Science Behind Cat Urine Odors and Stains

Cat urine is one of the worst smelling substances on the planet and stains left behind are harder to clean off than ketchup from your shirt. To understand why, you need to go beyond regular world understanding of it. Like anything else in the world cat urine is composed of molecules of different kinds. In fact cat urine is mainly composed of 4 elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It's the way those elements are combined that gives cat urine that ability to produce stains and odors. There are three major components found in the pee that are worth noting. These are the Urea, the Urochrome (or Urobilin) and most significantly the Uric Acid. They serve an important part in cat's metabolism processes.

I'm not a chemist but I've been curious about what makes cat urine smell and stain so bad. So after looking into it, I've figured out what effect each component has on the surface. I'm not going into deep chemistry here but here are the major causes and properties of your cat urine troubles.
Urea is the component that remains in a sticky state long after the pee has dried out from the floor or wherever it was. This is however easy to clean and should not be a major course for concern. The only time it creates odor is when mixed with water, which turns it into ammonia. Its major role in the metabolism is to exert excess nitrogen from the body. Each molecule is composed of 1 carbon, 4 hydrogen, 2 nitrogen and 1 oxygen particle or if expressed as a chemical formula, CH4N2O.
Urochrome (or Urobilin) is the pigment which gives urine its color. It has a feature that makes it glow when exposed to ultra violet rays therefore people use black light to spot urine stains. Since cats are not much of water drinkers their urine is almost always contains a lot of the pigment. Therefore whenever cats pee, they leave all those stains which are notably a very stubborn form of stain that many people have trouble managing. One molecule is composed of 33 carbon, 42 hydrogen, 4 nitrogen and 5 oxygen particles or we can express it as C33H42N4O6.
Uric acid is generally responsible for the bad odor that comes from the cat's pee. The main reason behind the strong smell from cats as opposed to other animals is due to the fact that cats do not take too much water. This causes cat urine to remain highly concentrated in uric acid which in turn results in the strong unpleasant smell. In the uric acid, you will find the crystals and salts. This makes the smell even worse since they tend to decompose with time turning into ammonia. With ammonia coming into the scene, it further reacts with the air around to produce even worse smell. Uric acid gets created when purines break down. Purines are a part of a chemical structure of genes in living organisms and plants, therefore your cat gets it from its food. Each molecule of uric acid is composed of 5 carbon, 4 hydrogen, 4 nitrogen and 3 oxygen particles or we can express it as C5H4N4O3.
As you can see, each major component of cat urine is made out of the same elements, but due to difference in structure, each of those components has different properties. The idea behind cat urine removers is to break up this molecular structure and rearrange it in the way as to remove all unwanted properties of the urine. Interestingly enough most advisable household cleaners: water, hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, baking soda and cornstarch partially consist of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon (except of water) as well.

For more information on cat urine and cat urine removal visit Cat Urine Odor Removal

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