Many of you have probably seen the Ben Stiller movie "Meet the Fockers" and if you have, you know that the cat in that movie, Mr Jinx, is trained to use the HUMAN toilet. Well, this is exactly what this blog is about. It is for those of us who wish to turn our own felines into Mr Jinx's and be FREE of that smelly old cat box once and for all!
My journey to toilet train my cat Sebastion began 14 months ago after realizing that the only thing that I really hated about being a pet owner was that darned litter box! Oh, deciding to embark on this unusual path (although more and more people are toilet training their cats all the time now) wasn't my first inclination. No, I was lucky enough to score a Litter Robot off of Craigslist for the bargain price of $150, and this machine is really wonderful in lots of ways. For instance, it keeps the odor contained within it, it is SELF CLEANING, and it doesn't need to be emptied frequently at all. The only thing it didn't do was keep litter from getting scattered all over the floor. And this inconvenience was it's ultimate undoing. Anyone who owns a cat knows there is about nothing worse than, for example, getting out of the shower and unexpectedly walking through a scattering of dirty cat litter! Eeew! Or finding it on your couch or in your bed.
Also, the Litter Robot is quite big, and pretty noisy, so I knew I would need a new solution to my kitty cat woes. Enter human toilet training.
First I did lots of research online. I wasn't even sure this was a REAL thing people do (outside of the movies, I mean :) But You Tube has plenty of videos showing kitty cat's in various stages of human toilet training. After more research still, I chose between several Toilet Training Kits for cats and settled on Citikitty, because it was the best price and had the most positive reviews.
Sure enough, after following the instructions and employing LOTS of patience, and even more stubbornness, I find myself with a cat that is 90% human toilet trained! Yay! It's been about six months since I took a way the Citikitty training seat, and let me tell you- I DO NOT miss the litter box- at all!
However, Sebastion might because when I am asleep or gone at work, he will use my carpet, or worse- my bed, for his litter box! Boo!
He realizes what he is doing is wrong, because he does it when he knows he wont get caught. So, the toilet training is not yet complete. So, don't believe the claims that it just takes a few weeks. I have heard some say it can, but for most it takes much longer and it generally works better for kittens. This may be part of my problem with Sebastion, because he was seven years old when I started training him.
I don't say that YOU should human toilet train your cat, but I don't see a thing wrong with making your life easier while hopefully enhancing your pet owning experience. Even though my results have not been perfect, I would do it over again, and probably will as I am on the market for a new kitten :)
I would however LOVE to learn how to get Sebastion past his determination to have "accidents" when I'm not around as this is no fun at all. And I know there must be a way, because there are many who claim their cat has "graduated" and I assume this means that they are accident free kitty cats.
However, when I joined Cats T Training at Yahoo dot com, which is a group SUPPOSED to help people like me get through the training process and boasts many a success story, they CENSORED my story because it wasn't all "Cat toilet training is all butterflies and rainbows". For the record, the story I tried to post there, is the same story I just posted here- that I have had 90% success toilet training my tabby cat, but I need advice on how to complete that other 10% of training, and that it hasn't been an easy process. Also, I just wanted to know how many people in that group had REAL long term accident-free success T Training their cats. Fair enough.
Yeah, the moderators weren't having that! So what's the point of the group anyways?
I canceled my membership with that Gestapo. I am nothing if not absolutely honest and will not be censored- especially if what I am saying can help people and sharing honest experience can do nothing but! Thank goodness for Blogs, huh?
Yes, I AM going to continue researching ways to complete my cat training experience! And come what may, at least I got this far, and it makes a funny story to tell my friends. I mean a toilet trained cat? Who does that?! ;-)
