War

[ladyofastolat]

War has been declared. We have been noticing a growing catty smell in the hallway. Eventually, we thought to turn over the mat in the hall, and the pale fabric on its underside clearly showed the marks of many and repeated puddles. Today, we got a new mat, and also got bottles of things with gratifyingly pugnacious names, along the lines of "Get off and stay off!" or "Oi! Cat! Get off my land!" The hall has been thoroughly anointed with these things. One cat has gone outside, looking very sulky; the other is cowering under the spare bed, glowering. I'll win this battle.

Comments

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a rubber mat by any chance?

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Um... I don't know. We've thrown it out now. It looked like a normal carpet-like thing on the top, but the underneath was something that could have been rubber, or could have been plastic.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Rubber can smell a bit like cat pee to a cat, and they will spray to cover the strange smell with their own. As we found out with our airbeds ;-((

[(Anonymous)]

Hm, as a non-cat person my observation is that cats do just pong. The people who had our house before us had cats (catflap in the back door etc) and the kitchen continued to smell unedifyingly of cat pee for what felt like several months after we'd moved in. (Now long gone, thank goodness). But good luck with it! - Neuromancer

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... and as a long-time cat owner, my observation is that properly kept healthy cats rarely pong.

Even if a cat is urinating in the house, the cat himself should not smell bad: if he does, he is almost certainly ill.

Usually, cats don't want to urinate in the house, and are often taught housetraining by their parents. The only one we had real difficulty with was hand-raised.

I don't think our house with its 4 cat residents smells of urine, nor that Ladyofastolat's house does - though of course it is possible that as I have always lived with cats, my sensitivity to the odour is decreased. (I don't think it is, I think if anything, it's hypersensitive!)

Like people, if cats suddenly change their behaviour, it is usually for a reason. It could be that there is a rubbery smell, as noted by helfaed, which is the cat equivalent of installing a lavatory and WC sign, but not connecting it to the sewer. Or it could be that there is some reason that the cats suddenly don't want to go outside: perhaps bullying by other cats.

It could even be that they don't like the weather: that one is easy to solve: you just make sure that at regular intervals you pop the cat out of a door or window that is some distance from the cat door. It's the same as puppy housetraining: if the dog will not ask to go out, you just need to keep making sure he gets regular 'opportunities'.

Or it might be a sign that one of the cats is not well or that they are stressed for some other reason. The difficulty in a multi-cat household is that it can be hard to tell which one: but once you've worked that out, it makes it much easier to determine why it is happening and stop it.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tips. I've certainly never noticed a catty smell in your house!

What seems to have happened with my cats is that one of them (Precious) started going inside every few days, just next to the front door. I saw her going outside at other times, so it's not as if she's scared of going out. She started doing it at about the time we found a neighbour's cat inside a few times, so perhaps this cat sprayed inside, so Precious was marking her territory. I thought I'd managed to stop her doing this, by covering up the patch, and sprinkling it with Olbas oil. However, I hadn't realised that she'd just moved a few feet to the right and was now going on the mat. I caught Honey doing it a few days ago, too, so I suspect she's trying to assert her territory, and cover Precious' smell with her own.

I've not found any puddles inside since we got a new cat, and anointed it with the strong smelly stuff. Though maybe they've just started to go somewhere else, and I've just not found it yet...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That does sound like the likely cause. Even if the neighbour cat didn't actually spray inside, the smell of her inside Precious's house in itself could have worried her enough that she felt she needed to put up a big sign saying: "THIS HOUSE BELONG PRECIOUS!"

Then Honey needed to add "AND HONEY TOO!!"

With a bit of luck, you have now taken down their sign and put up an even bigger sign saying "THIS HOUSE BELONG LADYOFASTOLAT!!!!!!!" and thereby fixed the problem.

It's annoying that it's really easy to remove animal graffiti so that we can't detect it was ever there, but of course their ability to detect the smell is so much better than ours that they can go on responding to it for some time.

After Java died we had some political issues here* that ended up with Mollydog's beloved beanbag having to be chucked out. I washed the dratted thing in bio washing liquid 3 times, but they could still tell. I don't know why a row between Footie and Henning ended up targetting poor old Mollydog, but I guess there is cat logic in there somewhere.

*Henning, the big bully.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

... then I'll just have to hope that Pellinor doesn't feel compelled to put up an even bigger sign saying, "AND KING PELLINOR TOO!"

(Though judging from the smell of his LARPing boots, maybe he already has)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

since we got a new cat, and anointed it with the strong smelly stuff

For "cat" read "mat". Oops.

[chainmailmaiden]

Orange essential oil is also not supposed to be liked by cats and may smell nicer to your noses than some of the bottles of stuff you can get from pet shops. (Though it would stain light things like carpet yellowy orange)

I dread what will happen when we get cats, our house stank of cats and dogs for ages after we moved in and while I think I've finally got rid of the smell, part of me worries that either I've just stopped noticing it or I've not removed it from a cat's point of view.