Why does a cat pee on the bed?

 Some cat owners are faced with the fact that the cat pees on the bed of one of the family members, and the owners consider this problem to be quite serious. 

There may be several reasons for this behavior, for example, health problems. But one of the most common reasons is that a cat pees on the bed of the person with whom she has a conflict. This happens often, and most often people attribute erroneous motives to cats: revenge or an attempt to “take over territory.”

What does the cat want to tell us by pissing on the bed?

Cats have scent glands throughout their bodies. With their help, purrs leave marks and communicate using smells. A cat has 3 options for leaving a mark:

1. Rub your muzzle on something or someone.
2. Scratch something with your claws (like a scratching post or your favorite leather sofa).
3. Leave a mark with urine. This is the strongest mark, and the cat reserves it for serious, stressful situations.

 Labels are easy to confuse with scent communication. For example, a cat rubs its muzzle against you when meeting you – this is not a mark, but a kind of friendly gesture aimed at exchanging smells with you. Now let’s imagine that the cat lives with a dog and is afraid of this dog. Will she come up to the dog to rub against her? Of course not. The same thing happens with a person. If a person lives in the house with whom the cat has a conflict, then even if the cat wants to make peace with this person, she will never be able to just come up and rub against him, because she is afraid of him and does not trust him. But since it is abnormal and unbearable for a cat to constantly live in stress and anxiety, the animal tries to solve the problem in its own way. The cat comes to this person’s bed, lies down, but since she is under great stress, it is not enough for her to simply rub her muzzle against the pillow. We have to use a more intensive method. The cat pees on the bed, lies next to it, and it turns out that the smells of a cat and a person are mixed.

That is, in the cat’s picture of the world, this is an attempt to establish relations with a person. And as a result, it turns out as in the saying: I wanted the best, it turned out … it didn’t turn out very well. 

 A person comes, sees that the bed smells like cat urine, and for some reason is not at all happy about this. Of course, one can understand him – this is not very pleasant, but the cat does not understand why they are again dissatisfied with her, and plunges into stress even more. The conflict moves to a new level, and a vicious circle is formed, and the situation gets worse.

What to do if a cat pees on the bed?

If the reason is that you have a conflict with your cat and she is trying to build a relationship in this way, the following steps will help.

• Completely exclude all punishments, screams, etc., so as not to cause even more negative emotions in the cat.
• Close the cat’s access to the bed. Instead, you can offer her, for example, an old T-shirt that has the smell of the right person on it. So a cat in a calm environment will be able to combine its own and human smell without the use of heavy artillery.
• Do everything possible to build a relationship with the cat: feed it (if someone else has done it before), play with it, pet it if it makes contact.

 If a cat feels safe next to a “problem” person, it will not make sense for her to pee on his bed. 

Source: Animals Speaking Club: Watch on Youtube