Dogs and Cats and Piss, Oh My!

Yesterday our male cat decided to start spraying and this morning our dog decided to leave a huge puddle in the kitchen. What the hell is going on?!

I’m not sure what stress the cat may be under, but my husband is ready to get rid of him. I’m sure it is because he is kind of a brat and doesn’t get along with our other cat or the dog, but then again none of our animals get along with each other. I cleaned out the cats water fountain and my husband cleaned out the litter boxes thoroughly, so hopefully if one or both of those two things were the culprit that will take care of the problem.

The dog on the other probably still has a urinary tract infection. Hopefully. Perhaps we need to do some blood work to rule out anything else. Blood work equals money, and money is something we don’t have. Ugh. I guess there’s just no way around it, however.

Cat Urine

While we had the pug over, our cat Tuesday hid most of the time. Well, until I found out where she’d been peeing.

I’m not sure why but our mean cat has become a scaredy cat. She hides whenever something is out of place, like another dog in the house. Dexter, our other cat, is the complete opposite as he will lay out in plain sight as if egging on the guest to take their best shot. It wasn’t until day two that I noticed an ammonia smell coming from the office and I was pretty sure I knew where it was coming from. When we moved in I had simply thrown down a bolt of fabric on top of my new and unused cutting mat I had gotten with a gift card for my birthday along with some hand towels. Yes, this was the “just unload everything and throw it wherever” pile. Needless to say, the cat took this as a pseudo litter box.

Fortunately the bolt of fabric was okay, but a couple hand towels weren’t so lucky, so I threw them into the garage to wash later. I should’ve washed them right away, but I didn’t. So, needless to say, the cat urine was rather ripe when I finally got around to washing the articles yesterday. I tried our usual Tide and added a couple scoops of Borax and put the machine on presoak, heavy soil and stain cycle. It still smelled like cat pee. So I decided to try the load again, but using All Free and Clear, which we use on all of our dog’s bedding because of her sensitive skin and allergy issues, along with a cup of Borax and half a cup of white vinegar. The sniff test after that load was done revealed no hint of cat pee, so I consider it a success.

So, perhaps next time, and I always assume she’ll pee on something inappropriate again either while she is mad at us or we have guests she disapproves, I’ll try this method first to find out if it does work better or if it really was just washing them twice that made a difference. However, from my last experience of washing pet urine it took three washes and a lot more vinegar, including a twenty-four hour soak, so perhaps the All does work better for getting out pet urine better.