Expert: Kate Tilmouth - 2/27/2010

Question
Hi Kate

We have a 24 week old male kitten that we got at 12 weeks from the rescue shelter. They have arrange for him to be neutered in early April (8 weeks time) and told us that we CANNOT allow him outside the house before that.

Recently, he's become very boisterous and is tearing around the house up and down the furniture which is normal enough for his age. What is not normal is that in the last 2 weeks is that he has started to urinate on all of the feather duvets in the bedrooms. I arrived home last night to find 3 duvets urinated on- its getting embarrassing bring them to the cleaners as I've been in 7 duvets in the last 2 weeks! He has also started to be a shoulder cat- he wants to sit on shoulders a lot. That’s fine too except he runs up our legs to get there or jumps off worktops to get across. Twice this morning he launched himself at my shoulder and narrowly missed clawing my face. People are getting badly scratched in his attempts to get on to their shoulders. When we try to stop him mid process he only tries harder to get there and the nail digging is worse.

When he's not doing that he's crying at the door to get out to the garden and all the wildlife that he can see out there. We did bring him out into the garden under supervision on two occasions and he ran up the nearest tree which is 60 feet tall; it wasn't much fun getting him down.

He's a really affectionate cat, he has toys and people to play with him and a pretty good life. We’ve had lots of cats before but none have displayed behaviour as erratic as this. Up until recently he was perfectly content and happy but he’s getting visibly worse day by day. We're wondering if it’s because he can't get out into the garden and is annoyed with us or if it’s something else? All our other cats were allowed as kittens out before they were neutered and were far happier in themselves. Can you help?

Many thanks

Clare

Answer
Hi
i would say his behavior is more to do with the fact that he is not neutered yet. I don't understand why the shelter is waiting so long. i have two kittens which are now 10 months old. the RSPCA neutered them when they were four months old.

His behavior is because he packed full of hormones and his desire to get out into the garden is not only to chase the wildlife etc but he must be also becoming increasing driven to mate.

Is there any way you mind somewhere else which will get him neutered sooner? I'm sure this will help him and you so much. he will calm down and not be so aggressive. he will not feel the need to urinate on things as this is classic tom cat scenting behavior. he will be able to go out into the  garden and use up all his energy.

the jumping thing could also be driven by all this energy too and so again I think that once he is neutered and able to go out that this behavior will decrease.

Until then I'm afraid you will have a very frustrated, energetic cat on your cats who will feel the need to scent mark etc. there not a lot that can be done about that until then. Sorry

best wishes kate
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