Urinating in an odd place..help!

Help!
My cats are both litter-box trained, of course, never missed it, never had any problems at all...till this morning!
My husband brought out son's carseat in from his car and put in on the floor in the dining room. It has a padded cover thing on it because the seat is vinyl and gets hot. Both cats (of course) had to explore it. Kipper got in it and sat there, like she wanted to go for a ride. Then she got out and Sammy (who is about to turn 1) got in. He sniffed around in it for a minute, then turned and squatted and peed right in it.

I couldn't believe it. He has never done anything like this. Is this normal? Why would he do this? Did it somehow smell like the litterbox, or maybe smelled like a good place to go?

It didn't smell like pee from my son, I know HE never peed in it! And of course it soaked through and got a little on the carpet, so now I am afraid he will think it's okay to go there where the pee-smell is. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

This is almost exactly what happened with one of my cats about 3 weeks ago.

Basically I put a cat bed in a place I had never put it before and for some reason one of our cats, PC, thought it was a new type of litterbox. He started to pee in it, but fortunately I saw him and stopped him just in time. I took the cat bed away and moved it to a more "normal" spot and all was fine.
There hasn't been a problem since.

PC is completely litter box trained and has never shown any problems before and has not had any problems since. The new location of the cat bed just seemed to have confused him a bit. It sounds like the fabric covering your car seat is very similar to the fabric on the cat bed - there must be something about it that attracts them in a certain way.

Donna

I don't have any ideas on why your cat did this but if the urine soaked through to the carpet it's best to use an enzyme cleaner, such as SOX, which would throughly remove any urine odor. This should prevent kitty from giving a "repeat performance" on the carpet.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for all of your replies.
I found some new Resolve, for pet stains, the very next day. I sprayed it where it had soaked through.
Hopefully this was a one-time thing.
Thanks!

I know this is a late reply but...

If cats are ill or distressed they will quite often pee in places they shouldn't as a way of attracting attention - when they do this they tend to do it anywhere and often in front of you. So be observant because a sudden change in behaviour could be a warning that something serious is wrong.

...just a tip - don't use any amonia based cleaning agents as this is a similar smell to cats urine and can encourage spraying - even amongst desexed cats.

Missy is 13 years old, as long as I can remember he has used the bath tub as a toilet when he feels that the litter box isn't clean enough for him. I can just have scouped and cleaned the litter box and when you go into the bathroom he's pee'd in the tub.