Cats’ Urination Habits: Understand Your Cat to Solve Your Cat Pee Problems

Learning more about your cats’ urination habits can help you understand why your cat is urinating in the house or anywhere else she shouldn’t. In most cases, urination problems in cats have nothing to do with you. The exceptions are improper training that’s made the cat fearful or confused. Urination isn’t out of spite or revenge or an attempt to manipulate you. Your cat’s simply reacting to his environment based on his natural instincts.

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Cats prefer to “do their business” in clean areas that provide enough room to turn around and get comfortable. Covered boxed may not offer this. Cats also look for something to bury their waste in, whether that’s litter, dirt, plastic bags or your bed sheets. Preferences do vary, though, with some cats favoring slick surfaces, others preferring gravely material and still others seeking out soft material. There are usually reasons for these preferences. Cats won’t urinate or defecate near where they eat, either, so keep the litter box away from the food bowl.

One frequent cause of cats urinating in the house is the cat’s instinct to wet where she smells cat urine. This means any location in your house that carries this odor is, in your cat’s mind, a litter box. Thoroughly neutralizing odors is the only way to keep your cat from re-offending on that spot.

Territory Marking

While spraying is the most obvious form of territory marking with urine, ordinary urination can also serve this purpose to some extent. Most un-neutered tom cats spray urine to mark territory, but even neutered toms and queens (females) can and do sometimes spray. To spray, a cat stands with his backside aimed at vertical surface like a wall or chair leg and sprays urine while back-treading with his hind legs. To simply urinate, a cat squats on a flat surface (hopefully the litter box). Cats spray when they feel their territory is threatened by something like a new cat (anywhere in the neighborhood), a new person in the house, furniture or other item that carries a scent from outside your home or unusual behavior of people in the house, like someone’s new work schedule.

Cats want their territory to carry their smell, even if so faintly that only other cats can smell it. If you’ve put the litter box down in the basement or some other out-of-the-way place, try moving it into an area a little bit closer to the living room or front door. A litter box cabinet is one way to do these. These look like ordinary cabinets, but contain space for a litter box hidden inside.

Your cat’s urination instincts aren’t the only thing that could be causing her to pee in the house, though. She may have a health problem or there may be something about the litter box that’s putting her off.

You can solve your cat’s inappropriate urination problems and get your home completely free of cat urine odors, but the solutions may not always be obvious. Instead of wasting time learning by trial and error, read the book Cat Urine Problems Eliminated to discover proven-effective ways to retrain your cat and regain your home.

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