Why do domestic cats urinate out of the litter box?

We know that cats are very clean animals, but sometimes, especially males, urinate outside the litter box that we prepare for their needs and leave marks in other parts of the house. But why do they do it? Can we avoid this? They effectively have their reasons for doing so, but we can avoid this behavior in most cases.

If you are the owner of a cat that follows this behavior that usually annoys humans and you are interested in correcting it, keep reading this article and find out how to prevent my cat from urinating at home.

 

Why do domestic cats urinate out of the litter box?

Surely if you have a cat urinating on the wall, on the sofa, on the chairs and other places in your house and that it is rare to do so in your litter box, you will have asked this question. We must remember that although they have been domesticated for many centuries and some prefer to live with humans, cats still have their instinct. So they will continue to do things that are strange to us or even uncomfortable. In the case of urine off-site, it can be several reasons such as:

The most common reason is to mark your territory. Cats, both male and female, but above all, mark a lot of what is yours and one way to do it is with urine. Their urine smells strong and unpleasant, but for them, it is something else and contains a high level of pheromones that serves to identify them, attract each other or to achieve the opposite effect keeping them away from possible competitors. Through the urine, they know if it is a male or a female and may even know if it is an adult individual or not. In addition, in the case of marking females, males can thus identify when they are in estrus, among more things that can communicate only with urine.

It may be that for them their litter box is too close to their feeding zone and as they are very clean they will not accept using the litter box and urinate in farther places.
Another reason is that they do not find their litter box clean enough because they already have some accumulated feces and urine. It may be stress because of some new situation that you have not yet been able to adapt.

It may be that the problem is the type of sand we use. Cats are very sensitive to their tastes for things, so they may not like the smell or texture of the sand we use for their box.

You have to check if you can detect more symptoms because sometimes this behavior is due to some type of illness.

If you have several cats, you might not like to share the litter box with your companions, so we should have a litter box for each cat.

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