If you are looking for the greatest gold-mine of easy to use Cat Training advice ever crammed into a newsletter series then read on!
Cats Forget to Flush
There are cats out there, right now, using human toilets in human bathrooms to do their business! Some may find this practice sick, especially when the cat shares the toilet with its housemates. Others may find it sensible.
Getting a cat to use a human toilet is in fact an option that many cat owners have adopted, with those living in apartments more likely to consider it. Cats are easier to housetrain than dogs, as they are much more particular about where they go. They bury their waste out of habit, and they will invariably choose their "elimination" location based on the surface. This is why cat litter works a treat. As long as the box is easy to find and access, housetraining a cat tends to be an unproblematic affair.
With kittens, you should limit the number of rooms that your pet can access, including the one with the litter box. As the kitten becomes accustomed to the box and gets it right, you can gradually increase its roaming area. This is important for kittens, as even a small house will seem much bigger to them than it does to us. Also it pays to have more than one box in big houses, especially when you've got multiple floors.
Because cats housetrain so easily, it is possible to exploit this behavior and train them in a much more targeted fashion. The target, of course, is the toilet. There are several variations on this training method, but the most important part is spacing out the steps in weekly or fortnightly intervals. This gives you the most chance at avoiding stress or confusion for the cat and therefore a better chance at success.
The process is not much more complicated than gradually moving a custom-built litter box over to and then on top of the toilet seat. It is custom-built so that it will safely sit on the toilet, and made of something (such as cardboard) that allows you to gradually reduce the height of the edges. In the box itself, newspaper can work much better than cat litter, because when the time comes you can drop it directly into the toilet.
After your cat has made it up there, make a hole in the middle (not too much bigger than a golf ball). You may also want to add a step or two up to the box and leave it there even after you've got it all working the way it should. From here, you (again, gradually) increase the size of the hole and decrease the amount of paper in the box. The next step is turning your "box" into a completely flat board and reinserting it underneath the seat. If all goes well, eventually you won't need the cardboard at all.
Expect the whole process to take anywhere from four to eight weeks, and bear in mind that there's no guarantee that it will work. Also, you may find that your cat's aim is worse than that of a male human, and decide to go back to basics with a litter box. Another alternative might be available in households with multiple bathrooms where you can designate a toilet as a "cat toilet." In these cases, you may even rig up a litter box that sits permanently on or just in toilet, which allows you to flush and clean with relative ease.
After all, you shouldn't expect your cat to flush. But that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Kind regards,
Author of Complete Cat Training
www.kingdomofpets/completecattraining/
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