Cat sprayed inside my car; How do I remove the stench???

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A stupid cat sprayed the cloth upholstery of my car.

How in the world am I going to get the smell out? This is my daily driver...and I can not stand the smell.

Should I use a chemical? Should I rent a rinse-and-vac?

Any ideas? I am desperate.

-- clove (clovis97@Yahoo.com), April 28, 2002

Answers

Get a bottle of Simple Solution for Cats at a pet store. It is an enzyme that "eats" the urine & urine smell. You don't need a rinse & vac or soap. Use paper towel to soak up any remaining liquid urine first (press on the upholstery to force it out), then pour Simple Solution onto that area and press it IN with a clean paper towel. Let it sit and dry. If it still smells when dry, then reapply. If you need to drive the car, then just cover the seat with a couple of regular towels. It has never changed the color on any fabric I have used it on.

We used the regular formula of Simple Solution when we were housebreaking our puppy (who didn't want to pee in the snow and instead did it in the house). The house never smelled of pee and when we moved out, there were no stains on the carpet. I most recently used it in our car. Our other dog is older and during a car ride he peed on the front passengers seat. The pee smelled really vile and it turned out he had a bladder infection. I got rid of the horrible pee smell in 2 applications of Simple Solution. We rent and the previous occupants of this house were the owner's adult grandson and 15 barn cats. The dining room was full of litter boxes (about a dozen), but the cats had used various kitchen cabinets as litter boxes and had also sprayed walls in the house. We soaked the cabinets with Simple Solution for Cats and the smell was gone. We wiped down walls with it and the pee smell was gone. We were (and are still) very happy with Simple Solution.

-- Dash (forthechix@yahoo.com), April 29, 2002.


Also you can use Febreeze. You can buy this at any grocery store or Walmart, K-Mart etc. It comes in a spray bottle and is on laundry aisle. Its works really good....it too is an enzyme that just eliminates the odor. I had a cat get in my car and spray several places......Febreeze took care of it completely!

-- Barbara Ann (think_peace51@hotmail.com), April 29, 2002.

Clove, this happened to me, too, and you have my sympathy! :( I have found Simple Solution to be somewhat, but not 100% effective. You may have to do an internet search for veterinary or kennel supplies, because there are products out there that really do the trick. They are often expensive, however. I don't know if the over- the-counter stuff like Simple Solution is going to help tomcat pee.

I have some stuff that they use in mortuaries. It costs $30 a gallon, but it works. E me if you want the contact info.

Too bad you can't paint the inside of your car with KILZ!

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), April 29, 2002.


After you clean and you must drive your car right away it helps to use your hair dryer or the dog dryer on the seats. Feel bad for you, it's the pits I know. LQ

-- Little Quacker (carouselxing@juno.com), April 29, 2002.

After you clean the sprayed area, there's this really cool stuff called zeolyte, that you can get in net bags. It's a volcanic material, like gravel, that absorbs odors, including cat spray, and chemicals such as formaldehyde from your carpets, furniture, pressboard, and even cigarrette smoke. When the zeolyte is "full", you put it out in the sun and it lets go of all the stuff it soaked up. It's recharged to use again. You can find them in catalogs like Gaiam, or any catalogs that sell new age-type household stuff. Or go to a search engine and type in zeolyte. They're not that expensive and they last forever.

You could also try ordinary baking soda, maybe an opened 2 pound box left in the car for a day or so.

Our tool shed, where the cats sleep at night, and they have a cat box, gets stinking pretty bad. I put zeolytes in there when I have left the cat box too long, and it gets rid of the odors in about half a day. I also use them in our travel trailer, which is new, and outgasses formaldehyde. They absorb the chemical fumes, and keep me from getting sick from them.

Another way to remove odors, which most people will not have access to, is to use ozone. You have to be careful when you use ozone, but it will grab chemicals and smells and turn them into ash. The rule of thumb with ozone is, if you can smell it, you have the ozone generator turned up too high. Either run it on low when you are at home or in your car, with good ventilation, and make sure you can't smell it, or turn it up high when you leave the house. When you come back home, turn off the ozone and open windows and doors quickly so you don't breathe the ozone. When we clean up cat spray in our car, we run an ozone air purifyer in the car overnight, with the windows closed, and just air it out in the morning. You can get good ozone air purifyers for your car or your house from Alpine. Ozone is great for cleaning up the air, but it will damage soft tissues in the lungs, nose, and ears. So be careful!

Good luck! I hate it when that happens! :)

-- Christine Baillie (towanda515@yahoo.com), April 29, 2002.



After washing the seat, if the odor still lingers, try spreading a heavy layer of baking soda on the seat and cover it with an old towel. If you need to hold the towel down you can tie an old bed sheet over the seat and the towel. The towel is to keep the soda off your clothes when you drive. Leave it on at least a couple of weeks and vacuum it out. If you can get zeolite, use it instead of the soda, it works faster. You can repeat this as often as necessary until the odor is gone. Luck!

-- kim in CO (kimk61252@hotmail.com), April 29, 2002.

Good luck! We started smelling something in our van and noticed the smell for another day or two. We started looking around and found a stray cat under one of the seats, still alive. Don't know where it came from or who put it in our van. But anyway it done its number a few times. We tried everything in the world and still couldn't get the smell out. Some of the stuff we tried would cover the odor up, and sometimes for several weeks, but when the inside would finally get dried back out the odor would come back. The only way we finally got rid of the smell is that my wife wrecked and totaled the van, so now we don't have to worry about it anymore!

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), May 01, 2002.

Nature's Miricle works the best. Local pet store. I swear by it. Be warned that it will smell stronger as it's working but will disappear as the urine gets eaten. Also, don't keep your car in the sun while it's working or it will dry too fast. It needs time to work. The baking soda and zeolyte will absorb the odor from the air but not really get rid of it totally. You will continue to smell it certain times (like when it rains) unless you use this type of product.

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), May 03, 2002.

White vinegar works really well. If yoy aren't sure where the cat sprayed, if you use a blacklight, it will have a flourescent glow

-- Catherine Gray (cathgray69@hotmail.com), May 03, 2002.

My vet told me the best thing to use is a women's douche product. Jo Ann

-- Jo Ann Weaver (hillfarm3@peoplepc.com), May 05, 2002.


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