Expert: Karen Craft - 1/14/2009

Question
Hello,

I have 2 cats. The older one is a 6 year old spayed female. She is the one I am
having problems with. Over the course of her life (I have had he since she was
a kitten) she has occasionally peed or pooped in places around my house. In
the last 4 years there has been a lot of trauma in her life, for example I
moved away and had to leave her with my parents and their cats (one of
whom she did not get along with), she was moved around alot but handled
most of it relatively well until she got a UTI. It unfortunately went untreated
for quite some time. She had begun licking all the fur off her abdomen, and
when my parents took her to the vet, were told that it was stress from living
with the other cats. They then put her on what I understand to be the
equivalent of cat anti-depressants (which I am not so keen on). It wasn't until
much later when they realized that the meds didnt help that there was a
medical problem, she was then treated for it, but the urination didnt stop.
When I was able to come back home and moved her into my new house
(where there were no other cats) it stopped. Things were good for a while and
we got her into a stable routine over the course of a year, but then it started
again. She had seemed very lonely (as my husband and I worked all day) and
decided that another companion might be a good idea. We got a 8 week old
male kitten. I thought that this might stress her out but it did the opposite,
she fell in love with him and once again everything seemed to be fine. ( I
might add that over this entire time she had still be licking the fur off her
belly and legs, and we were told that this had become habit now because the
UTI went on for so long and there was nothing physically wrong with her...
yay $400 VET BILL!) Now after about a year with the new cat, who uses the
litter box religiously, we have discovered that the older one has slowly been
peeing over all the boxes, bags etc in our basement and since we banned her
from the couch after she peed all over it numerous times, she will pee on
anything left on the floor. Because she is overweight, she also had problems
with being able to clean herself at one point. I have spent years trying to get
her to lose weight, but I finally found a high quality tinned cat food and
introduced it slowly (she was a dry food addict) and now she eats it happily.
She has lost some weight from eating the new food and now has o problems
with cleaning herself that we can see. My husband is at his wits end and
wants to get rid of her, so I am at the end of my rope now and do not want to
get rid of her, but the problem has to stop. We have tried all the other
strategies ie cleaning out the box, having more then one, using the deterrents, all the normal strategies dont work with her. And as we do lead
busy lives (My husband works full time, teaches music and plays in a band)
and I go to college full time, work part time we are not home enough to catch
her doing anything. To make the problem worse, my husband is exceptionally sensitive to smells. Please help! I have no idea what to do, between thousands
of dollars in vet bills to fix this and every known strategy under the sun I
have run out of ideas.

Answer
Hi Megan,

I'll try to help you. This is a problem that may take a few tries to get rid of. First off, has her UTI come back? Sometimes this can be a chronic condition that comes back. And combined with the licking of her abdomen suggest maybe Cystitis. Have your vet check her for this. Next get a really good enzymatic cat urine remover and use this in the areas where she has urinated. You have to remove temptations to reuse those areas.

If your vet gives her a clean bill of health Ask your vet about giving her this; Chlorpheniramine (Chlortrimeton TM).
It is an antihistamine that will help with the hair pulling and the urinating. It works as an anti anxiety medicine. See about using this,http://www.preciouscat.com/
You can get that at PetSmart.
It can help retrain her to use her litterbox. I hope one of these suggestions help. Let me know if they did. Good luck.

Ciao, Karen