I have 3 cats: 2 3-year old females and a 2 year old male. The females we adopted 3 years ago and they were spayed. The male was a feral we socialized and brought in but we never got him neutered. We brought in the male a couple years ago and neither of the females had an issue with him.
It’s been a couple months now and one of the cats has been spraying. We aren’t 100% which one it is but suspect it’s one of our spayed females due to the fact we have witnessed her purposely going outside the box in the past. Also encountered spraying incidents where it was fairly recent and she was the only cat we saw going towards that area of the house. (i.e. we have a finished basement and sometimes have had a period of half an hour or so where when someone else would go downstairs, they smelled pee. And she was the only cat anybody saw going downstairs in that half hour period)
Is there a way we can even tell it’s her? I’ve been telling my parents for weeks to get some sort of dye we’ve read about on numerous website but they just won’t do it for some reason.
We’ve tried all the possible options: •cleaning litter boxes every single day, constant fresh litter (we have seen all 3 cats using the litter boxes so it’s not a box-using issue. And the substance left is a spray - it’s never poop and not enough to be them just peeing out of the box) •the diffusers •using any sort of cleaning and prevention spray we could read about •extra time with the cat we suspect is spraying •putting an additional litter box in an area where the cat tends to spray the most •trying to prevent outdoor cats from coming around •no changed of eating habits - type of food and amount of food/water has always been the same
We had seen a cat outside weeks ago and thought maybe it was an issue with marking territory. But we also did everything to prevent that cat from coming around. None of us have seen it in a while. My cats never had issues with marking territory so we aren’t entirely sure it’s a spray to mark territory. (idk if this helps but I don’t recall ever having an incident when our air conditioning was on. I only ever noticed issues when the windows were open. It has led me to wonder if maybe a cat is still coming around and for some reason our cats notice it better when windows are open)
It’s at a point where we can’t keep anything on the floor or else we take a chance it’s going to get sprayed on. We keep a lot of things in a spare room that we try to keep shut but my dad always ends up opening that door so that completely negates the option of keeping things in there.
We went a couple weeks without incident and a couple nights ago, a brand new bag my dad had bought got sprayed on. And last night, my work bag got sprayed on. Normally I keep it on a hook but the hook broke off last night and I didn’t want to chance my dad opening the spare room door.
I was unfortunate enough to have the smallest room in the house and it’s annoying to have to keep literally everything on hooks. As i mentioned before, my dad tends to open the spare room door a lot so it’s really not feasible to keep anything in there. It’s also not feasible for me to keep my door shut because I have 3 axolotls and my room has to be a certain temperature for their tank to stay cool - it gets too warm/stuffy if I keep the door shut all day and night even with a fan on. I’m the one who cleans the litter boxes so it’s not really fair to me to keep adding them all over the house. I also don’t want to live in a house that smells of litter because we keep litter boxes everywhere. I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier but even the addition of extra boxes where the spraying occurs hasn’t stopped it - there have even been times where they sprayed in the same area. Shutting doors will only prevent them from spraying in the one room. I feel like they would just do it elsewhere if we just kept every single door closed.
Does anyone know how 1) We can prove the cat that is doing it? Is the dye in food method even safe? and 2) how to stop the cat? I think it’s been well overdue for a vet visit but my parents just won’t do it for whatever reason I don’t want to get rid of any of the cats - it would break my heart and I feel it wouldn’t be fair to the other 2 to just remove their sibling. If it is the male, is it safe to get him neutered at 2 years old? I’m not sure why my parents never did it when we first brought him in as a kitten.
Any advice helps so please send your ideas. Or methods that worked for you.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/p4qgkj/how_do_we_get_our_cat_to_stop_spraying/
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