Originally Posted by isky

Hi Luigi. 3 cats? mmm... I find training multiple cats can be tougher, since all it takes is for one cat to slow down the others. Whisky's training would have been over at the 3-4 week mark, but Guinness was a bit slower in grasping the concept, so Whisky had to wait for his brother to catch up. In any case, I've written up a summary of what I did for the benefit of other forumers thinking of toilet training their cats. I'll try to answer your questions as I go along.

(NOTE: Dividing this guide up into several parts for easier reading. Also, pictures have been compressed / resized for quick viewing - they're not great, but should be sufficient)

(errmm.. standard disclaimer. Use the following information at your own risk, blah blah blah.. be careful when using hot knife... blah blah... results may vary... blah blah... so don't sue me if you're not happy.)


---------- Isky's Quick Guide to Toilet Training Your Cats : PART A ----------

From researching the net, I found that there are two basic approachs to toilet training cats: the water approach and the hole approach. In the "Water Approach", you place a bowl into the toilet bowl, slowly reduce the amount of litter, and eventually substitute the litter with water so that you cat is pooping and peeing into a bowl of water. With the "Hole Approach", you basically cut increasingly larger holes in your bowl until you cat is forced to to the sides and edges i.e. your toilet seat.


***** Pre-Training *****

Well, I had known earlier on that I wanted to toilet trained the two boys. Since they were six weeks old (when I adopted them), I've been reading up and researching on toilet training. During this time, I also tried to get them comfortable with the toilet. I stopped closing the door when I go to the loo, so they got very comfortable with the sounds of... err.. splashing water (they even have to poke their heads into the bowl for a look-see,look-see), toilet flushing, showering, etc. I never lacked an audience when I went to the bathroom or took a shower.


***** Phase I: Water Approach *****

When they were almost four months, I started their training using the water approach. After much digging around for a suitable bowl, i finally found one in carrefour for about RM3-4 (Pic#1). The light green bowl fits very snugly in my toilet bowl (Pic#2). Anyway, i didn't have much trouble getting them to use the bowl. In fact, the day i bought the bowl, I went and filled the bowl with litter and put in inside the bowl... just to try it out. Next thing I knew, the boys were already scratching, pooping and peeing...on day 1. So, I managed to skip the whole shifting-litter-box-to-toilet phase. Oh yeah... by this time, I had already changed from the normal clay litter to the flushable type (Arm & Hammer).

I waited about two weeks before I started reducing the amount of litter. Had to get used to having litter on the toilet floor, but since I wear house slippers it was easy to ignore. I did start vacuuming more regular (i.e. every other day) to cope with the bits of litter sand that found its way into my bedroom.

After about another week, i noticed I was going to have a problem... it was getting extremely messy. As the amount of litter reduces, there's less chance for them to completely cover their business up so they basically end up stepping into there poop / pee. I started finding pee prints and poo prints all over the bathroom. Yuck! Granted, toilet training your cats can get pretty messy, but I'm a bit of a neat-freak, so I increased the litter in their bowl and went back to the drawing board.


***** Phase I Restart: Hole Approach *****

After some thinking, I decided to go for the Hole Approach, but I needed to get a bowl that was much shallower. With a deep bowl, there's not much room for them to move around, resulting in them stepping all over their own mess. Again, had to dig around at department stores and hardware stores before I found a plastic tray (Pic#3) for flower pots that was big enough for my toilet bowl.

This is the best one that I found. It's a "Baba" branded tray (Pic#4), and i found it at OUG Parkson Grand for about RM4+. It was a just a bit too big for my toilet bowl, so I had to modify it a bit. I cut two slots, one on each side of the bowl (Pic#5 & Pic#6), so that it slips nicely into the bowl, and covered the holes on both sides with duct tape / cloth tape (Pic#7).

You can use a dremel tool if you have one, or you can do what I did - i used an old sturdy blade, heat it up on the stove (don't heat it until it's red hot), and use the heated knife to cut out the parts you don't need. I used this process to cut the holes later as well. The tray is not as deep as I would like - when the boys scratch and dig around, some litter will find its way under your seat onto the lip of your toilet bowl. But it's still a lot better than before.

(Note: You will want to have the tray / bowl fit as snugly as possible. If it's too wobbly, it might freak out the cats when they try to use it.)


***** Phase IIa: Cutting Them Holes *****

After about a week of them using the new tray (no problems at all during this time), I started getting itchy fingers and began cutting the hole in the tray. I started with a ping-pong size hole (Yay! No problems!), waited about 3-5 days before moving on to a cricket ball size hole (Yay! No problems!), a tennis ball size hole (Yay! No problems!), then a tuna can size hole (... PROBLEM!!). Woke up one morning to find two piles of poop near the front door. After disciplining them (they get a bath whenever they poop elsewhere), i made an effort to try and catch them whenever they wanted to poop and pee, bring them to the toilet bowl, and wait until they are done with their business (I work for myself so I can manage my own schedule, but this might be harder to do if you have a full-time jobs). They usually have access to the whole apartment, but during the training, I had no choice but to sometimes keep them in the toilet when I went out to minimize accidents.

I also found that as the hole gets bigger, more litter gets kicked into the hole. There was now less litter to absorb their mess, especially their pee. Depending on how they sit, the tray will flex a bit causing their pee to trickle to their feet. Yeah, same problem I had with the Water Approach...messy. I figured that if I can fix this problem, the cats won't be so reluctant to use the toilet.

-continued in Part B-