Female cat peeing on us?

by Kay
(Michigan)

I have a four year old spayed female cat. In the last year, she has peed in a few spots. Six months ago I caught her peeing on my bedroom floor, and then she never did it again until three weeks ago when she jumped on our bed in the middle of the night and peed on us.

Then again last night she jumped onto my side (hip) while I was sleeping and peed. We keep her litter clean and had just cleaned it last night before bed and she still did it.

It's not something she does frequently, only once every couple of weeks lately and months before this.

There has been no change in new pets or moving her litter box and she never did this until this past year.

Is there something that could fix this? I thought maybe she has a UTI but she doesn't do it often. It's spread out over weeks or months for the past year.

Once I think she's not going to do it anymore because it's been months, she does it again?

My thoughts: I'm sorry to hear you've had to experience that unpleasantness, and that your cat is going through some issues.

Some of our readers have indicated they believe when their cats urinate in their beds (or on them directly), their cats are telling them something is wrong.

That something could be environment/behavioral related, or it could be a medical problem, like this cat with a bladder problem that peed on his human.

If what's wrong is related to the environment or a behavioral problem, but isn't obvious, you'll have to do some intense detective work to figure it out.

If it's anxiety related, a Feliway plugin diffuser may help.

There are quite a few medical issues that may directly or indirectly cause a cat to urinate outside the box.

It's more than just urinary tract infections that can cause this, though, and these problems can be intermittent. That might explain why it only happens every so often.

If it's medical and intermittent, it's more likely you'll get a diagnosis if you take her to the vet immediately after she does this.

Since it's your bedroom and bed, it could be marking behavior, and you could try confinement retraining as detailed in this exchange with Dr. Michael Salkin.

As he points out, some cats can be extremely sensitive to changes we don't think are important, but our cats do. They can also be disturbed by cats or other animals outside the house, prompting them to mark.

I hope that helps, and please let us know how it goes.
-Kurt