Cat behaviour consults

This is a medical question until proven otherwise, and that is not a formality. Feline idiopathic cystitis is one of the most common findings in a younger cat who suddenly starts urinating in the wrong place, and it is a stress-linked bladder disease, which makes it medical and behavioural at the same time. Bladder stones, urinary tract infection, chronic kidney disease and diabetes all increase urine volume or urgency. Degenerative joint disease is very common in older cats and badly under-diagnosed, because cats do not limp the way dogs do. A sore cat simply cannot climb into a high-sided tray or get down the stairs to the laundry in time.

So urine and blood testing come before any conclusion about the tray itself. It changes the answer often enough that skipping it is not defensible, and if a cat is in pain when they urinate, they will start avoiding the place where it hurt, which is the tray. Treat the cystitis and leave the learned tray aversion untreated and the problem continues after the cat is well.

Then comes the tray audit, which is unglamorous and frequently the whole fix. Number of trays, where they are, what is in them, how big they are and how they are cleaned. In a multi-cat house, tray avoidance is very often social: one cat sits in a doorway and the other stops going down the hall, and from your point of view nothing at all has happened.

Cleaning matters too. Use an enzymatic cleaner, never an ammonia-based product, because ammonia smells like urine to a cat and marks the spot as an approved toilet.

Spraying is communication, not toileting, and separating them is the first thing we do because the treatments have almost nothing in common. A cat who squats and empties their bladder on a horizontal surface has a toileting problem. A cat who stands and marks a vertical surface while still using the tray is telling somebody something.

Usually the message is about territory feeling unsafe or contested. The common triggers are a cat outside the window, a new cat in the neighbourhood, a house move, new furniture or new belongings carrying unfamiliar scent, renovation, a new person or baby in the house, and conflict with a cat already living inside. Desexing status is relevant, but plenty of desexed cats spray, so it is never the whole explanation.

That means the fix is often not aimed at your cat at all. Where an outdoor cat is the trigger, the work is environmental: blocking sightlines at ground level, keeping the resident cat away from the windows the intruder passes, removing whatever is drawing that cat to your property. Indoors, the plan covers how food, water, trays, resting spots and vertical routes are distributed so no cat can control access, plus a proper cleaning protocol and, where the anxiety is generalised rather than situational, medication.

Cats are not obligately social animals. They form preferred associates by choice, and 2 cats who are not bonded are not failing at friendship, they are being asked to share a territory. For a lot of households, calm coexistence is the correct goal and mutual grooming is not. Owners are often told their cats will work it out. Some do. Some spend years not working it out, very quietly.

The consult maps the house, because that is where the answer usually is. Where each cat sleeps, eats, drinks and toilets, which routes they use, and where the pinch points are: corridors, stairs, a cat flap, the doorway into the kitchen. A cat who blocks a corridor without ever raising a paw causes more chronic stress than a pair who occasionally have a scrap. Vertical space is territory in cat terms, and most houses are badly under-supplied with it.

From there the plan separates resources so no individual can control access to all of any one type, adds routes and elevated resting places, and where a relationship has genuinely broken down, runs a structured reintroduction in stages over weeks using barriers, scent exchange and then controlled visual access. Rushing that stage is the single most common reason a reintroduction fails.

Redirected aggression is worth naming separately, because it looks identical and is not. A cat sees an intruder through the window, cannot reach it, and attacks the nearest housemate. One incident can poison a relationship that was fine the day before. It needs its own plan, and diagnosing it as general dislike wastes months.

Hiding is a coping strategy, not a fault. A cat with a good hiding place is a cat who is managing the situation successfully. What concerns us is the cat who has nowhere safe to go, the cat whose hiding has started to expand into normal life, or the cat who is hiding and also eating less, grooming less or toileting differently.

That last combination is a medical flag first and a behaviour question second. Cats hide when they feel unwell, and it is frequently the only sign an owner gets. New hiding in a cat who used to be sociable earns a physical examination and usually bloods, not a behaviour plan.

For genuine visitor fear, the reframe matters: your cat does not need to meet your guests. The best outcome for most cats is not a sociable cat, it is a cat with a genuinely safe, elevated, undisturbed retreat and complete confidence that nobody will come looking for them in it. That means a house rule that nobody extracts the cat from under the bed to show them off, ever.

Where a person is going to be around regularly, a new partner, grandchildren, a cleaner, we build gradual exposure with your cat in control of the distance: guests sitting sideways rather than facing, no direct staring, food and good things appearing when that person is present, and the cat free to leave at any point.

The carrier is usually the largest fixable piece of the whole problem. Most cats only ever see the carrier immediately before something unpleasant, so it reliably predicts the unpleasant thing. Leaving the carrier out permanently as ordinary furniture, with familiar bedding in it, and feeding your cat in and around it, is genuinely effective and costs nothing but patience.

Which carrier also matters more than people expect. A hard carrier whose top unclips and lifts away lets a cat be examined sitting in the base, in their own bedding, rather than being tipped out or dragged through a small opening. Covering the carrier with a towel during transport, and securing it in the footwell or with a seatbelt so it does not slide, removes a large share of the travel stress on its own.

A home visit removes the car and the waiting room entirely, which for most cats is where the majority of the fear lives. Beyond that, we work with consent-based handling and pause when your cat tells us to, rather than escalating to scruffing or towel restraint. Every appointment that ends in force confirms the fear for the next one, and cats have long memories for it.

Pre-visit medication given a couple of hours before an appointment is frequently part of the plan, and it is not a failure. Keeping a calm cat calm is much easier than settling a cat who is already in a panic, and the point is for the visit to be forgettable.