Boy-Cat keeps Spraying
Aug 27th, 2009 by elle
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve two cats. One male, nearly four, and one female, nearly nine. The boy-cat has recently developed a rather annoying habit.
I’ll preface the rest of my post by explaining that I like my anonymity here on the interwebs, and I don’t want to disrespect my kitties by giving their identities on here either. So my fiancé and I remain anonymous, and so does our two little fur-babies.
Okay back on track. The boy-cat has a nervous disposition. When someone knocks on the door, he hides. If we have visitors in the house, he hides under our bed, wedged in between the leg of the bed and the wall the bed is pushed up against. I don’t know how he fits himself in there, but if we don’t let him into our bedroom when we have guests, he meows and pipes and gets very upset. I say pipes because he has underdeveloped vocal chords, causing him to have the voice of a kitten. He’s also very affectionate, and likes to rub his face against mine and my fiancé’s. He’s a lovely cat, but lately he has picked up an extremely undesirable habit…
He’s started spraying, marking, whatever you want to call it, he’s doing it… everywhere. He will walk up to something, point his rear end at it, hold his tail straight up in the air, and then sort of… quiver. Then, depending on the surface, you will hear a few droplets hitting the ground. The first time I head him do this I was so disgusting, I couldn’t believe he just started doing this all of a sudden.
And it gets worse, he’s done it on my favourite enviro shopping bag twice, and a heap of other things too. I’ve been able to wash those things, but the other night, I was sitting on the floor, sitting at the coffee table, and I knew he was around. That’s fine, but then I felt a hot, wet, liquid on my leg. Yep, he’s sprayed on my leg. I was so revolted, I tore into the bathroom, stuck those clothes into the washing machine, and showered. For a long time. With hot, hot water. And lots of soap.
Well I have no idea what to do about his spraying, so I’m just trying to keep everything that can be damaged by it away from him. Today’s knitting pattern has to be for cats, and in this case, a cat toy from Knitty, though I don’t use catnip because I don’t like drugging my cats unless it’s for their own good.