Moe the Cat and CSI

So Moe the Cat became a Manitoban before I did. Moe travelled to Winnipeg in late November and lived with my in-laws and their two cats. The other two cats are also persians and they are both much bigger than Moe, who was probably the runt of his litter. Anyway while Michelle was with Moe everything went well and then Moe spent three weeks with my in-laws and the "other cats".

The "other cats" turned on moe and blockaded him in a room. My mother in-law rounded on them and defended Moe and eventually Moe used his cuteness to wile his way into the daily lives of everyone including the "other cats". By the time Michelle returned to Manitoba and was preparing to recieve the furniture Moe was feeling at home in my in-laws house. That's when I arrived and a day later all three of us moved into the new house. At first Moe kept running around (largely to avoid us). He quickly settled in and during the first day he ate food and used his litter box.

Then Moe found a closet that was to his liking and he hid among our clothes while we worked on painting and other miscellanous tasks. While painting the front room I watched as Moe walked up to the fireplace in the front room and peed in the stone wood box beside the fireplace. We cleaned the area and put something there to stop the peeing in that location.

We quickly also noted (or rather Michelle did) that Moe stopped peeing in his litter box. After 2 days of this we started to worry. By day 3 or 4 we started to smell something in the front hallway. We did what we could but we didn't know where he was peeing exactly. Examining the area around his previous infraction did not help and that is in the room next to the front hallway. As the smell slowly increased we got upset and angry. We bought dettol and washed the front office/bedroom that really smelled like cat pee.

Not having the internet to check things out we directed others to make searches for us. This didn't really work but seemed to indicate that something like a blacklight from CSI -- might work. We finally snapped (not having internet to check things out just further frustrated us) and Michelle stopped at Home Depot and bought an Incandescent Black light. We tried it and it failed miserably.

We called several pet stores and one happened to have something called a "Spot Spotter" that had been sitting on their shelves a very long time. At $30 it seemed like a steal. We bought it, pumped 8 "AA" batteries into it and Voila! it worked. For the record it is a UV blacklight in a purple case and looks exactly like the ones they use on CSI. We discovered that Moe had never peed in the front hallway or in our bedroom. He was peeing in the carpet in the room with the fireplace. There were 9 spots and we don't know if they were all Moe. Perhaps an earlier pet, before the previous owner. We then started to by cleaning products and used dettol and vinegar and water solutions. This chemical soup caused such a stench that we called in a professional to use an antimicrobial on the carpets that should kill anything smaller than a pinhead for months to come. Of course it removed most, but not all, of the smell and after waiting the customary week they will apply it for free as soon as we call.

We also put Moe in an isolation room for a week. We went down for twenty minutes to an hour at a time, we included his favorite toys, scratching post, food and litter box. We have barracaded off the room he offended in and he is happily using his litter and eating well. We currently allow Moe into the fireplace room while we are there but we keep the CSI light handy in case we suspect anything more.