Why is my male cat peeing outside of the litter box?
Original Question: I noticed that my cat has been leaving drops of urine outside of the litter box. What should I do to help him? - Anonymous
Mar 1, 2018
TRANSCRIPT:
This is a really interesting question and quite a serious one. First, what I know is that this is a male cat and male cats can have problems with their bladder. There’s something called feline lower urinary tract disease and for a manner of reasons there can be inflammation in the bladder and it becomes painful. The bladder is basically like a balloon and then there’s a small urethra so in order to urinate you have to squeeze that balloon and relax the urethra. If your bladder is sore and you squeeze it, it will hurt so you tense up and then the urethra doesn’t relax so urine doesn’t really come out very well. So if you see your cat trying to urinate, going to the litter box a lot, meowing at the litter box, making noise, dribbling or dripping urine then you really want to act very quickly.
Male cats have a very small diameter urethra and they can become blocked and this is a very serious condition in our male cats. It is life-threatening, very expensive to treat in most cases and they usually have to be hospitalized, catheterized, blood work and X-rays are needed to try to figure out the reason why they became blocked in the first place. Sometimes it’s a matter of an infection so you’re going to want to do a urinalysis and a culture. Sometimes there’s stones or crystals in there and you’re going to want to try to dissolve those with a diet. There may even be stones that you may have to remove surgically and then there are other reasons why this stuff can happen which can be caused by stress and things like that which you can address.
Some male cats will have this problem and it will keep recurring so you’ve got to work closely with your veterinarian to make sure that you do those tests, get this understood and then really be proactive in the future. This is all about prevention, getting them urinating normally, identifying the reason why this is happening and really addressing it.
I’d really recommend you go to your veterinarian and start with some of those tests. If it’s a simple infection then maybe an antibiotic will just clear it and see what happens in the future but if it’s something more complicated then you’re going to want to implement a more detailed treatment that deals with either the stress, the crystals or the infection all at the same time.
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