Potential leak - anything I can do to diagnose?

Apodemus

Belenus said:

Working_in_pyjamas said:

Apodemus said:

With the right sort of food colouring, you could probably do a leak test...on the cats!

Absolute genius! Have fed the cats some food colouring and will wait and see! 

I presume that you are both joking. 

The cat would metabolise any food colouring and it is unlikely to colour its urine.

Years ago as an experiment I tried to colour a house plant by putting red food colouring in the water. The plant sucked up all the coloured water but the leaves didn't change colour at all.

The comment was tongue-in-cheek but urine colour can indeed be influenced by intake of certain dyes, for example, betacyanin is often observed in urine after eating beetroot. 

FreeBear

Working_in_pyjamas said: so I’m blaming it on one of the cats - strange that they would have an accident in the room where the trays are but no harm done.

Cats will sometimes pee & !!!!!! outside the tray. If the litter hasn't been cleaned out, or they are stressed. Have they been neutered ?

If they haven't, it could be one is in heat and scent marking.

carefullycautious

If your cat is drinking more and peeing more do check with your vet that he/she does not have a urine infection or other problem going on.

Working_in_pyjamas

FreeBear said:

Working_in_pyjamas said: so I’m blaming it on one of the cats - strange that they would have an accident in the room where the trays are but no harm done.

Cats will sometimes pee & !!!!!! outside the tray. If the litter hasn't been cleaned out, or they are stressed. Have they been neutered ?

If they haven't, it could be one is in heat and scent marking.

They’re both neutered, they live a charmed life so defo not stressed! One of them does have early stage kidney disease, he has regular blood tests and blood pressure checks (last done 3 weeks ago) despite not showing any symptoms as it was only picked up when he had a blood test prior to having a tooth out. 

Working_in_pyjamas

carefullycautious said:

If your cat is drinking more and peeing more do check with your vet that he/she does not have a urine infection or other problem going on.

Thanks, hopefully just a one off as the trays have been used religiously beforehand and there’s been no repeat. 

FreeBear

Did occur to me earlier.... A quick and easy test to see if it is cat urine is to shine a UV light on it. If it is urine, it should glow yellow to green when dry - You may need to do it at night with the lights off as the glow can be rather faint at times.

https://www.wikihow.com/Find-Cat-Urine-With-a-UV-Light