Cats are naturally territorial creatures. This becomes a problem when your cat decides to mark it's territory on your curtains, carpet and couches. It can be a difficult situation to deal with, particularly in multi-cat households, where cats tend to return to the "scene of the crime."

Preventative Measures

Cats are mostly very clean creatures but there are few reasons why one will urinate somewhere other than their litter-box. The key to avoiding accidents is ensuring the litter-box is kept clean at all times.

If the litter-box is filthy the cat will start looking for alternatives. This could mean they'll urinate beside it or often find another place in your house that suits them. Most often they'll use your plants as a replacement, for their litter-box, but other times it could be on the carpet or a piece of furniture.

Once a cat has done this, particularly a young one, if the odor isn't removed promptly they tend to return to the same spot over and over to urinate or take care of other business. They do this because they instinctively believe that the site they used before is where the litter-box is now placed. This is something that needs to be avoided at all costs.

Should it come to that, you're presented with the problem of cleaning it up time and time again.

Stop the Smell

First the urine must be cleaned. Use paper towels and allow them to soak up as much of the pee as possible before you use something to clean and deodorize the spot. One way to clean a place that your cat has marked is by using one of the many pet cleaning products, most of which have some type of odor remover as well as stain eliminator.

White vinegar often works well on spots. If you're not satisfied with the results from using the white vinegar, then baby wipes are also highly recommended as a cleaning product. There are also many natural odor removers that use special enzymes. Searching the Internet will provide dozens of other products for removing the urine odor.

The best thing you can do is keep your cat's litter-box clean. Unless there are underlying health issues, this should keep your cat from selecting other places in the house to urinate which should leave you with a fresh and clean house to enjoy.