Bette Struggles Post Treatments with Litter Box Use/How to Clean a Mess

Bette overnight: extra Valium only made her more anxious; she had trouble using the box and went inside the cat house that has a cloth covered pad on it, instead of the urine pads around the box. BUT it got on the floor underneath. I cleaned the floor and the house (we'll see if it survives the washer.) I'll pull the (luckily small) room apart and clean again in case that wasn't all of it. I smelled as I may have gotten it on me while cleaning and had to change; she smelled (she was cleaned.) My smelly clothes went into the basket to be washed today and that basket is upstairs in a closet away from the cats. (More on that below.)

Jimmy, with a history of urinating out of the box, and why he's on Prozac, must be stressed this week due to possibly earlier medication times, his sister smelling after the vet (but luckily he's been kind to her and we separate her for the first four hours home), a disruption of sorts in the daily routine, and possibly because the new formula of his compounded Prozac isn't working. But he's urinated out of the box twice and possibly three times: on a basket of dirty clothes (basket, clothes, wall, floor, under trim, in the cracks of the vinyl tile, etc.-when cats urinate it goes everywhere); against the box and pads on the wall around the box; and on the floor (again it gets everywhere.)

When I clean up urine, first I think of containment: get the trash bag, paper towels, spray cleaner; wipe down box, gather up pads, use paper towels to clean, to soak up urine; put it all in the trash bag; clean area with a spray cleaner but WIPE, don't spray because that just spreads it more; spray/wipe, spray/wipe, etc. Then where I can, I use the kitchen bleach spray-in the cracks, under the trim (spray on the surface, let set a few seconds, wipe the surface and let the bleach sink into the crevices, under trim, etc. where it cannot get on feet/paws but is less likely to bleach out the surface.) Then I wipe it down again with water to get rid of the bleach from the surfaces. (All of this depends on the type of surface you might have.) Everything goes into the trash bag to be put outside immediately or it attracts Jimmy. Any rags go into the washer immediately or he'll smell them and urinate in the vicinity. Even the scent of urine in the laundry/trash bag that lingers will attract him and I tend to spray something like Feliaway to divert his attention-which I need to start using daily again apparently. We go through phases of using it, not using it, using it again.

Bette has also lost 5 oz this week. Given that she was just over 12 lbs and is now under, she has some room to lose weight. But not five oz. a week. She eats well once home from treatment but not so much at night, then gets cut off at 10 pm. I can't use Mirtazapine because it will only drive her crazy and when she has a cut off from eating, that craziness would only keep her up more. We'll worry more about this when she's down to less than 11 lbs and post treatment for sure.