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Cat spraying in the house

502 views 3 replies 3 participants last post by  chillminx 
#1 ·
Hi, sorry in advance for my long post. My lovely 3 year old cat Stevie has always been a nervous boy. About 2 years ago he started urinating in our flat, after many trips to the vet we discovered that it was related to stress. So if we had a change in routine or if I went away he would have an episode. We tend to treat it with Zyklene and the vet prescribed Gabapentin if we knew of an upcoming change. He is on a wet food diet and we give him lots of playtime during the day. He has always been very keen to get out but since we lived in a second floor flat we would take him out on a lead. We moved home to bigger property with a garden about a month ago and I expected him to obviously to be upset by the move. (I had a large supply of enzyme cleaner ready). He seemed to cope ok with the change and loved having a stairs to run up and down on,he has however had a daily accident in different parts of the house. Which brings me to my main need for advise. We were excited to introduce him to the great outdoors as we now have a garden. We slowly introduced him to our garden and he has enjoyed it. We try to stay with him while he is outside as it is a new area.But then we discovered other cats were visiting the garden and he discovered he could jump over the fence. He actively seeks out the neighbourhood cats and meows at them,he gets very weird mood . He has got very agitated when comes in and paces around the flat. When he is out he sprays obsessively and this continues when he comes in. I appreciate he is new kid on block and he feels threatened . We are cautious about leaving him out alone yet and we have ordered a gps collar for him as we would be devastated if we lost him. He is totally preoccupied by going outside, he no longer plays with us and he is not as interested in his food either. The spraying both outside and in is not getting any better and the cleaning and smell is starting to get me down in our new house. I also worry he will go into our new neighbours gardens and spray in there on their lovely garden furniture and toys which may result in angry neighbours
Thanks in advance for any help
 
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#2 ·
Definitely sounds stress related and, obviously, having other cats invade his territory is not helping his anxiety levels. Have you thought about cat-proofing your garden so that (a) he can't get out and (b) other cats can't get in ? Or perhaps you could build him a cat run (Catio) ?

This topic is very useful if you decide to look into either course of action
https://www.petforums.co.uk/threads/cat-runs-cat-proofed-gardens.211361/page-75#post-1065654174

You can get it down by professionals although it is relatively simple to do yourself.
 
#3 ·
Thanks for the reply,
To be honest I dont think we could cat proof our garden and I dont think he would be happy in it either. He got out today and spent 4 hours out and about. Luckily he spent most of it in the field across the road from the house. He came back exhausted and very hungry.
 
#4 ·
@Sarah Murphy - is it safe for him to cross the road (to get to the fields)? If there is traffic passing at more than 20 miles an hour on the road I would be quite worried tbh,

I have a boy who sprays indoors sometimes. He is a rescued stray whom I adopted when he was about 18 mths old. He was not neutered until then. He has therefore retained some of the habits of an un-neutered cat e.g. being super-territorial, a penchant for fighting with other male cats, and spraying indoors.

Do you know your Stevie's full history? If you did not have him from a kitten, perhaps he was neutered late too...

I cat proofed my garden when I adopted my youngest 2 cats (sisters) as kittens. I wanted to keep the girls in the garden and knew I had the best chance of achieving this if I started when they were kittens. It has worked very well. :)

But what has also worked out very well, is that none of the neighbourhood cats can get into my back garden now. So my male cat who hates other male cats and sprays, can relax in the garden without any strange cats bothering him. It has made a big difference to his happiness, and his spraying indoors has become only very occasional.

Just to clarify - my male cat can get out of the back garden (through microchip cat flaps on the garden gates). It is just my girls who are confined to the garden.
 
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