Living in harmony with two or more cats in your home can be a rewarding experience. But when one feline starts to urinate outside the litter box, it can anger the most loving cat owner and prompt an eviction to the nearest animal shelter.
Veterinary surgeon and animal behaviourist Cynthia Smillie, at the Animal Behaviour Veterinary Practice, offers helpful advice on how to notice the signs and deal with problems associated with multi-cat households.
'Most owners only become aware of a problem between cats when they start spraying around the house, or there's aggression to other cats or to the owners,' Smillie says. 'Often, most people don't attribute inappropriate urination to problems between cats. Unfortunately, they don't understand a cat's social structure.'
While dogs are pack animals and usually exist within a social group in the wild, Smillie says cats are mainly solitary hunters. And while social groups of related cats can live together, their social structure is vastly different to dogs.
'A lot of problems can arise when we ask unrelated animals to share a core territory,' explains the former deputy director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Hong Kong. 'The cats need to feel safe and secure, and there is the potential for conflict when one cat comes into contact with another.'
According to Smillie, most of a cat's behaviour is geared towards patrolling its territory and marking it with urination, faeces or scratching. When a territory overlaps, another cat will assess the markings of a foreign cat. 'They will suss out if another cat's marks have faded over time, which signals 'I have not been here for a while', then they might put out another signal - it's all about avoiding conflict and aggression.'
When it comes to urinating outside the box, Smillie says, 'the cat is saying: 'I'm very stressed and spraying is a way for me to feel more comfortable'. This makes the cat feel more secure in its core territory and also signals to other cats to keep away.'