For all the joy they bring into the home, one aspect of having a cat that most owners don’t often appreciate is the smell. Experienced pet parents know it only takes one indoor accident to create a pungent odor throughout the house. With their highly concentrated urine that can readily soak into various hard and soft surfaces, cats have a knack for making a lasting stink.
Cleaning cat urine thoroughly and quickly is the only way to keep your home comfortable for the family and guests and prevent future accidents. Unfortunately, these stains present unique challenges that many everyday solutions often can’t solve. If you’re ready for a fresher home, we’ll explore five tips and tricks to remove the cat urine smell from your whole house.
How to Remove Cat Urine Smell From Your Whole House
1. Use a Blacklight to Find Old Urine Spots
We can sometimes sniff out the location of a cat urine spot, but more often than not, the smell seemingly comes from all sides, leaving us wondering where to begin our cleaning efforts. If you’ve been struggling to find the odor’s source, a UV light is an easy way to reveal hidden cat urine marks.
Blacklights or UV lights can be found at most major retailers. Start by turning the lights off, and closing the curtains to darken the room as much as possible. Then, sweep the light over your room.
Look for glowing yellow or neon green splatter patterns where your cat may have sprayed or urinated, often along the lower edges of walls or furniture. Once you find them, mark the perimeter of the urine stains so you know the area you must cover with your cleaner.
Check for stains where cats might secretly urinate, like behind or underneath furniture or in the back of a closet. Remember that UV light only works on dried cat urine stains, not fresh ones, so they are more practical if the cat pee smell has been around for a day or two.
2. Use an Enzyme Cleaner on Cat Urine Stains
Cat urine is more challenging than most stains, so many of our favorite cleaners typically fall well short of removing them for good. Uric acid crystals and other odor-causing compounds cement into carpet and furniture fibers.
Many cleaning products do little more than mask the smell, and even the best steamers and carpet cleaners can often only remove a small portion of the stain.
Enzyme sprays are pet and people-safe and can work on numerous surfaces without the risk of staining or damage. You only need to shake the bottle and saturate the area. Enzymes break down urine particles as they make contact and continue working until the urine is gone.
In many cases, you don’t even have to blot up the cleaner afterward, but be sure to follow the directions on your particular product.
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3. Pull Up Carpet If Needed
Measuring the extent of the cat urine is crucial if you hope to eliminate it entirely. You may clean a carpet to remove a stain and smell from the top layer to your satisfaction, but urine that soaks through to the carpet padding or the subfloor will continue pumping out an odor and attracting your cat for repeat performances.
The same applies to hard flooring that may allow urine to seep between the cracks.
Pull up your carpet at the corner and inspect for urine damage in the padding. If the padding is saturated or smells like urine, go another step and check the subfloor underneath. While you may be able to refresh the carpet and remove the cat urine odor, padding is cheap and challenging to clean.
Replace any carpet padding that smells pungent. If the damage extends to the subfloor, use your enzyme cleaner to break down the urine. Once it dries, apply a stain-blocking primer over the wood to prevent stains and odors from spreading.
4. Air Out the House
Cleaning the cat urine stain is the only effective way to eliminate the odor. Still, if your house isn’t even tolerable in the meantime, you have a few options to reduce, if not remove, the smell quickly and conveniently.
Start by opening all the windows to get a cross-breeze. Turn on any overhead fans, and set up box fans in the windows to push the smelly air out and pull fresh air in.
5. Sprinkle Baking Soda for Immediate Deodorizing
If you don’t have an enzyme cleaner but want to quickly remove a smelly cat stain, several household staples can provide a temporary refresh. Baking soda is at the top of the list.
Sodium bicarbonate neutralizes acidic and basic odor molecules, making it a versatile all-natural deodorizer in countless situations.
Baking soda is notably helpful as an initial attack for wet pee marks because it absorbs moisture as it deodorizes. When sprinkled on a fresh urine mark on a carpet or fabric, it will soak up the stain rather than push it deeper into the material, as you might do when you blot stains with a cloth.
When you catch the stain in time, baking soda can save your carpet padding and subfloor until you can apply an enzyme cleaner. If you’re out of baking soda, you can use cornstarch or clean cat litter for a similar effect.
Baking soda also makes an excellent quick fix for dried urine marks raising a stink. The cat urine smell will often recede but appear days, weeks, or even months later if it gets wet again. High humidity and liquid spills saturate the embedded uric acid crystals, causing them to refill the whole house with the smell.
Sprinkling baking soda on old cat urine will deodorize it while drawing away the moisture that causes the compounds to reactivate. It may not be a permanent fix or enough to keep your cat from smelling it, but baking soda can save your nostrils in a pinch.
How to Use Baking Soda to Deodorize Cat Urine Stains
Sprinkle a generous amount of baking soda over the cat pee stain. Depending on the extent of the stain, let it sit for at least 30 minutes or longer to absorb the odors and moisture. When dry, vacuum the powder.
Ideally, powdery materials like baking soda should be vacuumed using a wet/dry vacuum with a HEPA filter. Fine particulate matter can damage the motor on a conventional vacuum and may escape the grasp of a standard filter, causing more issues to solve.
Final Thoughts
Cats are known for occasionally making trouble, and nothing they do will foul up the home more than a noxious urine odor. The smell is unexpectedly tricky and persistent, leaving many of us ready to throw in the towel and call a professional.
While extensive damage may need expert intervention, following these tips and tricks to remove a urine smell will give you the best chance of overcoming the issue with minimal effort and maximum satisfaction.
Featured Image Credit: Pixel-Shot, Shutterstock
