How to Clean Pet Urine

Dogs and cats smell ammonia and think another animal has peed there – which means the dog or cat will feel the need to cover the other animal’s scent with their own to reclaim their territory. Be sure you only use ammonia-free cleaning products if you have animals in the house.

Soak up as much urine as you can and then pour a bunch of salt on the spot. The salt will soak up the rest of the mess, and then you can vacuum it up. Best of all, salt is cheap and it won’t hurt you or your pet!

Apply your treatment of choice AROUND the stain FIRST. That way, when the stain bleeds outward from the treatment you put on it, it will run into a wall of odor-fighting product, instead of your cleaning product spreading the stain further and further out.

If the urine soaked through to the pad, your treatment will have to also, in order to be effective. In order to avoid mold growing between your carpet pad and floor (it usually dries enough between the carpet & the pad; it’s under the pad that really supports mold growth), you will need to pull up that section of rug to let it dry thoroughly. Mold grows in about 48 hours, so it needs to be dry before then. If your carpet has been there awhile, it’s probably stretched out enough that you will easily be able to push the carpet back down on the tack strips at the edge of the wall, without using a stretcher, muscle, or any knowledge of carpet-laying. And keep the cat’s box clean and scooped, with at least as many litter boxes as cats! (SPCA says one more than that.) MANY fastidious cats who would never DREAM of peeing on carpet will feel forced to if their litter box smells to them. Use deep, scoopable litter, scoop daily, and bleach boxes every 1-2 weeks & fill with fresh scoopable litter. If it is deep enough that the waste never touches bottom, it will stay fresh longer if scooped daily.

I am thinking of buying a house but the lady that lived there before had dogs and cats in the house. aparently they went to the bathroom more on the floors of the whole house then outside. and for a long time! all the carpet has been pulled up but the house stinks unbairablly. can this house be reclaimed. Can you please tell me what to do?

“Use deep, scoopable litter, scoop daily, and bleach boxes every 1-2 weeks & fill with fresh scoopable litter.”

Be careful when bleaching the litterbox to make sure it is fairly clean when you do this. I usually prewash with the garden house nowadays. If there is any urine still in the box the ammonia in it will react badly to the bleach.

Normally this isn’t a big deal, because the amount of urine left in the box is negligible. However, I did want to warn, because most people don’t think about that. We were on vacation for about a week, pet-sitter didn’t clean up the litterbox, so we came back to a rather dirty box. Even after dumping the litter there were still clumps on the bottom, but I figured the bleach would take care of it. Yeah… we had to move all the animals into our bedroom for the night with our window AC running full blast because of the fumes.