Courtesy of:  Dr. Melissa

Shortly after graduating from vet school, my husband and I moved to Northern Alberta for work.  We had a 4 year-old cat (Folly), who I had adopted from the PEI Humane Society, and we thought it was time to get her a companion.  A few weeks later, after visiting a farm with a litter of barn kittens, I drove home with an 8-week old ball of fur on my lap.  We named him Tompkin.  It didn’t take long for him to fit in and even win Folly over!  He was very affectionate, loved to cuddle and ‘chatted’ to us regularly.  He especially liked my husband and would climb up on his shoulder anytime he bent down to put on his shoes or pick something up.

He grew into a handsome cat with a thick tabby coat and was loveable….until one day…he PEED on our couch!  Anyone that has experienced this knows the frustration of cleaning cat urine, especially when it happens repeatedly.  In fact, the sad truth is inappropriate urination is one of the top reasons why cats are returned to shelters or euthanized.

Tompkin was lucky to live in a house with a fairly new vet school graduate.  I was determined to figure out what was going on!

Cats can urinate inappropriately for many reasons including cystitis (inflammation of the bladder), crystals, stress/anxiety, marking and infection.  The first step to helping these cats (and your furniture) is ruling out a medical condition.  This usually means getting a urine sample..which as with most things is more difficult in a cat!!  We generally try to do a cystocentesis, which is taking a sample directly from the bladder with a needle.  Most cats tolerate this very well, we get a sterile sample and we don’t have to wait for them to pee!  Once we have a sample we look at how concentrated it is, and look for inflammatory cells, blood, crystals and bacteria. We may take a radiograph to look for bladder stones.  If this is all normal, we focus on behavioural issues.  We will ask a lot of questions to create a history of what is happening which helps us form a plan for therapy.  Things that can help include increasing the size and number of litter boxes , decreasing stress in multi-cat households with cat trees/perches and pheromones as well as anti-anxiety medications in severe cases.

Prevention is key, because once a cat pees on a bed/blanket/bath tub, they may decide they like that better and continue!  Good quality diets, including canned food as a large component, and increasing water consumption are really important.  Keeping multiple litter boxes in open areas and cleaning them frequently will help encourage cats to use them.

As for Tompkin, it turns out his urine issues are a combination of medical and behavioural  problems.  His urine is very concentrated, which creates crystals.  The irritation from this causes him to pee outside the litter box…a sure sign to me that he is hurting.  He flares up when he is stressed (if we are away or having noisy renovations done).  He is on a urinary diet, with canned food daily to dilute his urine.  He also gets an anti-inflammatory medication when there is a flare-up. His last episode was almost a year ago..hopefully it was his last!