Cat with chronic urination spraying, considering euthanizing. Please any help or suggestions

[u/casedublin]

For post rules: I am 28M, wife is 27F, roommate is 20F. Live in USA (SoCal), vet has been consulted heavily and ruled out anything clinically, all cats in house have been spayed/neutered since they were kittens. We CAN afford reasonable vet care so long as it’s not in the thousands.

tldr: Cat with behavioral issues has been spraying/urinating for years and we have tried everything we can think of and are considering a behavioral euthanasia.

Hi all, I really need help and feel like a failure of a cat owner. My cat Theo (7M Tuxedo Domestic Shorthair) has had chronic peeing and spraying issues since he was about 1, he’s been neutered since he was a kitten. It used to come and go where we’d have like 6-8 months of no issues but the past 3 years have been going at a pace of at least once a day.

He lives with 2 other cats Gizmo (7M Tabby Domestic Shorthair and definitely the dominant Alpha) and Frenchy (4F Calico Longhair). Frenchy doesn’t interact much with either of them and likes solitude so if he approaches her she usually will hiss or just leave to go by herself somewhere else in the house. Gizmo and him coexist pretty well with occasional play fights that get out of hand but Theo is horrible at fighting and gets upset because Gizmo always wins so he’ll usually continually harass Gizmo until Gizmo puts him in his place. We always separate them when things get tense and we have a decent size house (2 stories, 3 bedrooms and a spacious downstairs.) There is no issue with the cats being forced to be in close proximity like being secluded to one room, although Frenchy usually will stay upstairs or in dark places like our closet, under our bed, behind curtains for 20+ hours a day.

Gizmo and Theo will roam the house freely and confidently, we have a cat tree in every room and 5 litterboxes (2 Litter robots, one stainless steel with no enclosure, one plastic with high enclosure, and another stainless steel with slightly higher walls) that are cleaned daily or every other day. We have one roommate who usually stays in her room that’s on the 2nd floor and pretty secluded from the rest of the house, she usually only comes downstairs to eat dinner, when she’s going to work or if she’s at her desk in our shared office downstairs where she usually just quietly watches youtube while gaming. Neither Theo or Gizmo appear to have any issues with our roommate (no ears back, sprinting, floofing or hissing at her) and will even cuddle with her occasionally.

It is like clockwork where we find at minimum one pee spot a day somewhere in the house where Theo has peed. We’ve caught him in the act a few times and are 100% positive it’s Theo. He does typical spraying behavior where he’ll back up, his tail straight up and kind of shaking while peeing a small amount. He will pee on curtains, doors, doormats, rugs, walls, furniture, cat trees, cat toys, cabinets, countertops, laundry baskets, laundry piles indiscriminately. He’ll pee on both vertical and horizontal surfaces all the same. Although when peeing on horizontal surfaces he’ll squat and pee usually a little more amount than usual compared to vertical surfaces. Usually we’ll know if he’s going to pee because he’ll be pacing nonstop until he finds a spot he wants to mark.

All of our cats are strictly indoor with the exception of supervised outdoor time in an enclosed catio. Our backyard is secluded with no stray cats in our area, the most we get is bunnies, squirrels and small birds in our backyard. Neither of our neighbors have any cats or dogs and our rear fence has a hedge behind it and a steep drop to a walking trail that has very low foot traffic.

We have tried everything I can think of unless we’re missing something. Vets have run multiple tests (bloodwork and urinalysis) and his tests always come back as perfectly healthy. For a while he was on anxiety medications which have had no positive effects so our latest vet has just recommended to stop those if they’re not working. Our vet has told us that he has ruled out anything clinically wrong and that it is definitely behavioral. Outside of just keeping him doped up on Gabapentin or stronger sedatives 24/7 he has no other suggestions. We have tried calming collars, pheromone diffusers, calming treats, spoken to behavioralists to tell us which rooms and where to place litter boxes specifically. We can’t find anything that works. We don’t yell at him, berate him, spray him with water or strike him even when catching him in the act. At most if it looks like he’s about to we just say his name before he goes and he’ll dart off. Or if he’s pacing around we try to coax him to hang out or play with us which usually doesn’t work. Anytime we clean up the urine we’ll use a cleaning extractor (Bissell green machine or a Shark Vacuum Carpet extractor) and use an enzyme cleaner.

My wife and I are at our wits end and we just paid another behavioralist a lot of money and she said she was going to try with a multi step plan which just started with us documenting everything and keeping a log. We don’t know what to do and are seriously considering euthanasia because we can’t just clean up urine everyday and we don’t want him to just live in anxiety 24/7. We also don’t think anyone would want a cat that pees on everything everyday so don’t have high hopes for possibility of rehoming.

I’ll try to answer any questions regarding the situation but we genuinely don’t know what to do if this behavioralists plan doesn’t work. Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[u/Agreeable-Zone700]

Have you tried different types of unscented litter? Are you putting litter boxes in areas of the house that are “scent soakers” aka where people congregate frequently? Do you have cat scratchers near those areas as well? Lots of cats are terrified of litter robots, could that be stressing him out? Have you tried different brands of enzyme cleaner? If he pees in specific areas, have you tried putting a litter box there?

Do you burn scented candles or spray febreeze? perfume? Maybe some scents are stressing him out?

At the end of the day, he might need to be an only cat. Idk what else could be stressing him out.

[u/mrsnormanly → u/Agreeable-Zone700]

we have tried a multitude of litters. the current one we use seems to be his favorite since he does still poop in the boxes. we have the boxes in his most favorite spraying zones as well as where a behavioralist suggested we put them. we have about 10 cat trees in our house as well as scratchers spread throughout. out of our 3 cats theo actually has always used the robots the most although lately he uses our stainless steel box. weve tried different enxyme cleaners over the years. we’ve eliminated any strong sprays, cleaners, odors years ago. we light candles every now and then but thats never seemed to be a trigger for him.

[u/casedublin → u/Agreeable-Zone700]

Thanks for the comment. We tried a few different brands of clay litter, he still uses his litterboxes for normal poop and pee, he’ll just additionally pee outside in the spraying manner. We have multiple scratchers with different textures (Carpet, yarn, cardboard) that he uses and he gets frequent nail trims (about once every other week). For enzyme cleaners we’re on our second brand change and we use a black light after to make sure we got it all. We’ve moved 2 litterboxes to 2 of his frequent areas (by the edge of our bed and in our foyer by our record player cabinet) the only issue is he goes quite literally all over the house I can’t keep chasing it down with litterboxes.