How can I stop territorial peeing habit?

[TincanOwl]

Hii! I have two free roamers and they’ve formed a bad habit of marking the couch, usually the spots I sat most recently so I understand this to be territorial. They’re both spayed and neutered and they’re good with the litterbox otherwise. Biggest problem about it is I can never catch them doing is because it always happens sometime at night while I’m asleep, even if I could catch them, I’d also not be able to do much about it as most advice I’ve seen involves picking them up and putting them in their litterbox, which they’d never allow as they’re both rescues who have not been conditioned to tolerate being picked up. Another problem is it took me a very ling time to even catch on that they’re peeing on the couch as the fabric is conveniently light gray and thus you have to look extremely hard to even see the pee stains so by the time I caught on they’ve pretty much already marked my whole couch and it’s become a habit (and yes I’d likely been sitting and laying in rabbit pee for weeks? Months? yay). I also can’t block the sofa off as it’s it’s L shaped with only one side of armrest so it’s not as simple as putting a grid in front of it and I can’t put them in a different room, I live small. I’ve tried putting a blacket on before to see if it’d change the smell enough but they peed on the blanket too… Any advice here would be great! This is couch warfare I fear

[DanaNM]

Unfortunately couch and bed peeing are a common problem. 🙁  Since you can’t block off the couch, I think your best bet is to get a water-proof couch blanket or protector. This would at least protect your couch and could be washed easily. There are a number of them on the market now, often geared towards dogs. I know on beds some people have had luck putting a plastic shower curtain under a thin blanket as it both protects the bed and blocks the scent of humans that can trigger marking.

For cleaning, I recommend using an enzyme cleaner as it will soak in and hopefully neutralize the smell to discourage future marking.

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

[TincanOwl]

Thank you so much for the tips! Guess I’m lucky the stains are at least not visible haha

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