Cats are wonderful company, and a good deal of entertainment as they leap and climb their way around the house. Some of those behaviors are less charming, though—damaged furniture, curtains on the floor, and other pets living under stress. The good news is that most of what owners find frustrating is normal feline behavior expressed in an inconvenient place, and once you understand what your cat is trying to do, it's usually possible to give them a better outlet for it. Here are five common problems and how to approach them.
1. Soiling in the House
Eliminating outside the litter box is the most common behavioral complaint we hear about cats. It's almost never spite or revenge, whatever it may feel like—cats simply don't work that way.
Our first recommendation is always to have your cat examined, before treating this as a behavioral problem. A surprising proportion of house soiling turns out to be medical, and the list of possible causes is long: urinary tract inflammation or infection, bladder stones, kidney disease, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, constipation, and arthritis that makes climbing into the box painful. A cat who associates the box with discomfort will start going elsewhere, and no amount of cleaning or relocating will fix that until the underlying problem is treated.
One situation is a genuine emergency. If your cat—particularly a male cat—is going in and out of the box repeatedly, straining, crying out, or producing little or no urine, they may have a urinary blockage. That can be fatal within a day or two. Call us or your nearest emergency hospital immediately rather than waiting.
Once we've ruled out a medical cause, the usual suspects are the box itself and stress.
Litter box factors worth checking:
- Cleanliness. Scoop daily and wash the box weekly. Many cats simply won't use a box they consider dirty.
- Number. One box per cat plus one spare is the rule of thumb.
- Placement. Quiet, accessible, away from noisy appliances, and not all lined up in one room—boxes side by side effectively count as one location. In a multi-story home, put one on each level.
- Size and access. Big enough to turn around in comfortably, with low sides for older or arthritic cats.
- Litter. Most cats prefer unscented, fine-grained, clumping litter. If you've changed brands recently, that may be your answer.
- Escape routes. A cat who's been ambushed at the box, by another pet or a child, may not go back to it.
Spraying is a different behavior from soiling—it's urine marking on vertical surfaces, usually associated with stress, a new arrival in the home, or a cat visible outside a window. It's more common in unneutered cats, and neutering helps considerably.
Whatever the cause, clean soiled areas with an enzymatic cleaner rather than anything ammonia-based, since ammonia smells like urine and makes the spot more attractive rather than less. And please don't scold or punish your cat for this—it increases the anxiety that may be causing it in the first place. The Cornell Feline Health Center has more on this if you'd like to read further.
2. Curtain Clawing
Cats are built to use vertical space as much as horizontal, and a long curtain is essentially a climbing frame from their point of view. Some also climb curtains when anxious, putting height and distance between themselves and whatever is bothering them.
Cats shouldn't be punished for this, since climbing is entirely normal and the behavior isn't the problem—the location is. What works is giving them somewhere better to go. A tall cat tree or a set of wall-mounted shelves near a window will beat a curtain almost every time, particularly if the top perch has a view. Plenty of interactive play through the day helps too, since a cat with an outlet for their energy has less need to invent one.
Practically, tying curtains back or using a shorter length removes the temptation while you're setting up alternatives. And do check that whatever they're climbing is stable—a curtain rail coming down with a cat attached is a genuine injury risk.
3. Scratching Furniture
Scratching is a normal, necessary feline behavior. It removes the worn outer layer of the claw, stretches the muscles of the back and shoulders, and leaves both a visual mark and a scent signal from the glands in the paws. A cat scratching your sofa isn't misbehaving—they're doing something they need to do, in the most appealing place available.
The answer is to make something else more appealing. A few things determine whether a scratching post gets used:
- Height. Tall enough for your cat to stretch out fully against it, standing on their back toes.
- Stability. A post that wobbles won't be used. It needs a heavy base.
- Material. Sisal rope and corrugated cardboard are the usual favorites, though preferences vary.
- Orientation. Some cats scratch vertically, others horizontally. Offer both.
- Location. Right beside the furniture they've been using, as the Humane Society recommends. You can gradually move it once the habit transfers.
- Number. One in each room your cat spends time in works far better than one in the corner.
You can make the post more attractive with catnip or a little dried silvervine, and reward your cat when they use it. Meanwhile, making the furniture less appealing helps—double-sided tape or a loose sheet over the arm of the sofa usually does it, and both are temporary.
Regular nail trims reduce the damage considerably, and we're happy to show you how or do it for you. Declawing is not something we'd recommend: it's the amputation of the last bone of each toe, it's painful, and it's associated with long-term pain and litter box avoidance. There are much better options, and we're glad to talk them through.
4. Not Sleeping at Night
Cats are naturally most active around dawn and dusk, which doesn't always suit the household. Night activity means disrupted sleep for owners—cats pouncing on feet, crying, or yowling at three in the morning.
Often the cause is simply that a cat left alone all day sleeps through it and then wants company and stimulation when you're finally home. A few adjustments usually help.
What tends to work:
- Don't reward night-time activity with attention, even negative attention—getting up to tell your cat off still counts as getting up. This gets worse before it gets better while your cat tries harder at something that used to work.
- Build in a proper play session in the evening, using a wand toy, and finish it with something they can catch and "kill."
- Feed their last meal after that play session, since cats often settle to sleep after eating—the natural sequence is hunt, eat, groom, sleep.
- Give them things to do during the day: food puzzles, a timed feeder, a window perch, a bird feeder outside the window.
- Consider whether they have enough to occupy them generally—a bored cat finds occupation at inconvenient hours.
One important caveat: a cat who suddenly starts yowling at night when they never used to needs examining rather than managing. Hyperthyroidism, high blood pressure, pain, failing eyesight or hearing, and cognitive decline in older cats all cause night-time vocalizing, and all are worth investigating.
5. Conflict Between Cats
Cats in the same household don't always get along, and one cat may block another from food, water, the litter box, or a favorite resting spot. It's genuinely stressful for the cat on the receiving end, and stress in cats shows up physically—as bladder inflammation, over-grooming, reduced appetite, or house soiling.
It's worth understanding what's actually happening, because the popular explanation is misleading. Cats don't form dominance hierarchies the way dogs are often described as doing. Feral cat colonies are generally made up of related females who share territory and resources cooperatively, and conflict between unrelated adult cats in a house is usually about competition for resources and space, or about anxiety—not about one cat asserting rank.
That matters because it changes the solution. Rather than trying to rebalance a hierarchy, the effective approach is to remove the need to compete:
- Provide multiple sets of everything—food and water stations in separate locations, several litter boxes spread through the house, and plenty of beds and hiding spots.
- Make the most of vertical space, so cats can share a room without sharing eye level. Make sure any high perch has more than one way down, so a cat can't be cornered up there.
- Feed cats separately, in different rooms if necessary, so mealtimes aren't a flashpoint.
- Check for outside cats. A neighborhood cat visible through a window is a common cause of tension that gets redirected onto a housemate. Blocking the lower part of the view often helps more than anything you change indoors.
- Neutering reduces territorial behavior considerably and is worth doing for that reason among others.
If tension is established, a full separation and gradual reintroduction can help—but it needs to be done slowly, with scent swapping and feeding on either side of a closed door before any face-to-face contact. Rushing it tends to confirm the problem rather than resolve it. Synthetic pheromone diffusers made for multi-cat homes may take the edge off while you work on the underlying causes.
Please do let us know if this is happening in your household. Ongoing conflict between cats affects the health of everyone involved, and there's a good deal we can help with—including ruling out pain or illness in either cat, since a cat who feels unwell is far less tolerant of company.
Contact us if you'd like to talk through any of these behaviors. We're glad to help you and your cat understand each other better, so you can enjoy each other's company for many years.