Yesterday, as I looked around at my co-workers who are all sick, I thought I feel great; I never get sick. Last night and today I am feeling a bit rough. I hope I won’t get sick, but I can feel my body beginning to ache and complain. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I am pretty sure we have passed the phase of JD urinating all over our apartment.

The reason JD (3 year old male/neutered) was peeing was simple—he was stressed out. Originally, just adding Elly (our now 10 month old female kitten) to the mix caused him a great deal of stress and he peed a few times. When your cat is stressed out and peeing/marking your house the solution is simple—eliminate the point of stress. Unfortunately, eliminating Elly was not really an option.

Part of JD’s problem is that he is highly dominant and it was suggested to us by our Vet that another younger cat might bring out his paternal side. It did not (not really). Leah and I got proactive to attempt to relieve some of the tension in the apartment and this worked for a while, until Elly went into heat. Then JD turned into a sprinkler system. Last time I posted about JD he peed four times in the matter of a couple hours.

So what did we do?

1. Took JD to the vet to see if it was a medical problem (urinary infection, etc). It wasn’t but that seemed to scare him straight(er).
2. Elly got spayed.
3. Bought a pheromone plugin (like a Glade plugin) to calm the cats down.
4. Bought a pheromone spray to target the repeat areas that he peed and sprayed them daily.
5. Bought two kitty litters and scooped/changed them regularly
6. Loved him (JD).

Getting Elly spayed was huge. But both Leah and I would attribute our success in curbing JD’s habit to the pheromone. We had the plugin by itself originally and it was more or less just a bubblegum fix. However, paired with a spray that we could target the specific areas really helped. Finally I really do think that, even though JD would never admit to wanting love, giving him positive reinforcement and being gentle with him (even when we wanted to throttle him) actually did help. I think we likely could have reached similar results if we hadn’t, but we likely would have done more psychological damage and alienated him from us. It actually may have been more important to us to continue to be affectionate with him so that we would continue to work for a successful resolution.

Who wants to put money down on the fact that I will come home tonight to cat pee? I hope not.