Three new tips - vinegar & meows & scratching

These are pics of my 1/2" litter dam that I made by cutting a toilet paper roll in half and lengthwise and rolling tightly until it's diameter was about a 1/2". It works great. It just sits in the RP hole and is secure enough on its own. The cats don't seem to care either.


I also decided to do a tip section.

Tip #1 - how to cut down on scratching litter & poo
Try treating your cats on the floor to get them to jump down and stop scratching. This works great for me. Their scratching is only bad when I don't catch them going potty. The kitties are getting smarter though. It's not nearly as messy as it was a couple of weeks ago. They don't like having #2 on their paws either. In fact the last several poo's that I've found had a clean seat. Woohoo!

Tip #2 - playing in water while flushing
When I'm scooping & cleaning up the cats want to watch the flushing ritual & participate. By participating I mean they will paw at their #1 and #2's while they are in the process of being flushed down the toilet. A tip that I got from the Yahoo TT Cat group is to put some vinegar in the toilet before I flush. The vinegar smell in the water should keep their paws out of it. I haven't tried this yet so I'll have to get back to you on it.

Tip #3 - pay attention to your cat's behavior
Yesterday, Eleanor was going around meowing and she's normally not that vocal. My husband then said 'Oh yeah she was meowing like that earlier too.' So I got up and checked the toilet and her RP was clean but it was a little bit low on litter. I put a couple of scoops of litter in it and she jumped right up and went #2. So Eleanor was telling me "Hey fill my litter box." Don't ignore a meowing cat!

Here's to a new year without kitty litter

Things are going great with the 1/2" hole. Eleanor is still the messy one. She keeps all of her paws in the litter and sometimes there's drips of pee on the seat and if I don't catch them doing #2 they try to cover it and make quite a mess. I keep the wipes on top of the toilet. Boy what a life saver!

Yesterday, I had to use the toilet & moved the RP to the sink but Eleanor kept climbing up on the seat so I moved her to the floor. Eleanor then jumped in the RP on the sink and went pee! Guess we both had to go. I wonder if she would have gone in the toilet without the RP there.

I won't be home New Year's Eve. My sister will be pet sitting. Maybe I'll make the hole a tiny bit bigger next Friday. Here's to hopefully a new year without kitty litter.

Litter Dams!

Last night I tried creating my first litter dam. I used a straw with duct tape but the cats just thought it was a toy and removed it. I used duct tape to cover the hole and this morning I cut a toilet paper roll in half and also lengthwise. I then rolled it up until it was about a 1/2". I had a treat ceremony with the new setup and made sure to put plenty of water in their wet food this morning. Eleanor already used it and went pee. I also bought a new litter scoop. The old one was too big and actually made some holes in the roast pan. Not big but a pain just the same. We got a new camera for Christmas so I took some pics that I'll share with you. I had house guests for the last two days and yesterday I'm not sure what happened but the couch was 'wet'. It didn't smell like cat pee but I cleaned it with my cat cleaner stuff anyway. I sure hope it's not from the kitties. It will be my first set back.

Pleasantly surprised when I got home from work

I'm lucky in many ways. I work 10-6:30 5 days a week but I have an hour commute. My husband on the other hand works 3 14-hr days a week. This works out great because the cats aren't by themselves too often. In the morning, I feed my cats a half can (1/4 each) of moist Friskies. I usually feed them before I take a shower but I've been trying to change my routine and feed them as soon as I get up. Yesterday I didn't feed them until 7:30 and they didn't go potty by the time I left and my husband was at work. I was nervous all day at work because of what I'd come home to. I knew that they both had to do #2's and at least one #1. They've been spoiled up until now because I clean their roast pan each time I find a present. I was afraid that somebody might rebel and go potty elsewhere. Good news though! I came home and there were two #2's and at least one #1 and no accidents. The seat was a little messy but boy was I happy. I will now feed them as soon as I get up and to speed along the process I'll add a little water to the moist food.

Phew.. got through Christmas

I've been putting off creating a hole in the roast pan because of Christmas. I had my in-laws over and didn't want any mishaps. Everything went great. My mother-in-law & sis-in-law even got to see the kitties use the toilet. They thought it was cool. One tip I wanted to share with you is the blinking trick. In the cat world, it is rude to stare at a cat. There's a trick though and it is to blink slowly. When I am staring at my cats I will blink at them. This means in kitty speak "I know I'm staring but it's not in a rude way". Usually your cat will blink back or look away. Sunshine blinks back all the time. Eleanor doesn't seem to care. But I do practice the blinking technique and I think it's helpful in TT because when I am watching them go potty I can blink at them to let them know "Not being rude just friendly". I think it makes them more comfortable.

Here's a couple of things that I've noticed. When I watch them go potty I coerce them down with treats when they're finished and they don't have a chance to scratch because I dump it into the toilet. However, when I'm not around they get into a scratching frenzy and I've noticed later that they scratched their own poo and they get it all over the seat. Yuck! Sometimes they even fling it on the wall. Double Yuck! Easy enough to clean up with wipes but still a pain just the same. Hopefully they get past that stage. Eleanor is also sometimes gets her #2 on the edge of the seat. She has started to put two paws on the seat but most times all 4 paws are in the litter.

Sunshine is still my #1 student! She always has 3 or 4 paws on the seat. :)

Pics of my cuties

Here's some pics of my cuties. Sunshine is 2 yrs old and we've only had her since Feb 2007. We are Sunshine's second family. Eleanor (tabby cat) is 3 yrs old and we've had her since kittenhood. Koko my Blue Chow is about 8 years old. We call Koko 'our third kitty' cuz she's always there with our cats. I'll take some pics of my toilet setup and post later. Things are going great. The cats are getting the hang of it. Sunshine automatically puts all 4 paws on the seat. Eleanor is still working on it. She just started putting her front paws on the seat. BTW I had to move the treats from under the sink. Eleanor was able to open the latch and open the treat canister. LOL!

Still going good!

Well it's now two days since my last post. Things are still going good. Eleanor is my treat hound and she's really smart about scheming for treats. On Monday, I heard noise coming from the bathroom so I went in there to investigate. When I got in the bathroom I didn't see anything but I still heard the noise. I opened the door under the sink and there's Eleanor. The noise was her trying to open the treat canister which she did manage. What a sneak! She also does it with catnip, dog food or cat food. There are teeth marks all around my catnip canister. Because of Eleanor all cat food, dog food and catnip needs to be away from her cat teeth. The dog's food is kept in it's own trash can.

Yesterday, I caught Eleanor doing #2 and she has all 4 legs in the litter and her butt was over the toilet seat. I didn't want to scare her so I didn't try moving her right away. When she started to go I was able to move her feet on the toilet seat. I gave her lots of praise & treats of course. I've now switched the treats to regular cat food. If you ever go to the pet store there's a sample section and my cats just think it's treats. I love it.. free 'treats' ! Most of her poo made it in the litter. Clean up wasn't that bad.

I'm having company over this weekend and next weekend. So I made a little bathroom sign. I modified it from an existing one that was out there (additional information about this poem as of March 13 2008--the original poem was created by Jo http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/CatsT-Training/files/Humor%20/ and I have decided to remove the poem below as I did not ask permission).

I wonder what my in-laws and grandparents will think. Haha! My in-laws have around 7 cats. They will need to share the toilet with my cats. I only have one bathroom in our little 3 BR ranch. I'm going to clean their roast pan today. I was thinking of putting the good litter in a bag so I can reuse it. That SWHEAT litter ain't cheap! I think I'll try bleach to clean the RP. It doesn't look dirty but the cats have been smelling it a lot lately.

Sunshine is the A+ student? Wow!

I do have to say that things are going very well. No mishaps just a little poo issue. There have been two poo episodes so far. The cat goes poo (not sure which one yet) but steps in it and gets it on the toilet seat and flings it on the floor. No biggie... I just clean it up with a wipe. I figure the kitty will figure it out. I did see my Sunshine go #2 with her two front legs on the toilet seat and then she even placed her back feet right next to them. Way to go! The funny thing is that Sunshine has always been our 'slow' kitty compared to our smart Eleanor. Sunshine's first owner said that she wouldn't go in the litter box all the time. I never had potty problems with Sunshine though. I think the first owner just didn't keep the LB clean enough. I did notice though that Sunshine has problems using the regular litter box in that she'd sometimes get #2 on her legs or tail. That's why I think it's so ironic that Sunshine's my A+ student right now.

Toilet training the cats - yes I'm doing it!

I am on a new adventure. I am determined to get kitty litter out of my life! I have two kitty cats; Eleanor - my Bengal-like striped tiger cat and Black Sunshine - my black part Coon cat. Eleanor is 3 yrs old and Sunshine is 2 yrs old. We've had Eleanor since kitten hood and Sunshine since Feb 2007. I compromised with my husband on naming our cats. He didn't want them to have just any female name so we named them after cars. You have to understand my husband loves racing. We even had a Nascar-themed wedding this past August! Our favorite drivers' diecasts were on top of our wedding cake (Tony Stewart & Denny Hamlin). Eleanor is the name of the Mustang in the movie 'Gone in 60 Seconds' and Black Sunshine is the name of a Mustang in a Rob Zombie song. Funny huh?

Getting back to kitty litter.. I hate it. I spend every day scooping kitty litter and then I put it into a Walmart plastic bag in the trash. Every week I remove all the kitty litter into the trash and it is so heavy. My husband then disposes of it and buys a new bag of litter every other week. We live in a town where you have to buy expensive (but cheaply constructed) 'town' trash bags for the trash truck to pick your trash. This has forced us to become very good at recycling. At first I was recycling to save money but now I do it for our environment too. The town won't let you recycle from the curb if you don't have one of these town-bought trash bags with it. So we use town trash bags sparingly & regular trash bags which my husband smuggles to work to dispose of in their dumpster.

My story of kitty litter:
I was using scoopable kitty litter with two litter boxes. I found out from the groomer about 3 months ago that the reason my Black Sunshine kept getting knots on her behind and back legs was because her long fur was touching the scoopable litter when she peed. Yuck and here I thought she was just a messy kitty! The groomer said that she also had this problem with her long hair kitty and she recommended the cheap regular clay kitty litter. So I made the switch and Sunshine now doesn't have the matting problem anymore. However, clay litter STINKS. No matter what you do the stench is just bad. I scooped every day and disposed of every week but it just stunk.

Needless to say I was getting sick of cleaning litter boxes so about two months ago I disposed of the litter in one box and didn't fill it back up. So now the cats were sharing just one kitty litter box and they seemed fine with it. This is about the time that I stumbled across the Litter Kwitter web site and then started doing more & more research on toilet training cats.

Making the transition to the toilet:

1. If you are training two cats and only have one toilet, get them used to sharing one litter box because in the end they will be sharing one toilet. I also recommend leaving your toilet seat up so the cats can get curious about the toilet. Curiosity is a good thing. Let them play in the water. It won't hurt them. Let them see you do your #1 and #2's in the toilet and then watch you flush it away. Also, stop using any products that make your toilet blue before letting the cats explore the toilet. Get some of those bathroom wipes to keep on top of the toilet.

2. Slowly swap out your kitty litter with a flushable brand. I used S-WHEAT brand as it is flushable and from what I could tell it's the only flushable brand that guarantees it is safe for septic systems. Expensive though-- a small bag was almost $10 (hopefully this is the last bag of litter that we buy)

3. I had a very large covered litter box so I switched them over to a small regular litter box that I had lying around & filled it with the S-WHEAT litter and a small amount of their old clay litter. One of my cats likes to eat the S-WHEAT litter and the package says that this can happen because it's made out of wheat. That's why they recommend mixing with old litter because they'll be less likely to eat it.

4. I then slowly moved the litter box to the bathroom. I moved it from the corner of the kitty room closer to the door for a couple of days and then next to the sink in the bathroom for a couple of days and then next to the toilet for a couple of days.

5. I'm lucky in that my cats are treat driven so each time I moved the litter box we had a little treat ceremony over by the litter box in it's new location.

6. I slowly raised the litter box over a couple of weeks. First I used an old pillow because I didn't think the box would slide around as much and then I added a box of large clasp manilla envelopes below that. I then removed the pillow as it wasn't as stable as I would have liked and used some cardboard boxes I had lying around. At one point I noticed that they needed a little step to get into the litter box so I used one of their old scoopable litter plastic containers and that worked great.

7. All during this time, I tried my best to clean out their litter box every time one of the kitties went potty. It was especially easy in the bathroom because every time I used the toilet I could check on their litter box. This also helped me pinpoint when my cats used it. The cats also got used to me watching them & encouraging them while they did their business.

8. Sat Dec 15th - Now the big switch! I decided to go with the Roasting Pan technique with a soft toilet seat. I was considering the Sitz Bath but didn't want to spend $15 so I went with the $3 Roast Pans (came as a set of 2). I had a small box that the roast pan fit into and rested the toilet seat (unscrewed & removed the top half) onto the roast pan in the cardboard box on top of the leaning tower of other boxes. One of the cats went #2 in it. I was very happy.

9. Sunday Dec 16th - This morning I noticed that one of the kitties tried to go #1 but missed. OH NO what a mess! There was a little in the RP (roast pan) and some drips on the toilet seat but most of it went under the RP and was absorbed by the cardboard box. I then decided it was time to move the contraption onto it's permanent home.. the toilet! I read that some cats might not go to the bathroom for 24 hours after you do this. I had another treat ceremony on the toilet with the cats. I then fed them their moist food mixed with a little tiny bit of water to make them want to go pee. I heard someone in the bathroom and looked and it was Sunshine. She was getting ready to go pee. I watched her and then gave her a treat and lots of praise & then scooped out the pee. Half an hour later Sunshine was in the toilet again and this time she did #2. Woohoo! Treats & praise & scooped out the poo. I'm so happy it's going in the roast pan & nowhere else. Eleanor usually goes potty right after she eats (I've gotten used to their schedules) but she's being stubborn and won't use the toilet. She's come over to me and whined a couple of times. I made sure that she saw Sunshine's success before I cleaned it up and I brought her in a couple of times. So now I'm on Eleanor Watch. UPDATE: It is now 2pm and Eleanor came to me crying so I took her into the bathroom again & this time she went pee. Yippee! Both kitties have now used the RP in the toilet. Here's a funny one for you. My husband comes in from snowblowing and says, 'Can you get the toilet ready for me? I have to use it.' I told him it's really easy.. you just have to lift the seat and remove the roast pan. I did remove it for him. I guess it's a training process for us all.. haha.

Here's some great cat toilet training links:
This first link is the BEST on TT cats. It's a Yahoo Group on toilet training cats. You have to sign up for the group and it can take several days to get accepted but it's SO worth it.
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/CatsT-Training/
http://www.kittygoespotty.com/toilet-training-tips.php
http://www.karawynn.net/mishacat/faq.html
http://cats.about.com/od/litterboxproblems/a/toilet_training_2.htm
http://www.coolkarma.com/cat/gettingready.html
http://home.gci.net/~divs/behavior/toilet_cat.html
http://www.mingusmingusmingus.com/Mingus/cat_training.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLeOXVfjA7s
http://www.karawynn.net/mishacat/toilet.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.cat-world.com.au+toilet
http://echeng.com/cats/pooping/