Getting Tired Of My House Smelling Like Vinegar

JDW

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I’m about to skin both my cats alive! Ever since my older cat’s littermate sister passed, she pees only on the plastic mat I keep under the litter box. An acquaintance surrendered her male cat to me. At the time he was just over a year old. I immediately took him to be neutered. He pees on the laundry! Clean laundry. Dirty laundry. Doesn’t matter! I have two litter boxes in the house. I clean the pee up with vinegar or wash my clothes with vinegar to cut the smell. I love my babies to death, but something has gotta give.
 

5starcathotel

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I certainly get the frustration! But I think there is some crucial detail missing here.

What is the relationship between your cats? Are they friendly with each other, or do they fight/avoid each other? Are both litter boxes the same style? What kind of litter do you use (crystals or sand?), and are they covered or uncovered? How long have you had the male?

This is mostly a guess at this point, but I feel like your girl wants to use the litter box, but is afraid of it for some reason. And the male is feeling quite insecure about his home and territory. If they are not getting along, both behaviors would make sense.
 

MeganLLB

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Yes you nees an enzymatic cleaner also in addition to that Odoban smells great and you can add it to your laundry and it gets rid of the smell (for the humans but cats can still smell it)
 

dixielittle

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I’m about to skin both my cats alive! Ever since my older cat’s littermate sister passed, she pees only on the plastic mat I keep under the litter box. An acquaintance surrendered her male cat to me. At the time he was just over a year old. I immediately took him to be neutered. He pees on the laundry! Clean laundry. Dirty laundry. Doesn’t matter! I have two litter boxes in the house. I clean the pee up with vinegar or wash my clothes with vinegar to cut the smell. I love my babies to death, but something has gotta give.
You can mix the vinegar to cut the smell and still have the same effectiveness.
 

Alldara

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There's some excellent advice here: Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease (FLUTD) | International Cat Care

IT sounds like the male cat has FLUTD, which is stress based. Seems logical as he was gifted away. He doesn't need to ever have an infection to have FLUTD as stress can cause inflammation and pain.

Some things that could help us brainstorm with you:
- how many litters do you have?
- how many floors of home do you have?
- what type of box(es) are they?
- what type of litter?
- Has your older cat been treated for arthritis?
- have you tried a pee pad outside the litter instead?
 

Mac and Cats

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For removing urine smell, I HIGHLY recommend this cleaner. I had two cats that were spraying EVERYWHERE and I was losing my damn mind. I had pee pads taped all over the walls. Then our third cat started "scare peeing" because she hated one of the spraying cats so much. Said offender would come around the corner and surprise her and she would "scare pee" on the floor on accident. So, at one point, I had 3 cats peeing in inappropriate places. I swear to you that this stuff works. I am not affiliated with this company at all and receive nothing in return for recommending it. If the urine is on carpet, you may have to put gloves on and massage the cleaner into the carpet. It may take 2 or 3 applications for the cats to stop smelling it. I wasn't able to smell it after one treatment on carpet, but the cats would stop and smell the area. So, I did a couple more treatments and steam cleaned the area after. After that, the cats no longer stopped to smell the area.

Now on to the spraying issue. I tried EVERYTHING to get this spraying to stop. Adding more boxes, adding motion lights so they could see in the boxes at night, adding more boxes to different locations, different litter, pheromones, etc. Nothing worked. Finally, after finding no medical issue for it and us discussing that nothing I was trying was working, the vet suggested I try putting the two sprayers on Prozac. The second we put them both on it, they stopped spraying. It was like a miracle. I would say if everything checks out at the vet and you have eliminated all other options, it's worth trying.

Since then, one of our sprayers has passed from an unrelated issue. We are now currently weening the second sprayer off of the Prozac (he's been on it about a year and a half). So far, he has not had any spraying issues. Some people try to ween their cats off of it much sooner than we did and don't have issues. Our vet said that if he does start spraying again, we can always resume the Prozac.

I will say, if you do end up buying the cleaner, make sure you wear gloves if you are going to have any skin come into contact with it. It isn't dangerous, but it does cause a white film to develop on my skin and it can feel a little tingly if you don't wash it off right away.

Hopefully, this is helpful to you. Good luck!
 

NekoM

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Your Babies are not happy, they’re both communicating the same message.
 
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