This is a long one, so I'm going to try to keep it short but also include a tldr at the bottom.
We live in a 3 cat (2 males, 1 female, all fixed), 1 dog household. The dog was planned, none of the cats were. One was a small kitten dodging cars, one was a desperate co-worker needing a fast re-home, and the one in question, Rey, literally just walked into our house one day and never left. Notably, he was fixed and declawed when he moved in.
Rey is the oldest and has been here the longest. He "moved in" shortly after we got our puppy, as he came up while we were walking the dog and started playing, and walked inside with us when we came in. He and the dog have always gotten along great, they are inseparable, so I feel safe the stress is not coming from the dog but likely the other male cat. The other two cats came about a year ago, and only a few days apart from each other. I mention this, because since the other male cat came in, we have had off and on litter box issues with the two males, neither one will seem to use the boxes at the same time, one will always be dominating and stake claim to all of the boxes. We are up to five litter boxes with four different types of litter. Again, possibly of importance, the other male cat is a bit of a trouble maker, but never fights meanly. He's like an annoying younger brother, non-stop picking, but we've never had a real fight, hissing, or anything. Just annoyance.
Right now Rey is on a complete litter box strike. He has additionally started meowing excessively to be let outside, nonstop. Which we do not feel is safe due to him being declawed, knowing there are other cats, dogs, foxes/coyotes, and we live off a busy road and a block away from a highway on-ramp where I regularly see roadkill. (I include all this in a feeble attempt to keep people from telling me cats should be outside) He stops meowing when we are out of the room, and starts again as soon as we wake up or come back. He continues to urinate and poop, however outside of the boxes, sometimes even right next to the box.
I just got back from the vet to rule out health issues or a UTI. The vet was able to get a urine sample which was straight red with blood, however had very minimal white blood cells. She gave us some antibiotics just in case since there were a few white blood cells, but believes his blood and other issues are from stress, likely due to being in a multi-cat household. She recommended a special stress/uti prescription diet they sell, however this is very expensive and I already have a female cat very prone to UTIs as well. (Of course, the other male/instigator has never had any health issues, ever)
I need to bring down his stress level. I desperately wish I could build a catio, however we rent and cannot build outside of our house and honestly our landlords are not aware we have cats. (I know, we're terrible.) We have looked into buying a house just to be able to do this, but it's not in the cards at the moment. I could try to build a cat highway with shelves, but it's hard since we can't put large holes in the wall, nothing larger than a small nail. I feel like I have lots of cat spaces, we have a tree, they get on top our kitchen cabinets, refrigerator, I have a few cat beds around they love... I'm running out of ideas. She also mentioned we may need to start from scratch to re-train him to use the litter box. Something I'm dreading as well.
Okay, sorry for the long post. Any ideas for reducing stress, possibly avoiding this expensive $100 a bag food, and giving more "cat spaces" on a budget would be helpful. I feel terribly for him, but also cannot keep scrubbing up cat urine and having a meowing cat any time I'm home.
tldr; We have a 3 cat household, one cat peeing blood from stress, tested negative for UTI, vet suggested we try to lower his stress levels by giving an incredibly expensive food, providing lots of cat-friendly spaces, and re-train him on the liter box from scratch. Looking for ideas on how to accomplish all of this.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/die9zx/cat_peeing_blood_from_stress/
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