spraying

[gracecloud]

My 11 year old,neutered cat,Loverboy,squirts everything in site. He has been to several vets who all say there is nothing physically wrong with him. He is intelligent, loving and loved, and knows I do not like the behaviour, but continues. I tell him not to when I see him "assuming the position" and he stops, but I am stumped. There are other cats in family who seem curious and a tad horrified by this squirting, but they don't do it. Cannot apply any kind of chemicals to furniture as do not like them, besides, he squirts ALL kinds of things...EVEN ME! once or twice. Any animal communicators out there who know what he is trying to tell me? I wish I understood what ALL my precious animal companions were trying to tell me. They mean the world to me! Thank you.

[bloomer]

Yes I too have an 11 year old part maine coon tabby..I posted before about him... You're absolutey right, when you catch him in the position.. and repremand him.. he knows he's doing something wrong.. and runs to his box.. he's done this since he was a kitten.. I'm sure it's a territorial thing.. because the rest of his day is spent marking things with his chin.. I have even tried giving lots more attention.. but he just seems to be the same.. It's really annoying, but I love the big guy too much to put him down..

[Burrl]

We once had five pet cats. Too, too much! One or more of the males was spraying on everything. The worst was the heater vents! That smell would never go away, but was at its worst when we would start up the heater for the first time in a year.

We never found a solution, except the worst imaginable one... they all died of feline leukemia, one by one, just before a vaccine was found.

Consequently, after we moved, we were very shy about getting any male cat. When we learned that a kitten we adopted (Burrl) wasn't the female sex we believed her/him to be, we asked the vet about the spraying problem.

His answer was that male cats usually only spray in households of multiple cats, expecially other males, to mark their territory. If they do, only the extreme solutions work, the most practicable being to turn the offender(s) into permanently outdoor cats.

In our case, at the time not being a multiple cat household, we did not have a problem. Later we got his sister, Mush-Mushi, at the age of 8 months without him ever taking up spraying. They are both 5 years old now.

It is a curse. I don't know how else to put it. I am sorry. Good luck.

[This message has been edited by Burrl (edited July 11, 2000).]

[Linelle]

Our two neutered males didn't spray inside at all until we got a new cat last year. We've always discovered it after the fact, and weren't sure who the culprit was. In any event, all three cats get along pretty well now, so it was baffling. I researched this behavior at the Scoop on Pee & Poop website http://poop-pee.homepage.com and it's much easier to deal with when you understand cats' reasons for spraying. Last week I bought some Feliway at the vet's, which seems to be highly recommended to not just deter spraying, but to reduce the reasons for doing it.

Good luck! After my new 19" monitor was christened, I knew I had to do something.