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Hello everyone! This is my first time on this forum, and I was so happy to find this thread. I have a pretty complicated situation going on in my household, and I’m so sorry for how long I’m sure this post will be! There are a lot of cats involved, so I’ve provided a photographic cast of characters that I hope will help. I’m probably going to give way too much information… but I think that the clues to our household issues lie somewhere in the saga of our cat expansion over the last year, so I’m going to try to paint a rough picture of how everything started for us. (Apologies in advance! I was an English major and keeping stories short is really hard!)
My husband and I moved into our first home last year, with one cat and two aging parents. (According to most, it’s the moving my parents in with us that should have caused all of our problems, not the cats. But the parents are great, and at least they don’t pee everywhere. xD) We were happy with our single 2 year old cat, Sylvanas—Sylvie to her friends. We discovered a few weeks later that there was a beautiful neighborhood stray living in our backyard, and long story short, we fed her til she loved us so much she started bringing us kittens. The first set of kittens that Morrigan brought us were older, and quite feral. I spent the whole summer taming them, and late last year Mama Morrigan brought us a second litter when they were still young enough to be totally socialized. At this point we brought in the two ex-feral kittens and had them fixed. We named them Arthas and Liara, and they have become an inseparable pair of the snuggliest, sweetest cats I’ve ever had. Of course, there was adjustment when it came to only-child Sylvie learning to share, but the conflicts were normal, and the adjustment went about as smoothly as cats can go. Now the three of them are great friends and play and sleep together.
At this point we tried desperately to find homes for the new kittens while they were still fluffy and blue-eyed, but we had no success. My mom fell in love with little Solas, and we brought him and his sister Tali in when they were about 8 weeks old. They went into quarantine and we kept trying to find a home for Tali, but had absolutely no luck. We had always known that we wanted to bring in Morrigan, and so we finally got her fixed and through her recovery period. At this point in the process we had at least some cats separated at all times, and were reeling from having become a 6 cat household in a few short months. But we were falling in love with each and every one of them, and the constant string of setup visits started coming to an end.
So this is about where real problems started to occur. For the first time we now had all of the cats loose in the house, and integration began. In what I will now affectionately term PHASE ONE, all cats/kittens were spayed/neutered except for the littlest girl, Tali. There were the usual adjustment kerfuffles and spats, but nothing out of the ordinary, and all in all they seemed pretty happy and exploratory. This brief period of bliss lasted for about 3-4 weeks, and then we found our first pee spot in my mother’s bedroom. At the same time we realized that Tali was around 3-4 months old and going into her first heat, and so we assumed that the urination was part of that, as the bedroom where she peed was one of the rooms she was most comfortable in. We quarantined her upstairs with Mama Morrigan for company, and got her spayed. She had some complications with the spay and had to be separated for longer than usual, and she and Morrigan were separated from the other cats for a little over a month. Sometimes we would let Tali’s brother Solas up there to play with them too. He was the only cat playing for both teams.
In the downstairs, the four remaining cats were blending fairly well… The middle child, Liara, was fast becoming queen of the household and making sure everyone knew it. No one really minded, however. Then Solas hit his growth spurt, and became the crazy, floppy, wild monster of a teenage boy-kitten that I’m sure we all know and love so well. He wanted to be the new lord of the manor, and started harassing Liara every chance he got. He would trap her in corners, chase her, etc. But still, NO PEE.
When we brought Tali and Morrigan out of their extended quarantine that second time, we went into full house re-integration PHASE TWO. But something was different. Every time Liara saw Tali she grew laser focused, and chased her horribly. This is not the usual integration conflict I am used to, it seemed much more vicious and targeted. She did the same to Morrigan to some extent, but not so much. Tali is a shy, delicate, and tiny cat, and she began to hide in corners and slink around the edges of rooms. Liara could be perfectly happy getting snuggles in a lap, and then fly off the handle when Tali entered a room. Tali would see her and freeze, petrified, then bolt which of course only made Liara chase after her. Liara also started being a little more high strung in general, as though she was just on edge most of the time, and taking it out on Tali. All the while, Solas continued to harrass Liara, albeit only sporadically. We hoped time would help, and we let it go for about 3 weeks, but suddenly the pee was back. It started in the same place, mother’s bedroom. But then it spread to the upstairs couches and pillows as well. We couldn’t see who was doing it, but we assumed Tali, as we had assumed she was the first to pee pre-spay.
We tried isolating Liara in my husband and my bedroom, as she sleeps in there every night and it is a safe place for her. We wanted Tali and Morrigan to at least begin to integrate with the other cats. But the problem didn’t go away, and we think Liara peed in our room for the first time as well. Again, no cat had been witnessed in the act, and all was assumption. Stressed by the issue, we put Morrigan and Tali BACK upstairs into quarantine, once again creating a two colony home. The pee issue stopped completely. At this point we bought Feliway plugins for the home, and decided to give them a few weeks to disperse before trying again. Things seemed to pretty much go back to normal. Tali and Morrigan were happy upstairs, no pee. The A Team and Solas seemed happy downstairs, minus Solas being an adolescent douche at times.
We started running a shift system—Sylvie, Liara, and Arthas went into our room with us at night, Morrigan and Tali were let loose in the house to play with Solas. In the morning they practically put themselves back upstairs for the day, and we let the other three back out again. No issues, no pee. The scents of the other cats didn’t really seem to phase anyone. So we decided to try one last time, with the Feliway having been in place at this point for about a month. PHASE THREE!!! Instant hate from Liara towards Tali. It was heartbreaking to see our tiny baby hiding, skulking, barely sleeping. Liara was on edge constantly, and took it out on Morrigan when she couldn’t find Tali. The others don’t care at all, Sylvie is pretty content, though she sometimes chases Morrigan if Liara is chasing, I think Sylvie thinks she wants to play her friend’s game too. Arthas loves everybody and wants to be everybody’s friend, he’s a fat orange snugglebutt. Solas equally loves and harasses everybody playfully, but he does still play dominance games with Liara.
It only took about 3 days of phase three before the pee started again. In mother’s bedroom, upstairs, and for the first time it spread to several soft things in the living room. We actually observed Liara both horizontally mark as well as pee in there, but we don’t know that it was just her all along, we still feel Tali could have been a culprit. There are so many factors, and so many variables, that we don’t know what to try next. As of yesterday, Tali and Morrigan are isolated upstairs, yet again, and we hope that the pee stops as well. We are so afraid of it getting worse, or spreading.
A few notes, if it helps. None of the cats have EVER shown aggression towards any of us throughout this process. We have seen all of them quite happily use the litterboxes in the house, no one avoids them. We have a mix of covered and uncovered litterboxes. We have three feeding stations, one upstairs, one in our bedroom, and one in the main room. We have two clearly delineated cat tribes, and one floater-Solas. We have cat trees and very high places for them, as well as lots of toys.
So far, getting rid of any of them is an absolute last resort. We know we are at critical mass, and 6 cats is far too much for one house, but we love them, and we want to give them wonderful happy lives. If having a divided house forever is the only solution, we will make a two-shift house work, but we would much rather get to the point where we can integrate them without a pee-splosion occurring in the meantime. I look back, and can’t even believe that in phase one, they actually seemed to all be getting along… where did we go wrong?
Whew! I know that’s way too much to read, and for anyone who stuck it out, thank you so much! Any advice or insight is greatly appreciated!
The problem is that we really can't deal with the urination for 6 months to a year. My Mother has some very old and wonderful furniture in the home that has so far avoided incident, but fear of it becoming involved is causing anxiety and panic for all.
