Operation Toilet Training

Operation Toilet Training officially started Sunday, August 13. What in the world am I talking about, you wonder? I’ll explain; it might be a little long.

Since moving to Montevallo and a much smaller house, we (The Cats and I) have had some issues and misunderstandings with our litter box habits. Previously, they used two boxes, covered with one large wooden box, a “kitty outhouse” if you will. Now, they have two separate covered boxes (covered to keep Dog Breath from helping herself to “litter box crunchies” – no, she’s not weird, she’s just a normal dog). Apparently, the smaller space and the sharing of the boxes is causing some domination and territorial issues amongst the cat population. Throw in Squirt's neurotic litter box behavior, and you’ve got quite a mess. In the 4 ½ months we’ve been there, we’ve ironed out most of the problems and everyone is sharing the boxes nicely, most of the time. Occasionally, there is an ambush as one cat exits the box, but that doesn’t happen very often.

Enter Squirt, the sink pee-er, and also the most ambushed of them all. Squirt is my most neurotic cat, who has always had the habit of pooping in one box and peeing in the other. The problem with this method is that he cannot get his sisters to cooperate. They consistently use both boxes for both functions. So, after several incidents of peeing on the floor next to the box because he didn’t want to go in the smelly box (this is my assumption based on his behavior), he got the bright idea to pee in the bathroom sink. Don’t freak; this is the tiny bathroom that houses one litter box, and we rarely use it because it’s so small. He did this several mornings in a row, and it made me start thinking about toilet training them. I feel like he is a good candidate because he’s open to alternative places of pottying.

I did some Internet research and formulated a plan and timeline to start training. I also got Dave’s support because it involves occupying one of our bathrooms for the next couple of months. Yes, he thinks I’m as crazy as you do, but he admitted that it’s worth a try if it means getting rid of the litter boxes and solving our litter box issues. Sunday, I duct taped a disposable metal roasting pan into the toilet and put some flushable litter in it. I also began moving the litter boxes closer to the toilet. This has to be done little by little to keep them from freaking out on me. The plan is to slowly move the boxes into the bathroom and next to the toilet. Then I will slowly start raising them, a little at a time, to the height of the toilet. Once they will use them at toilet height, I will take the boxes away so that they will use the pan in the toilet. Once they are using the pan, I will gradually start cutting bigger and bigger holes in it until they get used to using the toilet water and not having litter to scratch in. Once the entire bottom of the pan is gone, they will be toilet trained. I estimate that we will be at that point around the end of October, hopefully. There are no guarantees that they will like using the toilet, even if they know how, but I’m going to give it a shot.

With all that said, we had a breakthrough last night! I went to check the toilet litter pan last night and the toilet lid was closed. When I opened it, I found that someone had used the litter in the toilet! I really didn’t expect this to happen so soon, so I was thrilled. At that point, I thought I might see them start to use the pan more and more since someone did it first. Well, this morning I woke up to scratching noises, and when I looked in the bathroom, Jewel was “covering” the litter pan. She actually took advantage of the entire roll of toilet paper that was on the wall to cover the mess in the pan. I had to laugh at the pile of toilet paper in the toilet; that’s so typical of her. When I removed the toilet paper, I saw that she had actually used the pan! So, since the inception of Operation Toilet Training, they have used the toilet pan twice. I’m very excited, and this may mean that training will not take as long as a thought. I will still have to slowly phase out the litter boxes, but we seem to be on our way.

P.S. You may think I am ridiculous right now, but you will really be laughing if this actually works.