How To Remove Cat Urine From Carpet: I know what the day you’re having if you’re trying to read this blog post. This is one of those problems that can be solved, which is good news! First, I’ll tell you why cat urine smells so bad and is hard to clean up.
Once you know what is going on, you can use your scientific knowledge to figure out how to clean it up. Having the correct tools for the work is helpful. Before you ever have to clean cat pee out of a rug, you should have these three things ready to go:
- A UV light that will help you find where the stain is;
- A clean white cloth to use to dab. An old hand towel or tea towel made of terrycloth or an absorbent paper towel works well.
- Enzymatic cleaners like Angry Orange, Simple Green, Kinderbean, or Nature’s Miracle are made to work on pet stains and carpets.
Why does cat urine have such a bad smell?
Our noses find the smell of cat urine incredibly unpleasant. No one likes the smell of urine, but cat urine takes it to a new level. Once you’ve smelled cat pee, you can never get that smell out of your mind.
Urine is urine is urine. Any animal’s urine is just the “leftovers” of its metabolism, which is the process by which the body turns the food and drink into energy. Blood vessels carry waste products like urea, uric acid, chloride, sodium, potassium, creatinine, and other things to the kidneys, which filter them out. Urine is a mix of these chemicals and some water. It is stored in the bladder and leaves the body through the urethra.
Cat urine smells worse than other animals’ urine
Even so, cat urine seems to smell worse than the urine of other animals. Why? Because of two things:
Concentration of cat urine is higher than that of other animals
Our house cats’ ancestors were desert animals that had to figure out how to live in dry places. Their bodies were made to work with the least amount of water possible. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means they have to eat meat to live.
Their bodies probably expect to get most of the water they need from the juices in their prey. Why does the pee of a desert animal smell worse than another animal? A cat’s kidneys were made to squeeze out as much water as possible from the urine.
The “loop of Henle” in a cat’s kidneys is very long, which helps them use waterless. So, the smelly waste products in cat urine are not well mixed with water. On the other hand, humans have a much shorter Henle loop, so our urine is not nearly as concentrated.
Cats communicate in their urine
Dogs live together in a social group, and they use many ways to talk to each other and avoid fights. Cats are also social animals, but they are not like dogs. They usually hunt, eat, and sleep by themselves.
So they don’t fight with other cats; cats talk to each other through smell. Cats can talk to each other through their aromas without getting too close. For example, when a cat pees on a tree trunk, the odor can tell other cats essential things.
Because of this, two cats can “talk” to each other without ever having to meet face to face. Male cats who haven’t been neutered have more to say, so their urine has more compounds that make it smell not good.
There is an amino acid called “feminine” in the urine of male cats that haven’t been neutered. Feline has no smell at first, but when it gets to room temperature, it breaks down and starts to smell. It has sulfur, which makes it smell like rotten eggs and sewer gases.
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Cat pee smells worse than other pee when it first comes out and worsens over time. Bacteria start to break down the urea in urine, which makes ammonia. Ammonia is what makes cat urine smell like “old cat urine.” Urea stinks, but it dissolves in water, which is good.
Regular cleaners and water can eliminate the smell of urea that is breaking down. Many websites say that water, vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, or cleaning products can be used to clean up cat pee. And at first, they do seem to work.
Cat urine removal solution with uric acid
Another part of urine that is hard to eliminate is uric acid. Uric acid does not dissolve in water as urea does. It tends to stick to whatever surface it is “applied” to, including the carpet, the padding underneath, and the wooden subfloor.
Salt crystals are what uric acid is. When uric acid is exposed to water, it changes back into crystals. So, when you try cleaning up cat urine with regular water-based solutions, you’re making the uric acid crystals move again. So it makes sense that the smell of pee keeps coming back.
Enzymes solution
You can’t just pick up or wash the uric acid out of your carpet. It will finally break down on its own, but one source says that the half-life of cat urine is six years! That means that in six years, it would only be half broken down.
The only way to dissolve the chemical interaction between the uric acid and your carpets is to decompose the uric acid itself or to accelerate its natural decomposition. Enter enzymes! Enzymes are usually proteins that can speed up or start a chemical reaction. Different enzymes work on other proteins.
It would assist if you had the proper enzymes to break down the uric acid in your carpet. The name for these enzymes is ureases. Ureases break down the uric acid in your carpet into its parts: carbon dioxide and ammonia. Once the carbon dioxide and ammonia are released into the air, they will disappear.
