How To Get Rid Of Cat Urine Odor

Katelyn was able to totally eliminate odour in her new house with a few effective tricks and hard work.

The smell of cat urine is very unpleasant; here's how you can eliminate it.

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Cat Pee Is the Worst Smell Imaginable

Cat pee is among the most offensive odours on this earth and one of the most difficult ones to get rid of. It seems completely immune to the usual household cleaners, and once it dries, it can make your eyes water.

There are three main situations most people find themselves in:

You have a cat who has had an accident.
You have an old or male cat whose urine is especially stinky.
You've recently purchased a house that was super cheap because it's toxic with the stench of cat urine.

My personal experience is with option number three. I once purchased a house which had been abandoned for about six months and had been taken over by the bank. It turned out that a cat had discovered a wide open crawlspace access which led to a hole in one of the closets and gave him free access to the house.

The cat owned this home from March until August. Naturally, it peed multiple times in every room that had carpet, and the first time we stepped into the house, we had to step out again to breathe.

It was truly disgusting. The ammonia smell burned in our noses, and each time we toured the house, all the windows had to be opened for air. After a few weeks of hard work, though, the house was pee-free. Here's some advice based on my experience.

There are several reasons why your home may smell of cat urine.

Situation 1: Your Cat Had an Accident

If you've caught your feline friend in the act or stepped in a fresh puddle on the floor, there is one thing you should remember. If you've ever seen a ShamWow infomercial, you've probably seen the demonstration that shows how a cup of liquid will spill on carpet and then spread out as it soaks in. The same is true for cat or dog messes. Just assume the spot you can see is actually three times the size it actually is.

As soon as you see the mess or scream at your pet and chase it away from the scene of the accident:

Grab a whole lot of paper towels (or a ShamWow) and soak up what you can.
Then get a spray bottle filled with a 50% solution of water and distilled white vinegar.
Just spray, spray, spray until the carpet is absolutely drenched with the mixture.
Then cover it up with newspaper so you don't step on it, and let it dry.

That should stop it from smelling after it's dry, but if the odour lingers, go to a pet store and buy an enzyme cleaner specifically for cat messes.

Situation 2: Old or Male Cat

As cats age, their kidneys start to function less efficiently, which could account for the stronger smelling urine. It's probably wise to get your pet checked out by the vet in any case, just to be sure you don't have a liver or kidney problem to deal with. That also goes for cats of any age.

Male cats have certain steroids in their urine which are supposed to stink as a way of marking territory and other reasons similar to why dogs sniff each other's behinds.

Aren't we so lucky humans have evolved to simple handshakes?

Situation 3: The Stinky New House

This is the big one. Cat urine odour seems to smell even worse the longer it dries, so naturally, a house which has been abandoned (or previously owned by a hoarder/crazy cat lady) is the worst situation of all. Not only is the pee smell stronger, it likely won't have left many visible stains, so you don't even know where to begin. This is how we did it, step by step (without having to gut the house and replace the subfloors)

Get a little handheld black light. Yeah, some of that CSI stuff really is true; an ultraviolet light will illuminate any bodily fluids that have stained a floor but are invisible to the human eye. (Try it in your kitchen, you'll see some pretty nasty surprises, especially by the stove!)
Wait until dark and use the black light to locate the spots where the pee has dried, making sure to look in corners and up the walls too. Male cats have a tendency to spray on walls to mark their territory.
Try to determine which rooms the smell is strongest in. For us, it was the carpeted rooms; the hardwood and laminate floors seemed to be ok.
There is no way to save the carpet. You may be able to clean the smell from it, but any heat and humidity will almost certainly bring the smell back again. Unfortunately, it has to go.
Rip out the carpet and underpad and check the subfloor for stains.
Now here's a judgment call. You have two options: replace the subfloor, or wash, disinfect, and seal it. This decision depends on the extent of the damage. Ours was moderate but not too severe, so we chose to disinfect and seal it.
We used an absolutely horrid smelling disinfectant called Creolin (Google it), but I'm sure there are other products out there that would do the trick. One I would recommend is called Bio Scavenger Uric Acid Eliminator by a company called Glen Martin Ltd. It's a commercial urine cleaner, intended for uses like public washrooms, etc. It's expensive but very effective.
After the subfloor has been cleaned and allowed to dry, seal it with a wood sealer to prevent the smell from coming back up if it soaked down into the foundation of the house. You'll want to paint the baseboards with the sealer as well, just in case.
Whether it helped or not, we also gave the entire house a fresh coat of paint and all new carpet. Once the old carpet was gone and the subfloor sealed, we laid down both new carpet and new underpad, and the smell is gone.
Just to be sure, we also drenched the entire crawlspace and all the hard floors in the house with the Uric Acid Eliminator. We've been asking everyone that comes over to sniff around, and so far, so good. The house is clean!

You could say we were lucky to have fixed the problem that easily; there are definitely some horror stories out there about houses being completely saturated in the smell, with layers upon layers of cat feces just sitting there. Those situations do usually require the house to be gutted and redone from the inside.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author's knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

karla on March 11, 2012:

very helpful. detailed and lead to the resolution of the problem. :)

Jennifer Angel on July 06, 2010:

Great article, I like the fact that you've covered many of the scenarios that may affect other readers.

I personally have two garage cats, who refuse to go outside. They can't come in, I'm allergic.

This is a really great hub! Well done!