Furious and ready to have cat euthanized

I am so incredibly furious right now that I can't see straight and my head is pounding.

First, let me say that I have always been an animal lover and have always had a pet.

I love my dog like he is my child.

I am growing to love the neighborhood cat who has been with me since my son moved out a month ago. This cat loved my son and now that he is gone, the cat is coming in to eat like he has for several years, but since my son isn't here for him to sleep with he is sleeping with me. He gets more and more snuggly each day.

The problem is the cat we got several years ago. I never wanted a cat, but I wanted to get rid of the mouse problem.

This cat has never had much to do with us. A couple of years ago (when the neighborhood cat started coming around more often after his owner died), she started peeing on stuff. She has been spayed. I was reading online and a lot of people said if a cat is peeing inside, get her spayed.

So, over the last couple of years, I have bought all kinds of cleaners to spray to try to get rid of the cat pee smell.

I have bought special enzyme treatments for the laundry. She likes to find a laundry basket full of dirty or clean laundry, and pee on it. She pees on the bathroom rugs. She pees on the kitchen rugs. If you leave a jacket or coat out, she pees on it.

When she pees on clothes or rugs, I have to run them through the washing machine at least 4 times using the enzymatic cleaner in the first load to try and get rid of the cat pee smell, and then follow up with w or 3 more washes with vinegar in there to try to get rid of the nasty smell of the enzymatic cleaner.

A few weeks ago, I had decluttered my desk area and put some important papers in a box. I walked by it later and she was squatting on top of the box, peeing all over it. I put a trash bag over the box and she has gone back to it and peed on the plastic several times.

Tonight I started to make my bed. I'm very picky about the mattresses and pillows. They're expensive and not that old and I want to keep them nice.

I put the mattress cover on and then got distracted. When I went back into my room, this cat was lying on the mattress, trying to act cute. I picked up the bottom sheet to make the bed, and it was wet.

I smacked the cat really hard and screamed at her. She ran and hid.

My son just came by to pick up a few things and witnessed my rage.

I was sitting here Googling my city and state + "euthanasia" to try and find out how much it would cost.

Am I a terrible person?

Now it's F'ing 8:30 p.m. and I just started washing my sheets AGAIN. This is the first load. I'll need to wash them several times before I can dry them and make the bed.

I only have one set of sheets. Yes, I'm some kind of pathetic impovershed person. I don't have an extra set of sheets to make the bed while these are in the wash.

Now I won't be able to go to bed until really late tonight. If I can calm the hell down.

My son said not to euthanized her. He said to at least take her to the humane society so they can find her a home.

So I said, "Yeah. Don't you know what they do there? If they can't find homes, they euthanize them. No one wants older cats. They want cute kittens, and the human society gets way too many of them dumped off as it is and has to kill them."

Yes, I guess I'm a terrible person.

P.S. I'm reading more about this online.

It looks like cats do this out of aggression or urinary tract infections.

She definitely is mad about this other cat being around.

A lot of websites are saying to take her to the vet for evaluation in case it's a urinary tract infection.

I can't afford to take this damn cat to the vet and get medications for it.

I just spent $200 on my dog's vet visits and medication right before I got fired and I love this dog like crazy.

Hate this cat. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

And now I'm trying to breathe and calm myself down before I have a coronary.

I really wish I could say that I have no idea what it's like, but I can honestly say that I know the exact feeling you're having right now. I have two cats myself and the younger one (now 6 years old) used to pee on literally EVERYTHING. For, no joke, the first 4 years we had her. She only stopped when we moved into our house a few years ago.

It was a constant struggle getting her to use the litter box at all. Even after we moved she'd still pee on the floor literally RIGHT NEXT TO her litter box. And, I kid you not, she finally stopped going on the floor only a month ago because I somehow worked out that she doesn't like scented kitty litter. There were a couple of times I raged on her pretty bad. I picked her up by the scruff of her neck and screamed in her face on more than one occasion.

(As a side note, my other cat who is a year older has always had a fascination with tipping over their water dish. Literally. Every. Day. The worst part is that he'd do this in the middle of the night, so if I happened to need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and needed to walk through the kitchen to do so, I would walk RIGHT through the lake of water. Once I caught him in the act and in my momentary blind rage... again... I can relate to that... I might have shoved his face in the water for a few seconds. Afterwards, I did feel really bad about it.)

Only because I've been through this before can I say that, no, I don't think you're a bad person. Or it's entirely possible that I am also a bad person. I think you're just a person who has reached their limit. I get it, and I've threatened to throw them outside at least once a week since we got them.

There are no kill shelters in many locations, that may an option. Good luck, I know how frustrating and conflicting the whole situation can be.

Call a Cat rescue group. You have enough going on, this cat is just additional stress. Maybe Hamster can help you locate one in your area?

You are not a bad person, perhaps you have a bad cat? I mean really there are some bad people, so why do we assume that all animals are "good"? If it were me, I'd make a place for the cat outside and see how that works. Only let him inside when supervised. Maybe he can change, if not, he needs to go to kitty heaven! And that statement does not make me a bad person.

This cat is about 6 or 7 years old now. I can't even remember when I got it. That's how terrible I am.

She has never been outside.

Can a cat adjust from being an indoor cat to an outdoor cat?

I was just reading online about about the no-kill shelters in my area, but they don't take cats from the public. Their websites say they rescue them from death row at the humane society.

Can a cat adjust from being an indoor cat to an outdoor cat?

Yes, they can. I've had several cats (five at one time thanks to my kids) and they do just fine outside. I really think they like it outside!!!

>I smacked the cat really hard and screamed at her.

This is wrong and is only going to make the situation worse. I would ask the moderator to put a trigger warning on your post, but I don't know how to do that, so I'm asking you.

The cat has been peeing for years and you haven't figured out how to soothe the cat, so you are probably not going to figure it out now. If you have craigslist in the area, try to get someone who will adopt the cat since you can't handle it. Until then, I suggest confining the cat in the bathroom. Peeing in there will be much less trouble and won't disturb your bedding.

I have no idea how to do this.

What constitutes "trigger" anyway? With all of the many things we talk about on here, nearly everything is bound to trigger someone, so at what point do we determine something would be considered a trigger? You're the first person to bring this up the entire time I've been posting here.

I have to say I'm stunned by the descriptions of how cats have been treated. Screaming in an animal's face for being an animal? Smacking it for being an animal?

It will fare better at a no-kill shelter.

People do adopt older cats. I've adopted four over the years because people are selfish and go for the kittens. My older cats have been loving, well-trained and abandoned for the worst reasons. A pregnancy, rentals where cats aren't allowed, etc.

Your cat would be best placed with an experienced cat owner who understands cat behavior and can train her properly.

Craigslist is a nightmare.

I've tried to find homes for animals twice on Craigslist.

Both were dogs that I found, kept in my backyard while I tried to find owners, had to deal with both dogs causing damage to my yard and patio/covered porch that took several hundred dollars to have repaired, and then FINALLY found people to adopt them.

Do NOT, for any reason, put the cat outside! There are too many dangers out there and he will not know how to defend himself from roaming dog packs, traffic, feral cats, starvation, coyotes, bad weather, poison, snakes, or people who torture and kill small animals for 'fun'.

If you're going to get rid of the cat, it's best to take him to the vet and euthanize him right now, rather than put him outside where he will almost certainly experience a short life and brutal death.

Oh, great.

Now it's after midnight and my son is sending me text messages out of the blue, criticizing me for being mad at the cat.

Now I'm pissed at him.

He moved out a month ago and I never hear from him unless he wants something. He ignores my calls and ignores my texts, but if he texts me I'm supposed to pay attention immediately. The only exception is 3 times he has spent about an hour with me and I paid for coffee or meals.

Before that, I had a little over a year of us living in the same house and him NEVER having time for me. For the last 6 months or so, the girlfriend lived here. Never asked me for permission for her to even stay the night and somehow she ended up living here. Didn't contribute a dime for rent or utilities.

So, yeah. Now I'm sitting here, bombarded with text messages.

I said he never bothered to help me with the cat while so he doesn't get to criticize.

It was difficult as hell to even get him to change the litter box.

Just made me mad.

I'm already dealing with enough crap in my life, and a lot of it was caused by him, and now he's heaping more guilt on me without offering any solution to help.

Hard decision Purple. Kind of rough mountain life where I live. I have a friend who works at vet here, she chose to euthanize her cat who urinated everywhere in her house. I have 5 cats and someone is peeing everywhere, last week on my kitchen counter on the bread. It's so frustrating. But I don't know which cat is doing it, and they are welcome to come in and out as they please. But when there is already enough, too much going on, like it is for you right now, find the cat a new home. Can ur son take it in?

I don't think my son can have pets in that apartment complex unless he pays a pet deposit. And I doubt if they want the cat to pee all over their stuff.

It's easier to let me deal with the pee, isn't it?

I've had to wash plenty of his stuff 3 or 4 times each when the cat has peed on his laundry. Did he stop what he was doing and wash everything? No. But did he complain about the pee? Yes.

Just go on and move out and leave me with the mess and the headache.

Sure. No problem. Let's just let the house smell like cat pee.

I never have guests anyway, so why not let the smell just permeate throughout the entire house?

Let it fester really nice so when one of my rare guests does come over, the stench will smack them as soon as they walk through the front door.

Shouldn't be much different than the smell from when my son rarely changed the cat box for the last 6 years and refused to ever scoop it.

Never mind the fact that the only chores I ever asked of him were to change the cat box and mow the yard.

But that's a whole different story. Mowing the yard. He'd promise to mow it over the weekend, but the weekend would come and go with me reminding him that he had promised to mow, and then he would get angry and tell me he was going to do it. Of course, he wouldn't do it.

Then I had to pay someone $30 every week or two to mow the yard.

So, yeah, go ahead and text message me to tell me how YOU think I should be doing things in a house that you no longer live in and couldn't freakin' wait to get out of.

That's every mother's dream, right? Do your best to try to raise a child on your own, struggle through crappy job after crappy job, deal with being bipolar while raising a kid with ADHD, put up with a controlling parent, manage to finish a college degree while working full-time at jobs you hate, get fired repeatedly, go on and off meds, in and out of treatment, all based on whether you happen to have health insurance at the moment, hang on to the rollercoaster of bipolar for dear life, struggle to find a reason to keep on living when it seems like there is no point, fall into default on $90,000 of student loans and $30,000 in debts to the point where I feel like I'll never come out from under it, deal with the emptiness of no real friendships to confide in, handle the loneliness of having no one to love or build a relationship with, put all of the last 21 years into raising that child who turns around and lets loose with criticizing me via text message on his cell phone on my plan which he hasn't paid for. Yeah. I'm paying for you to have the convenience to criticize me. Great investment on my part.

I am so sorry you are dealing with this much frustration. I am an avid pet lover. I love my cat she is my baby. That said if my cat caused me such distress, and interfered with my well being by consistently peeing/marking her territory. I would get rid of her. Do you have such an emotional tie to her that you just cannot live with out her? In my experience cats that age once they start the behavior it is so hard to break them of it. I wouldnt be telling this to someone who has the ability to possibly fix it. I just know this is leaving you very fragile and you have carried this load long enough. You dont deserve to feel guilty because of it.

You have to give yourself the permission to do the right thing for YOU. You can allow someone to take this burden from you so you don't suffer. People will be die hard animal lovers saying how dare you give up on your cat or how dare you euthanize the cat. This is your mental well being. They are not the ones suffering like you are. You make your decision. Give yourself the permission to do what you really want to do.

I wish you well and I hope you find less stress

No, not "for being an animal."

For its behavior.

For ruining things.

For costing me more money in products and utilities to wash things repeatedly to try to salvage them, and wasted money for the things that have been beyond help that I've had to throw away.

I already stated that I am an animal lover. I have a dog that I love and an indoor/outdoor cat in the neighborhood that has been hanging out with us for a couple of years and, now that my son has moved out, the cat is getting snugglier with me.

Would an animal lover get this angry with an animal?

Yes.

I am.

That's the reason I pointed out that I am an animal lover. To show that I am at the end of my rope with this cat. My rope, as an animal lover, was longer than that of an average person. The average person would not have put up with this as long as I have.

I'm a pet lover, too, which is why this is frustrating and difficult and making me so angry.

What kind of pet lover wants to get rid of a pet?

Like I said, I love my dog fiercely, and the other cat is great. Cats I've had in the past were loving, but this cat the pees everywhere is anti-social. Always has been. I can't even pet it because it snaps at me and won't allow affection.

No, I'm not attached to this cat.

I have often wished that I never got it. It hasn't enhanced our lives. It hasn't been fun or cute or loving. We've tried over the years to pick it up and cuddle with it. It has never allowed us.

Then a couple of years ago, when the neighbor died and his indoor/outdoor cat decided to adopt us, this cat started peeing. It would stop for a while, but then it would start in again.

These last few weeks, it has been peeing more and more, until tonight when I caught her on my bed.

So now it's 1:20 a.m. and I'm so wound up and mad that I don't know how I'm going to fall asleep.

I could take half an Ambien, but even half makes me wake up with a foggy head.

And, on top of everything else, I've got my very controlling parent riding my ***** constantly about my son who just moved out.

Parent is telling me I need to give son an ultimatum. Do this or that, or suffer the consequences. Make some kind of offer that will make him leave the apartment and come back home with me.

As if I have the money to make any kind of ultimatum.

Plus this parent pulled this kind of crap on me when I was younger. It was all a way for parent to pull my strings and make me the puppet so parent could control my life. It worked for a long time, when I was too weak to stand on my own. The few times I started to get stronger, parent shot me right back down and told me I was doing so bad on my own. But those were the times I felt like I was doing better, trying to be my own person, working toward my own goals, and happier.

Now parent wants to see my son fail so parent can put my son under parent's thumb, like parent kept me under parent's thumb.

Why would someone wish failure upon their child? That's what parent wants for my son right now, just like parent has always wished on me. And, in my case, failure is usually what i got, which made parent happy. Parent was happy to see me fail, yet gave me grief about what a failure I've always been.

Now that son has moved out, my parent wants my son to fail.

Aren't I supposed to be cheering for my son to make it on his own? Isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Raise the child and then when the child goes out into the world, we sit back and act proud because the kid is now an adult instead of a dependent?

Not in my family.

Now I've got parent on my butt about my son not living up to his potential, he's going to waste his life like I have wasted mine, he has such potential, where did I go wrong (because it's all my fault, of course), why isn't he back in college yet, when will he go back, I should make him go back, why haven't I forced him to go back yet...

It's 2:05 a.m. and I still can't sleep.

My son and I have never really had a fight or a conflict before.

What am I going to do if this thing tonight means he is really, truly mad at me and continues to phase me out of his life?

As it is, I rarely hear from him.

I've always avoided conflicts with him because I've been so afraid of losing this relationship, just like I've lost most relationships throughout my life.

I've never been able to keep a best friend. I've had a lot of friendships go sour and then we never speak again. Or we have an occasional email to say hello and make sure the other is still alive.

I should never have told him about my bipolar a few months ago. He started treating me different after that. Like I didn't matter as much. Like my views were not as important. Like my feelings did not matter as much as before.

He hasn't confided in me like he used to. I'm not sure if that's just part of becoming an adult and it just happened to be around the same time that I told him about the bipolar.

I worry about him not being in college right now. I don't want to see him flail around from job to job like I did, wondering what his life purpose is.

I worry about him straying from spirituality. I raised him in church, just like several generations in our family have been raised in church. He has always been a really deep mixture of philosophical and religious and I've always been glad that he turned out that way. But I'm worried that it won't last and he might turn his back on the way he was raised.

He's already turned his back on some of the values I taught him. I know this because he voted for the other presidential candidate and I'm still scratching my head about how that happened.

I just can't bear the thought of him being mad at me, me not handling the conflict well, some permanent damage being caused, him phasing me out of his life, me not knowing him, me not knowing my grandkids someday, or his kids treating me the way he treats my mom.

Perhaps your son googled bipolar and found that is can be hereditary. He could be upset about that and doesn't know how to talk to you about it. Just a thought. Hang in there...things have got to get better!! And I still say the cat will be fine outside!

First have him deal with the cat bring it to him if need be. He'll go to college when he feels he can. There's tons of ways to get credits outside college. Take him out to lunch and talk to him about your dx, and other concerns you have. You can have adult to adult conversations now.

I don't know of any ways to get college credits outside of college. At least not in the USA.

One of my past jobs was at a university evaluating transcripts of students who were transferring in. I had to look up all of the courses on the transcripts of their previous colleges and universities to determine if the college I worked for would accept the classes and, if so, what classes they would be considered equivalent to.

At no time did this university accept "life experiences" as college credit. Only classes from accredited colleges and universities could be accepted.

At the Associate Degree level there is "work experience". You can get up to 3 units per semester if you work while going to school.

Cats can be very sensitive. If you are out of balance the cat will also be. If you are frustrated and stressed, your pet will NOT be calm and stable.

Maybe you can rehome your cat. You claim the cat is family but then you abuse it and want to kill it. You don't do that with family.