toilet training kitty: silly or ingenious?
Friends of ours are planning on bringing home new baby kitties soon, so naturally our brunchtime conversation the other day ventured towards exciting topics like kitty litter and boxes. Inevitably, the subject of toilet training cats came up. But aside from a scene or two in Meet the Fockers, none of us have ever witnessed this miraculous training in action. Have any of you? There’s a company called Citi Kitty that makes a toilet training kit for cats. How wonderful would it be to not have an ugly litter box taking up space in our small apartments? If you visit their website, you can see the wonders for yourself! Watch the video! It’s highly amusing, but we can’t picture our cat doing this. What do you think? Is this a smart thing, or a waste of time? — Angela M.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:09 am
i really would love to try this out!
May 16th, 2007 at 9:11 am
My husband did this with his cat, who reneged on the solid waste part of the deal - but she goes through litter so much more slowly now, it’s a huge plus. Waste of time…you’d rather spend it cleaning litter pans?
May 16th, 2007 at 9:56 am
My roommate tried doing this to her cat while we were in college only to end up with disastrous results. He refused to use it and started going under the bed. We were back on the litter box in less than a week.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Don’t the cats miss the satisfaction of scraping and hiding their prize afterwards? Hmm. Will have to think about this one.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Except then you get cat paw mess on the seat!
May 16th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Our family cats were toilet trained. My brother was a bit of a skeptic but was particularly impressed one day as the cat ran past him beating him to the bathroom. Less scooping makes sense to me!
May 16th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
A friend of mine while I was in college who had a cat who not only used the toilet but also flushed.
I say do it, it’s worth it to walk in on the cat and the cat gives you a dirty look.
May 16th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Scrappy,
If they use the toilet instead of a litter box, then there won’t be cat paw mess. Think of it, their feet will have the same stuff on them that your bare feet would have in your home. Sounds great to me.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Unless the cat flushes, this seems like it would be even more gross than a litter box. Litter is designed to absorb smell. Standing water is not.
May 17th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
I tried this with my kitty. It almost worked, but then I moved and he started using moving boxes as litter pans. I gave up, but always wished I stuck with it. I put a clear plastic bowl under the lid with litter in it and he got used to that for a while. Then I started decreasing the amount of litter in there until it was just the bowl with holes in the bottom so he could get used to the sound of his stuff hitting the water. I was days away from taking the bowl away, but then the move happened. Rats.
May 19th, 2007 at 10:59 am
i tried this with my two cats and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. i have never had to clean so much and my cats were not pleased with the loss of their litter box.
May 21st, 2007 at 9:19 am
My husband and I managed to toilet train two cats. Don’t let the “there is no mess” party line fool ya. Cats are not people, they do not always directly center their business over the toilet itself. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the seat, the lid and sometimes even the side of the toilet. I most definitely would NOT recommend doing this if you have to share a toilet with the cat. It’s just gross.
After about two years of being toilet trained, one of our cats simply refused to use the toilet any more, and after about of month of having to clean up his mess on the carpet, I gave in and got them a litter box. I have never seen kitties so happy! They were so overjoyed to see their long lost litterbox that they quite literally dug all the litter out of it on it’s first use.
Long story short, it’s just not worth it. The cat’s don’t really like using the toilet, and you more or less are going to have to give up that toilet to them. On the plus side, toilet trained cats do lead to a lot less odor.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:47 pm
my husband trained our cat + it’s wonderful
May 21st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
i mean he trained our cat himself with a metal bowl he lined with a plastic grocer bag + he cut a hole in the center of the bowl + just kept making the hole bigger until it was a circle + then he removed it. the cat liked scratching at the noisy grocery bag in place of kitty litter. you don’t need a store bought kit.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Years ago, I potty trained my cat with just plastic wrap (lift the seat, cover toilet with plastic wrap, place a small scoop (1 cup or less) of litter at the center of the plastic wrap, put down the seat). My cat used the toilet on the first try. He scratched at the litter, his nail broke the saran wrap, the litter fell into the toilet, he turned around on the seat and did #2.
I have two young cats now (under a year old) and tried to train the older one using the same method. She sat ON the plastic wrap and broke through the plastic wrap. It was a mess and she was startled so I stopped the potty training immediately for fear that she would shy away from the toilet due to this experience.
I decided to get the kit and it arrived in the mail today. We’ll see if my cats have any success but I am willing to give it a try in hopes of never needing to scoop the toilet.
Some things I’ve learned through my research on potty training a cat:
Use flushable litter
Gradually move the litter box closer to the toilet
Potty training success seems to increase, the younger the cat is
Wish me luck!
August 17th, 2007 at 10:01 am
I have trained my two cats to do this.
It is worth all the effort.
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Apparently this is a doable thing, as there is books out about this.
February 19th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
i’m currently toilet training my cat using the litter kwitter. take a look at my blog. i post entries almost daily and i have photos and videos too. so far we are doing very well.
http://www.freewebs.com/myhellokitten