Cats ! I neither like them or understand them !

I NEED HELP !!

Daughter, Holly, moved back home a few weeks ago with Chihuahua Gucci, and cat Winkle. No problems at all with Gucci, despite the fact he looks like a rat and something that belongs on the end of a well-aimed boot, he's a spunky little fella and we have a really good relationship. You can communicate with the little guy, we speak the same language. It's the cat I have a problem with. She arrived, with her cat litter tray, because she is a house cat, she doesn't go out. Fine, no problem. However ... very shortly after she arrived, she came into season. Fine, again no problem, I thought ... we'll live with the yowling outside our bedroom door 24/7, despite the fact I have to get up at 5.30 am every morning to go to work, and don't walk back through the door until about 7 pm at night and am therefore ******* exhausted! No problem, t'is only for a week, and then we'll have her spayed, end of problem. Winkle goes to the vet, has the chop, comes home, fine, absolutely no problem. She is as good as gold, no more yowling and keeping us awake.

HOWEVER !! ...

We have just discovered that she has been pissing in our office behind the speakers on the floor behind the desking ... for the last couple of weeks. All over the new laminate flooring that OH laid after he spent 3 weeks clearing out all the desking, the computers, the filing cabinets etc. etc. to decorate our office. The new laminate flooring is now all pickled due to the cat's piss all over it. The stink is unbelievable, despite frequent washings with Dettox and bleach. I now stink of cat piss where it has soaked into my leggings, my new Philips foot pedal on my digital dictation software which cost a bally fortune now stinks of cat piss and doesn't work very well, the sound system for the office doesn't work at all since it has been liberally sprayed by ******* Winkle for the last 2 weeks, and OH is to say the least Not Amused !! To add to all that, daughter Holly crashed her car in Waitrose carpark this evening in the pouring rain, and the damage she inflicted to a poor lady there will cost us around £500, plus the damage to her car.

This is an Extremely Bad Hair Day.

If anyone has any advice about what to do about the Pissing Winkle I would be extremely grateful. Tomorrow she is no longer going to be a house cat, she is going to be rapidly discover that she is now a Garden Cat. However, we love our birds very much indeed, so if she so much as looks at one of them, she will very rapidly become a Dead Cat.

Any advice as to what we can do apart from a) killing her and b) giving her away would be very gratefully received. I am desperately hoping that she will be stupid enough to jump the fence into next door's, where they have 2 very large GSDs that are both fed on BARF and they will accidentally mistake Winkle for an exceptionally tasty bunny and we will no longer have a Winkle problem !!

I am totally sick and fed up with daughters and cats !! I now know why I immersed myself in dogs and horses - they are no trouble, you know where you stand with a dog and a horse.

Oh Dear!
Sorry, can't offer any advise really, other than shutting doors where you don't want the cat to go,
I've nothing against cats, I quite like them, even had one once, but I found a cat does just what a cat wants to do!

http://www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-cat-urine.htm

http://www.cat-training.co.uk/

The above links may be of help to you. Cats need to be trained at kitty stage to use litter boxes but perhaps the change in environmnet has confused the cat. Keep the door shut to the office. In the first link, you will see what to use to get rid of smells and how to wash your clothes if cat's urine gets on them!

I love cats - had one for 19 years but she used her litter tray, even when my late parents and brother and I moved here ! Cats are really clean - honest!!

Hope the wee cat settles down OK.

Take care:)

Hi...bicard in water is uaually really good at getting rid of smells. I have 3 cats and love them all....not sure you ever fully understand cats thought but to me, that is there charm.

Cats are by nature extremely clean animals who take to using a litter tray like ducks to water. If the cat is not using it there must be a good reason. Cats are very fussy and wont use a tray that is not really clean, maybe it is in the wrong place and she has to go passed something she does not like to get to it. Maybe she is just marking her territory, she must feel kinda out numbered in the new 'dog house'. Maybe try putting the tray where she wees and see what happens

I had to smile at your horses and dogs are 'no trouble' comment...I find the opposite, cats are not trouble...dogs are quite a lot of trouble

Sorry Awfal but can't help it,
Use the Jeyes fluid, it will clear the smell.

Well, good news !!

Clever old me. Perhaps I should hereon in be known as The Cat Whisperer !

I sat down, and had a good old think about why Winkle should suddenly have started this disgusting habit, what had changed over and above the obvious of moving home.

One of the factors was that Gucci had started to gang up with Tai and be nasty to her by threatening her and then eating her food. However, we had solved this problem at least partially by shutting her in the downstairs loo with her food.

I thought about her litter tray. She doesn't just have an open tray, she has what I call a s**t pit - a tray with a lid that clips over the tray to stop the cat sending litter all over the place. I thought to myself maybe she found it very threatening to go in there and then have to emerge again not knowing whether Gucci and Tai were waiting to pounce on her. So I took the lid off, and just had the exposed tray with the litter inside. In addition, I stopped being quite so hygienic and religious about picking up the wees and poos every time she went and then spraying on some odour reduction stuff. The combination of these 2 things has worked. For the past 2 days, Winkle has tinkled in the tray !!

That naughty Gucci though - on Easter Sunday morning we were having a lie in in bed and Winkle had deposited a nice big poo right in the middle of the litter tray. Gucci decided he was going to get her into trouble, so he went and picked up the poo and deposited it on the stairs !! OH went ballistic until I pointed out that the poo had been in the litter tray when I went downstairs to make the tea, I just hadn't been arsed to clear it up but thought as it is Holly's cat, she could break the habit of a lifetime and actually do something for one of her pets! Gucci looked so smug until he realised that he had been rumbled, it was very funny !!

gbjoce wrote:Hi...bicard in water is uaually really good at getting rid of smells. I have 3 cats and love them all....not sure you ever fully understand cats thought but to me, that is there charm.

Cats are by nature extremely clean animals who take to using a litter tray like ducks to water. If the cat is not using it there must be a good reason. Cats are very fussy and wont use a tray that is not really clean, maybe it is in the wrong place and she has to go passed something she does not like to get to it. Maybe she is just marking her territory, she must feel kinda out numbered in the new 'dog house'. Maybe try putting the tray where she wees and see what happens

I had to smile at your horses and dogs are 'no trouble' comment...I find the opposite, cats are not trouble...dogs are quite a lot of trouble

True - but I understand dogs and horses, I don't "do" cats. I thoroughly dislike them as a species, but I have to say Winkle is very sweet, loving and far more like a dog than a cat. She is half Bengal Tiger Cat, so that may have something to do with it.

We have got rid of the smell with Dettol and some special stuff we bought from Pets at Home.

I admire your fortitude, if it was in my house it would no longer be a house cat,it would be an outside cat until it learnt that was where it did it, outside. Poor you, I can just imagine what OH was like