Cat urine has a smell that is extremely hard to get rid of.  Like many others who have tried so many products to eliminate the smell, I have yet to find anything that truly works, even the ones that claim 100% or money back, well they haven't met my cats.  I've replaced carpet, furniture, tossed out clothing and no I'm not getting rid of the cats, they are family.  So, I started buying all sorts of products to remove this odor.

Many of the products that work as an odor neurtalizer (compared to masking the smell) do work much better.  In fact, there are recipes available for sale on ebay from various seller that use household ingredients to reduce/eliminate the smell.  I've tried that too, and believe it or not, that is the one that has worked the best for me.  It's very cheap to purchase and the ingredients are inexpensive as well.  (No I'm not a seller of the recipes or any of the products.)

One thing very important is to find out why your cat is eliminating outside the litter box in the first place to prevent it from happening again.  Of course a clean litter box daily and fresh water daily is a must, if you're not doing that then start immediately.

After reading numerous sights, trying over several hundreds of dollars in various products to reduce the smell, and then contacting my veternarian, there is one thing many people don't check for and most sights don't bother to tell you about--have your cat checked by your veternarian for crystals in the cat's urine!  Males are more likely to have crystals than females and crystals can reoccur in a cat.  All three of my cats had crystals, no wonder they didn't use the box at times.  A special diet food from the veternarian is used to reduce the crystals and the cats have as much water as they want.  One vet said too much magnesium (from tuna) could potentially cause crystals as well.  I didn't give them tuna, but they were still full of crystals.  Quality cat food does make a difference--a big difference in your cat's health!

As I'm going through this process with my cats, I continue to use the household cat urine recipe and the smell is almost gone.  What's important is identifying why they are eliminating outside the litter box and then fixing that.  I suppose many sights don't tell you about crystals in the urine so you continue to come back to purchase their products. 

My goal in writing this is to encourage people to have their cat checked by a veternarian and then work on the issues from there.  If no crystals, then what...the litter, the litter box itself, number of boxes (at least one more box than the number of cats), location of the box, quality of cat food, stress factors, and so on.  It's not easy to get to the root cause and there could be more than one factor, but stick with it.  Rubbing their noses in it is a bad idea and rarely works. 

Think of it this way, when a cat doesn't use the litter box, it's their way of bringing an issue to light.  It could be health issues, sanitary issues (would you stand in your own waste elimination again and again?), stress factors, attention needed, emotional signs (upset, angry, confused, etc.), and more.

Anyone who has a cat in their life knows that cats are independent and what causes one cat to urinate outside the box may be different from another.  Since they are family, we do this out of pure love.  See what products work for you, but above all, have your cat's health checked annually at a minimum.