Expert: Tina - 1/21/2007

Question
Tina,
I just bought a new sofa replacing an old worn out couch and the cat is urinating on it when I am not watching. Now the couch smells, its not even paid for yet, and I am ready to kill the cat.
What can I do to deodorize the couch and what can be done to keep the cat off the couch?
Jim  

Answer
Hi Jim,

First of all, cats urinate outside the box almost always for medical reasons. Please take your cat to the vet and have her urine tested for crystals or bladder infection - these are very common in cats. Here is an article with help on the issue:

http://catnet.stanford.edu/articles/infosheet_litterbox.pdf

To remove the smell from your sofa, get yourself some Nature's Miracle - it is sold at pet stores. Pour it all over the affected areas (if you can't tell where the urine was, shine a black light on the sofa at night and the cat urine will glow) soak the affected areas well and leave to dry slowly. When dry the smell will be gone, Nature's Miracle is an enzyme that breaks down the proteins in cat urine that smell. It works really well, I had a foster cat pee on my futon once and used this stuff - I couldn't smell anything once it was cleaned.

It's also possible that the new sofa has some kind of strange smell that smells like cat urine to your cat - some foams etc give off gasses that attract cats to urinate on them.

You can also try using the Feliway spray. Feliway helps eliminate iinapproriate urination in cats, it mimics relaxing pheromones that cats exude from their cheek glands. Spraying the sofa (after cleaning and drying) with Feliway will prevent your cat from urinating on it again. It is not detectable by humans at all (the spray smells like rubbing alcohol when you first use it, but that quickly evaporates). It is sold in most pet stores and online.

Finally, if you wish to train your cat to stay off the sofa, the best way is to use a device that will scare her off even when you are not there. I recommend "SSSCAT", which is a motion-triggered compressed air device, it makes a hissing noise and blows air on the cat when she jumps on the sofa. Place it there and turn it on when you are not around. Here it is:

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=10802&Ntt=ssscat&N...

If that link doesn't work go to www.drsfostersmith,com and search on "ssscat".

Good luck!