What to do if your cat is marking territory
Your cat isn't that far removed from its wild roots. They feel an instinctive urge to stake their claim by leaving their scent. While most territory marking is done through innocent rubbing or scratching, issues with urinating can also arise.
But don't worry, you can teach your cat to stop using urine to mark their territory!
The importance of scent
The scent is the primary way that cats communicate. For example, when one cat comes home from the vet, the other cats in the household may treat them as a stranger at first, based on their smell. They'll have to get a good sniffing before their part of the family again.
Since cats can't be in two places at once to monitor their territory, they have many scent-based ways to leave their calling card.
Marking by rubbing
Felines have scent glands on their cheeks, paws, and flanks and when they rub against something—a door, a chair, you—they put their own personal scent on that object. This leaves the message for other cats that they've been there and laid claim. Rubbing against you is a way of marking you as theirs telling other cats to back off.
In a multi-cat household, all this rubbing helps to establish territories (at least temporarily) and to create bonds between the cats. When two cats in the house meet up, they'll sniff each other and one will start rubbing and maybe even grooming the other. This helps to ease the tension between them.
Marking by scratching
When your cat scratches something, they're doing more than sharpening their claws; they're leaving their scent as well.
Cats have scent glands on the pads of their feet and scratching is another way cats mark territory. Don't punish your cat for doing what comes naturally—just train them to use a scratching post and leave the furniture alone.
Urine-marking takes two forms:
"Spraying urine on vertical surfaces"
"Urinating on horizontal surfaces"
Spraying is when a cat backs up to a vertical surface with its tail erect and squirts urine. Their tail often quivers while they're spraying. Regular urinating is when they squat to pee on the furniture, the floor, things lying on the floor, or any other horizontal surface. Both males and females can (and do) spray and squat. Marking with urine is not a litter box issue.
Why your cat is urine-marking
There are several possible reasons your cat is urine-marking:
Introducing new pets to the home
If you are considering adopting a new cat or dog or other pet, be sure to give your resident cat plenty of time to adjust. The newly adopted pet should have a safe room to adjust to the home which allows your resident cat time to get to know them through a door or baby gate. Don’t require your resident cat to share a litter box with a new cat.
Medical issues
Medical problems can be another cause of urine-marking. Particularly with male cats, a urinary tract infection (or much worse, a blockage) may be at fault if your cat suddenly stops using the litter box or spends a lot of time trying to urinate and licking their genitals. Some cats will even urinate and cry right in front of you or try to urinate in the bathtub or sink to let you know something's wrong.
Mating behavior
The urge to spray is extremely strong in cats who have not been spayed or neutered, so the simplest solution is to get that taken care of by five months of age before there's even a problem.
If you've adopted an unneutered adult cat, get them fixed as soon as possible. Neutering solves most marking issues, even in cats who have been doing it for a while. However, the longer you wait, the greater the risk that marking behavior will be ingrained.
Stress
Cats are creatures of habit and many react badly to even the slightest changes in their environment. This can include everything from a new pet or baby in the house, to a caretaker’s absence, a strange cat in the backyard and other environmental factors we don’t fully notice or understand.
Marking territory with urine is your cat's way of dealing with stress. They feel anxious and are trying to relieve their anxiety by staking out their boundaries. Leaving their urine scent is the most emphatic way to say, "I'm stressed."
If you see signs of medical problems, take your cat to the vet immediately. Urinary tract problems are not only painful, but they can also be fatal. A cat whose urinary tract is blocked can die in hours or suffer irreversible organ damage from the buildup of toxins in its system. Urinary tract problems don’t clear up by themselves and require urgent attention.
Hi, my name's Sarah Richards, and this is my cat, Timmy.
Today, Timmy is a happy, contented, and well-trained cat who hasn't peed outside the litter box in 3 years.
I can leave my house for hours, and give him the run of every room with 100% confidence that he will NEVER pee anywhere other than his litter box.
But believe me, it wasn't always this way!
Why?
Well, let me tell you a quick story about how Timmy came into my life.
Since 2009 I've been working as a Veterinary Technician for the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals).
My job entails prepping animals for surgery and post-operative recovery, and as you can imagine, I've treated A LOT of sick, malnourished, and mistreated animals during my time in the job.
Back in 2011, a colleague of mine brought in a skinny little tabby cat who had been found with 6 other cats in an empty house.
The owner's home had been foreclosed due to him losing his job and not being able to keep up the repayments.
But rather than take the cats with him or bring them to us, he'd decided to simply abandon them, and leave them all to fend for themselves Eventually, the cats were discovered when the realtor entered the home, days after the owner had left.
He immediately called us to come and help. It was clear straight away that the cats were fortunate to be still alive. They were suffering from severe malnutrition, and there were pee and poop all over the house.
I instantly fell in love with the smallest one. He was very unwell and close to death when he was rescued.
He was so sick that everyone thought it was unlikely that he would survive the night.
It seemed that everyone had given up on him but me.
But he was a fighter, and he made it through the night.
Not having a pet at the time, I asked that I be allowed to take him home, which my bosses allowed me to do once he was well enough.
So a few days later I took him home with me.
I called him Timmy.
But as I'm sure you can guess, Timmy's toilet habits proved a big problem for me!
He had been used to peeing wherever he wanted, and moving him to a new home resulted in some major anxiety issues - which made the problem even worse.
He would pee on the furniture, in the corner of the kitchen, on the bed, on my clothes - anywhere but the litter box, in fact!
I was constantly cleaning the house, wiping up pee, washing my clothes, and buying new cushions and bed linen.
Whatever I did... and whatever tactics I tried... he just refused to pee in the litter box.
And it went on for months...
Until finally, the breakthrough happened!
I got chatting to a girl named Laura, one of our cat behavior specialists at work, who gave me a really weird but unbelievably effective trick that she said would encourage Timmy to start peeing in the litter box.
And incredibly, it worked straight away!
I was amazed that something so simple had worked so well...
For the first time since I'd brought him home, he'd peed where he was supposed to!
It was a huge step forward - but it didn't solve the problem completely.
After that, I spoke with Laura again who suggested some more techniques - which I put into action as soon as I returned home.
And this time, they solved the problem completely, by not only encouraging Timmy to pee in the litter box but by discouraging him from peeing anywhere else.
I HAD STOPPED TIMMY PEEING OUTSIDE THE LITTER BOX, PERMANENTLY!
After seeing how well it worked, I wanted to share the same techniques I used with others. So I wrote down everything I'd learned in a step-by-step, easy-to-follow guide, complete with illustrations!
And then I started handing out my guide to clients, friends and anyone else I knew who were experiencing similar problems with their cats - and all of them reported back to me with INCREDIBLE RESULTS!
In fact, the techniques revealed in my manual were 100% EFFECTIVE for every person who used them on their cats.
And after seeing just how successful my system was, I created this website so that I could start teaching these techniques to cat owners right across the world - hundreds and thousands of people just like you, who have all achieved amazing results for their cats.
AND SO CAN YOU!
Product Review
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Spraying, or peeing, around the house is a big no-no, for obvious reasons; and sometimes, cats that regularly use their litter box turn to other areas of the house to urinate or spray. As a result, owners tend to focus on the issue of the mistargeted urination, rather than on why the behavior is occurring - the key element to Cat Spraying No More.
The
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In Conclusion
There really is no risk in trying out this product. With a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee, if things don't work out as you expected you get what you paid back.
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