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
http://www.karawynn.net
http://cats.about.com/od
http://www.coolkarma.com/cat
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
http://www.google.com/search
http://echeng.com/cats/pooping
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Toilet training the cats - yes I'm doing it!
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1 comments:
Wow, you have progressed to quite a big hole in the setup! Very encouraging to us other toilet-trainers. It's such a help for me to read other people's experiences and especially to see pix of their setups!
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