification and good resource allocation will handle the problem.  Good luck.

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