Toilet Training?

[filamgirl618]

Hello everyone! So I have a big question about toilet training. I've always been curious and interested in the fact that people have toilet trained their cats but I've never gone through with it mainly because I was fairly content with my litter box (the Omega Paw one where you turn it and all the poo and such gets collected into a drawer), we devoted our spare bedroom for the cats, and that I wasn't sure if me and my husband would be able to dedicate ourselves to something like that for so long. Well recently, my husband's cousin has had to crash with us for a bit (so far, it's been a month, but I won't get into that...) and so we've now had to move the litter box into the dining/living room area and has thus made itself much more known. Not only that, but my dog has a taste for cat litter/poo if she can't wait for dinnertime. So, I'm starting to think that toilet training may be the way to go this time around.

I've been doing some research and obviously there are a bunch of options. I'm thinking that we're either gonna get this book/DVD combo called "The Toilet Trained Cat" by Aston Lau or get the Litter Kwitter (however that's VERY expensive for us). So we were wondering all of your opinions on toilet training cats and for those who have successfully toilet trained your cats, if you can give us any advice at all. It would be greatly appreciated! Thanks a bunch!!!

 

[goldenkitty45]

I tried it once with my first cat. He did fine till the center piece was taken out and he realized there was water in there - could not get him up on the toilet again.

But my objection to trying to do this is mainly for medical reasons:

1. You cannot monitor how much or how little the cat is peeing or if there is blood in the urine or poop. This is vital with males and UTI's!

2. You cannot test the poop or get a sample for the vet for worms.

The third reason is mainly psychological on the cat's part - its unnatural to do it an they cannot cover their pee/poop.

I would not advise you to try - stick with the litter pan and scoop daily or every other day.

Oh and one more; friends of ours with 2 Ocicats taught theirs to use the toilet. However, the cats would wait till they came home to use the toilet and this lead the male to have more UTI problems. So they went back to using the litter box.

 

[missymotus]

I had 3 of my pet Ocicats trained using the Litter Kwitter, I trained all 3 at the same time and it took I think about 12 weeks to complete the training.

They were successfully trained for over a year with no issues, I only went back to litter trays when I brought in more cats (breeding cats, no point in training them)

About 2 years now since they went back to trays and they'll still use the toilet when visiting my mums house, lid is kept down here because of kittens so they have no choice but trays at home.

You have to be prepared to go back to trays at any time, and not stress the cats if they resist the toilet as many do. I lent my LK to someone, her Bengal was fine while the Ragdoll had issues everytime they moved up a level so she had to give up.
I only trained mine for fun, just to see if they could do it.