Toilet training

Hi! I'm new here, and have a few questions about toilet training my cats. Has anyone else ever done this?

Here is my situation: I've done a lot of reading online, and have been transitioning my 2 cats by first moving the litterbox to the bathroom, then slowly raising it up to the level of the toilet, and then finally placing it on the toilet. I had to rig up a heavy base to keep it weighted down, but it works!

Then I ordered the Citiykitty toilet training seat, and installed that. I've heard good and bad things about it, but I figured if it worked it would be well worth the $30, and if not, at least I tried! So I'm using the toilet training seat, and one cat, Chloe (2.5 years), is using it just fine. She did seem a little confused the first few days, but I expected that and she's adjusting just fine. My other cat, Anya (1.5 years) used it once, and then has been avoiding it. It's stable, doesn't move around, and has litter about 1 inch deep, so it's not a total change from the litterbox. I keep it very clean, and clean it after each time Chloe uses it. I was afraid that Anya was just holding her pee and poop in, but today I discovered her secret: she'd been peeing and pooping on a pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room! So I've cleaned that all up, but I'm afraid that she will just start using the carpet or furniture! I've tried placing her on it, and since she did use it once, I know she knows where it is. But she just howls and runs aways. She's been jumping up to use the litterbox when it was on the toilet for weeks, so I don't understand what the problem is now. Although it appears that she is very stubborn!

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! I have to say these forums are great and I wish I'd known about them a long time ago, but now I'm happy to have found them!

Thanks everyone!


Ronda

Hey Ronda-
Welcome to TCS! Well. I don't really know first hand how to train a cat, but I'm sure that someone else will come along with better advice But have you tried keeping the cats in the bathroom with the door shut, that way they have no choice of where to go to the bathroom. It seems logical to me, that way they realize "hey this is my new place to do my business" Then after they get the hang of it, let them have a little bit more freedom until they got it mastered! As for your cat going to the bathroom on the dirty clothes- it's their way of telling you "hey mom, I don't like that you took my kitty litter box away- PUT IT BACK!" But you just gotta show them who's boss

IMO its cruel to expect ALL cats to do this. If one will do it fine but IMO I would not try to make the other do it. She's already protesting - pay attention to HER desires, not yours.

I'm not in favor of training them to use a human toliet - its not that hard or inconvenient to use a normal litter pan and scoop it. Its part of being a cat owner.

There was a thread a couple months ago about another person's experience with it - kind of a day by day journal. She had good success, but realized that if she moved too fast in the training process, her cats wouln't respond well. A couple of times she had to "go back a step", let the cats adjust to that for a while, and then move on to the next step.

I know some people have had a lot of success with this, i'd like to try it someday. I think the overall trick is a lot of patience and willingness to move SLOW with the toilet training process. I'll try to find the thread and post a link to it.

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...oilet+training

here's the link.

thanks for the link!

If Anya continues to avoid the toilet training seat of course I won't force her to. I don't think you can force a cat to do anything! But I'm not quite ready to give it up yet. Thanks!

Toilet training can be done but if ever the cat's rear gets splashed by a drop of water or anything else, you will either have to start from scratch or the cat will never use the toilet again.