Why is my cat spraying ?

There is nothing more upsetting than a cat who is constantly spraying around the house. Thousands of cat owners all over the world are having this problem. There are , no doubt , many answers to the question "Why is my cat spraying" but here is my particular experience of this. Maybe it will be of help to some of you .. I certainly hope so.

Training a cat is not easy and I have spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out what the problem is and how to deal with it...

It is always lovely to arrive home to be greeted by my 3 Birman cats, they gallop downstairs and run to me with their tails in the air and we spend 5 minutes saying 'Hi' to each other. It really is a great way to arrive home.

What isn,t so great is my customary hunt around the house to see if there have been any 'accidents'. My youngest, Barnie (here he is 'chilling' on my kitchen cabinet) seems to 'forget' where the litter trays are situated and has taken to spraying in different places around my house!! He has a particular fondness for doors or the front of my kitchen appliances !! My sofa also became another target on numerous occasions to the point where I was forced to throw it out and get another one. This spraying problem was driving me crazy !! My only saving grace was the fact that he had been neutered so the smell wasn,t really so bad. A good shampooing of the affected areas was usually enough to sort the problem.

My initial reaction to his spraying was to scold him and on occasion rub his nose in it in order to show him that his spraying was bad. Any of the more knowledgeable cat owners out there will realise that this is not the way to solve this problem. In fact this is a great way to make the spraying even worse !!

Once I had finally realised this I resorted to different tactics to outwit him which involved blocking the areas so that he wasn,t able to reach them ' Ah... that will do it ' I thought ... He knew different of course .. As quickly as I prevented him access to one area he would just choose a new one and spray there instead!! It became a serious challenge and now my house was beginning to resemble an obstacle course !! I had boxes in front of wardrobe doors, a pair of dumbells in front of the door to the spare room (yes.. he then sprayed on these too which made my workout very interesting to say the least!), I placed their beds in a line beside mine as he had decided that the edge of my pine bed was another great 'spraying spot!' I had absorbent kitchen paper folded up and laid in front of my cooker and on and on it went !!

Does any of this 'ring a bell' for any of you? I tried goodness knows how many different methods of stopping this behaviour. Lemon juice was a good one .. I would rub it around a particular area to put him off, my other 2 cats hated the pungent, acidic smell .. Barnie liked it!! I bought a spray from the local vet.. Barnie liked it !! (I,m sure that he hated the smell really but wasn,t going to let me think I had won this battle so easily.)

I've probably gone through more chemicals than Pete Docherty!!

Every so often he would stop spraying in an area for weeks on end. 'Ah great !!' I would say.. To the point where I would begin removing the obstacles in order to make my home look a little more .. well .. like a home I guess !! No sooner had I moved the box or the dumbells he would immediately start spraying again !! I was at my wits end and just couldn,t work out why he was doing this. He really is the most affectionate and friendly little guy you could ever wish to meet and doesn,t have a bad bone in his body ?

But why was he spraying !!!

I showed him this picture of another cat who refused to stop spraying but he wasn,t impressed !! He either knows me too well or he knows that I dont own a gun ?

I would watch him when he did actually use the litter tray (yes there were times when he would forget our competition) He would stand there for a while but then jump back out and disappear into the kitchen to his more favoured spot i.e the fridge door. I would follow him and he would immediately walk straight back out again, I think that he knew that the spraying was wrong but couldn,t help himself. I began to realise that he was nervous about being in the litter trays (they are the kind with the cover over them) but had no idea why ? Then one day it became a little clearer. He climbed in the tray and was followed there by George (here is George looking quite innocent !!) George was sitting and staring at Barnie in a quite threatening manner. It was at this point that I realised that Barnie was being picked on by George because there had been occasions in the past where George would chase him and nip him causing him to yelp .. Finally it was becoming clear why Barnie hated being in the litter trays so much and had begun his spraying. He was trapped with nowhere to run. My attentions were now shifted to making sure that Barnie had plenty of affection and that George was prevented from harassing him so much. Little by little the problem is now disappearing !! Barnie is praised every time he climbs into the litter tray and George has become wise to the fact that if he goes to Barnie while he is in there he will be in trouble! Barricades are slowly coming down and other than the odd 'accident' when he forgets that he is now a 'good boy and doesn,t spray any more' we seem to be approaching normality..

Hey!! .. I never mentioned Oscar .. He is an absolute 'star' and is no trouble whatsoever.. here he is relaxing with the aforementioned George !!

No doubt there are those among you who will be experiencing the same spraying problems which I had. I,m convinced that there is always a very good reason why a cat will behave the way that it does and it is up to us to try and figure out the problem. In my case Barnie was spraying because he was being bullied by George but as I am out at work most of the day I probably missed the signs. I have learned quite a lot about understanding my cats, there are mistakes made along the way of course, my first one being the fact that I scolded Barnie for spraying which just made the poor little guy worse. If I had taken the time to look more closely at the situation I might have seen the cause of the problem more quickly than I did. It saddens me to think that there are many animals which are being mistreated by owners who refuse to try and understand why their particular animal is acting the way that it is. There are many resources which will help people in matters such as these, a couple which I would like to recommend can be found here complete cat training or here complete cat care. I think that many of us are guilty of thinking that a cat thinks like a human and therefore is being what we consider to be bad because the cat is a bad cat. I think I have learned that Barnie in particular was doing what he was because he had a problem and this was his way of dealing with it. I think that we are not quite as smart as we think we are !!!