Two upset cats with litter box issues. Drug suggestions?

I'm visiting my mom in CA for a couple of weeks. Since my dad died, my son and his gf have moved in to take care of mom. They also brought two young cats with them. My mom's two cats have been through a lot what with my father dying (one cat was his) the extra people around and now two more people and two young cats. Urinating outside the litter box has become a HUGE problem. They've tried everything. We've taken to locking them in the laundry room overnight so at least the pee isn't on the couches. But sometimes they knock over the laundry baskets, kick cat sand into them and then pee in and under them, Ewwww!

So, now it's drug time, which may help relax them and help them adjust to their new situation. Has anyone had luck with something? What type of drug should we stay away from? I believe they are thinking sedatives. We have to find something that will work soon! gf has had it with pee. VET APPT IS ON TUE.

 

Can't help with the drug suggestions, sorry. For urine, however --

To clean urine from the floor, splash the urine with some white vinegar and swish it around; that'll get rid of the smell and help stop the urine from soaking through to the underfloor layer. If the urine has been there for a while, you can let the vinegar sit for a few minutes, then mop it up with a towel. Don't forget to check the underside of the litterbox, etc, for any urine that may be there as well.

To clean the towels and any laundry that may have urine on it, just throw it in the regular laundry and add a cup of white vinegar to whatever detergent you normally use. That'll get rid of the smell there, as well. For thicker items (pillows, thick blankets, etc), you may want to add two cups of vinegar to the laundry.

You can find white vinegar in gallon jugs in some stores; in my area, prices range from 1.89 to 3.29, so it can pay to shop around. You can also use a 50-50 mix of white vinegar and water for couches and carpets, or you can get one of the enzymatic cleaners from a pet store.

HTH --

Jean and her Gwyn

 

Ahhh, the dreaded peeing outside of the litter box issue! Yep, been there myself...well, not me personally, but my civvie Ralph. Poor little fella had it rough....I moved from the apartment he grew up in (he was 6 years old when I moved) into our own house. A few weeks later my mom moved in with us and then two weeks later his bestest friend in the whole wide world, Kodi, my akita, who Ralph absolutely loved (used to suckle on him when Ralph was a kitty and Ralph just cleaned him all the time), passed. Shortly after that my sister and her three children ended up moving in with us...Let me tell you...that poor kitty was at his wits end. He started to pee outside of his box and before I realized it, the urine had soaked down through the hard wood. I cleaned and cleaned the carpet and the floor, dried everything up and put plastic, paper, you name it, to help catch any pee...unfortunately, nothing helped.
Vet visits did not show anything physically wrong with him, so decided it had to be emotional. Vet gave him a script for Buspar. We used it for three months and he is now going in the box. Of course, pulling up the carpet and re-doing the hard wood floor got the urine smell out and may attribute to this, but I honestly believe that the buspar helped a lot.

Lynda (& Scruffy) had one of her kitties put on valium or prozac...one of the two. I'll send her a pm and see if she will drop you a line.

Good luck and I hope I helped a little.

 

You can try meds but if this started because of the other cats, they clearly are saying they dont want them there and there are too many cats. We have used prozac at the shelter on chronic litterbox problem kitties but their issues were territorial and happened all the time, not just because a situation existed that they didnt like.

Were double the number of litterboxes added plus one extra? Getting scooped 2x as much? Oh, and the cats that get locked up should be your brothers and girlfriends cats, not your moms cats. How would you like to get booted out of your home? Of course they are going to act up. When they come out of the laundry room, the whole place smells like the "invader" kitties and they are going to spray/urinate to say, hey this is MINE what are you doing here?. Perhaps confining the newcomers and doing a slower intro would help?

 

that's what i'd try first: adding more litter boxes.
sorry about your dad, melinda.

 

I'm sorry about this Melinda...

Meanwhile, more littler boxes, separate the cats, add in several feliway diffusers (google feliway) and see how that works....

Jen