Outside the Box
I just read a post in 'Boing Boing', one of my favorite blogs about making one's urine turn blue. Too kookie for me but it got me thinking about a trick one can use to ferret out which cat is spraying or urinating in the wrong place.
Outside the box is a real problem in multi cat households. Many times the true offender is stealthy and this makes treatment difficult at best. Often the cat which the owner THINKS is urinating outside the litterbox is either the WRONG cat or NOT the ONLY ONE!
here's how you can find out WHO and WHERE such 'inappropriate elimination' occurs. There is a special stain called fluorescein used by ophthalmologists to check eyes for corneal damage. If you stuff several of these stain strips inside a gelatin capsule and feed it to a cat it will cause the cat's urine to glow under a black light. By performing this test one cat at a time the evidence can be seen glowing when viewed with a black light at night!
Multi cat household often have at least one cat 'marking' inside the house or urinating outside the litterbox. Statistically in a household with ten cats the chances of at least one cat not using a litterbox are 100%!
Anyway, you can play 'CSI, the home game' with this test.
oohhh, here's another hard to swallow factoid; the animal behaviorists at Cornell Veterinary College report households should have one MORE litterbox than the total number of cats!
hmm, that means a lotta litter.
Food for thought. I think we have a data sheet posted on the website about reasons for 'inappropriate elimination' and 'territorial marking'. Much more details therewithin.
Remember that urine marking is NORMAL for cats that live outside. Inside cats usually do not mark unless they are ill or socially stressed. It is one of the few ways cats have of communicating with us insensitive humans.
happy holidays!
Outside the box is a real problem in multi cat households. Many times the true offender is stealthy and this makes treatment difficult at best. Often the cat which the owner THINKS is urinating outside the litterbox is either the WRONG cat or NOT the ONLY ONE!
here's how you can find out WHO and WHERE such 'inappropriate elimination' occurs. There is a special stain called fluorescein used by ophthalmologists to check eyes for corneal damage. If you stuff several of these stain strips inside a gelatin capsule and feed it to a cat it will cause the cat's urine to glow under a black light. By performing this test one cat at a time the evidence can be seen glowing when viewed with a black light at night!
Multi cat household often have at least one cat 'marking' inside the house or urinating outside the litterbox. Statistically in a household with ten cats the chances of at least one cat not using a litterbox are 100%!
Anyway, you can play 'CSI, the home game' with this test.
oohhh, here's another hard to swallow factoid; the animal behaviorists at Cornell Veterinary College report households should have one MORE litterbox than the total number of cats!
hmm, that means a lotta litter.
Food for thought. I think we have a data sheet posted on the website about reasons for 'inappropriate elimination' and 'territorial marking'. Much more details therewithin.
Remember that urine marking is NORMAL for cats that live outside. Inside cats usually do not mark unless they are ill or socially stressed. It is one of the few ways cats have of communicating with us insensitive humans.
happy holidays!
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