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).]