Cat: Odd behaviour & urinating in strange places

12Phase

We've a 15 year old cat who has suddenly started behaving very oddly.

He is pestering for food a lot, even jumping onto the kitchen table and trying to take food from someone's plate while eating. He is extremely well fed and absolutely not hungry.

The second problem is even more bizarre - he has taken to urinating on the floor.

This morning he went behind the television console and has completely destroyed a load of tv, audio and home networking equipment by urinating all over the cables and shorting stuff out.

He's also gone in the bathroom and has defecated on the floor a few times.

He actually quite deliberately went to in behind the TV this morning and went on the floor. It wasn't an accident, it was very definitely a chosen place as he had easy access outside and to litter.

I'm going to bring him to the vet on Monday for a check up as I'm concerned this is getting a little weird.

Any ideas?

Also, any ideas for cleaning cat urine from hardwood floors? The floor weird very weird after it .. it literally dissolved the oiled finish and also caused it to swell slightly...

Nody

Well for starters the fact he went behind the TV again is if you did not remove the pee with an appropriate remover (the protein in the pee will remain with normal cleaners) it smells like pee to your cat and they go again.

Secondly the fact he's suddenly hungry and pooing and peeing around would point towards most likely a medical condition of some form; I'd recommend a blood test to go with the vet check to try to find out what it is.

Milly33

Was just going to say sounds like an infection... Our fella although younger gets urinary infections and pee's wherever he can, mind you can see that he is in pain if you around him..Like it hurts for them to pee.

Keep an eye out for blood in the urine or poop if you can.

Older cats get problems like this too, a good friends cat suffered constantly from it. Ended up on a better low salt diet as such and was ok...

murria

Our 16 year old cat was acting exactly the same last year. Turns out he has thyroid and kidney problems and he is on medication for both now. We couldn't feed him enough and he was peeing in strange places after always having had a cat flap. The vet reckoned he was associating the pain on urination with the place he was going and so not using the same spot constantly. He's much better now. Hope there's not too much wrong with your fellow.

Alun

"Inappropriate elimination" as it's euphemistically known is always either down to psychological factors or some kind of infection, usually of the urinary tract.

In the case of urinary tract infections, they dissociate the pain they're experiencing when urinating with the place they usually do it in, i.e. the litter tray, so deliberately seek out somewhere different to do it. For some reason they often seek out hard, cold surfaces like wooden or tiled floors, or in the case of one of our cats, our ceramic hob :eek:

Being an older cat, the possibility of some kind of kidney problem is also high on the list. Has he ever had any routine blood tests done? Ours are getting on in years a bit too and have had them done but thankfully have shown no abnormalities.

12Phase

We've figured it out and it's most definitely psychological. He's engaged in all out war with a new neighbour's tom cat and is not winning at present.

I noticed he was watching the cat flap very closely all the time. Then a large fluffy head popped in from outside which he absolutely clobbered and went totally nuts.

I chased the cat off .. made plenty of hissy noises and shouted at it and our cat was rubbing me and purring away ...

Anyway, we've installed a chip based cat flap, used Urine Off in any area he's gone to avoid any repeats and get rid of any odours (It actually didn't smell 'catty'. It was more just urinating than scent marking.

And I've put in a Felway pheromone plug to see if he'll chill out a little.

Other than that just giving him plenty of 'support'.

Milly33

I swear by those plug ins.. Great to see ye have it solved has he stopped peeing now around the place... If it did continue it might be worth getting him checked for the sake of it...

Haha I hope he wins his war with the neighbours cat...