Automatic Litterbox Central

I can't believe nobody has started a thread in here yet. Is nobody interested in the holy grail of having your kitty use a normal potty? If one of mine wasn't so dain-bramaged, I would definitely try it.

One of mine does it, but it had nothing to do with me at all. He just started doing it on his own at about 6 months old, and has now been doing it for two years consistently.

You have got to be kidding. Wow talk about the ultimate litter box, and cheap too.

It's very weird, but then again, the cat that does it is a Bengal - and they are kind of unusual. He is a VERY large cat.

LOL, I have a friend with a Bengal. He calls him General Sherman. The cat is huge and incredibly mellow. About as dumb as a post though. I think he's a little too inbred.

I'll gladly trade one of my mentally-challenged cats for your super-genius cat.

Well - if the truth be told, I have 7 cats now. Five of them are Scottish Folds, which seem to be among the smarter breeds on the planet. Then there is Max the Giant Bengal, about 40 pounds, who may be going to college next year if he gets accepted. And lastly, my little Burmese, who is very sweet but dumb as a rock...

I picked up a couple of stray oriental shorthairs when I lived in Taiwan in 1978-1979. Those were the best cats ever. Smart as hell. As one of my cat books says, "Not the kind of cat to have if you want a peaceful life." I sure miss them though. They traveled the world with me.

Cat trivia: Most taiwanese strays have a genetic tail defect. One of mine had a tail about 0.75" long and hard as rock. It had a little hook on the end, which was invisible behind the fur (which looked like a bottle brush). The other one had a normal, long tail, but it had a 45 degree bend about 1/2" from the end.

Unfortunately they both died from cancer at about 14, probably due to the DDT they were always soaking everything in back then.

I had a single american shorthair that had some coon mixed in with him due to size and pattern. I started him out young (4 months old I think). I took a metal strainer that fit well into the toilet filled it with cat litter. That of course would leak litter. So I scratched that. Got a metal mixing bowl with a big enough lip to use. Filled it with litter and I was off to the races. The cat had no problems. So started reducing the lvl or litter. I can say this cat was a cat litter ADDICT. Eventually I had him down to just a tad of litter. From what I read I was supposed to replace the litter with a little bit of water but I said what the hay just take it out. Basically he would go just fine IF I watched. So I had a cat litter addict that was an exhibisionist. The above took about 6 months. It took another month to get him to do it consistently and then yet another month without me watching. Then I got a GF and he was no longer top dog/kitty. He got moody and I had to revert to cat litter in the toilet. BLEH. I had almost got him back to just toilet when we got a second cat to cheer him up and this second kitty had NO interest watching her go to the restroom. However she will use the cat litter in the toilet. The GF is a wife now and we got a dog. So neither cat is happy with me.

You can do this and it is WONDERFUL when it happens. It takes patience. Plan for 2 or 3 daily cleaning of the litter in the toilet since clean litter they LOVE. Gradually do it and plan from 6 to 12 months for it to succed. If you go on vacation, if you move, if you get another animal. ANYTHING that disrupts your cats routine/life will disrupt the cats toilet training anywhere from a week to 3 months progress.

Once we get the dog house trained properly I might have a chance to concience the cats to TRY the toilet with just water. My difficulty is the new cat IS NOT FOOD MOTIVATED. The first cat is just a treat whore...

O well have fun

I haven't tried toilet training yet, but I'm very interested to see if my cats will try it. My question is: do they try to dig and bury when you put the litter in? I don't have a metal bowl or anything that might work under the toilet seat, so I was going to buy the little $10 kit from Petsmart. I was worried that the cats might try to dig and bury, though, causing them to fall in the toilet! That's another question... has anyone ever had a cat fall in the toilet? I know it's silly, but I gotta ask!
Thanks!
-poobear

I've looked at the 'kits' at the chain stores. They appear to me to be too flimsy for large cats. The idea behind the ones I've seen is a circlular toilet bowl shaped plastic that you put under the toilet seat. It is made of our several rings of plastic. You start out with the it completly covered with litter and then incrementally remove the inner rings so that their pee/poo will fall through and the cat learns to not step in the middle but only on the seat area. My fear with those is the plastic rings would give way the cat is afraid of the toilet for a while.

Shouldn't try to toilet train till the cat is large enough to be able to jump out of the toilet if they fall in.

Some cats have an addiction. An addiction to cat litter. If incrementally the cat is sterred away from cat litter then hopefully the scratching reflex would weaken. I just put a scratch en post inside the bathroom for them. It helped a little but the older cat just has an addiction for cat litter (like stimpy).

I gave up last week on toilet training of our second cat. So I put out a normal litter box for box to use. The cat trained on the toilet now whines when I close the bathroom up. This cat I had trained to use the toilet without anything in it. He is reverting to his old habbit of forcing me to watch him. If I am not watching him he meows loudly till I go and watch him. I of course give him a treat for doing such a good job. Last night the second cat and our minature pinchere watched the cat do #2 in the toilet. Maybe they will get the idea. Our dog I think could do it. Maybe I should try that next week.

Well, I ended up buying the toilet training kit tonight because it's only $10. I see your point about it being quite flimsy, though. Do you have any other suggestions on what I might use to train them... something sturdy enough?
Thanks,
-poobear

Now if you could just teach them to flush!

I read a suggestion somewhere a while ago... Measure the diameter of your toilet bowl... then go to wal-mart (or somewhere equally cheap but less evil) and find a large bowl (roasting pan; tupperware; metal) that has a rim around the edge and has the same diameter as the toilet bowl. (And isn't too deep to fit in the toilet.) Maybe there are even oval-shaped bowls that would fit exactly, but if not, the rim on the round bowl should hold it in place.

Then, just lift up the toilet seat, stick in the bowl, close the toilet seat, and fill the bowl with litter. So the toilet seat sort of keeps the bowl in place. That way, you can also remove the bowl when you have to go. After the cat uses that, just keep reducing the litter in the bowl. Eventually, just put newspaper or something in the bottom. Then, I think the person said to put a little water in the bowl so the cat gets used to the sound of the water.... After that, take away the bowl. (And burn it )

Ok. I just found a link to where I read about the above:
http://www.karawynn.net/mishacat/toilet.html

When I tried to get my cat to use the toilet, I put shelving paper over the toilet bowl (it sticks well) and covered that with plastic wrap, then put down the seat, and added litter. My cat wouldn't have any of it. And, I couldn't use the frigging toilet. So I gave up.

One last idea -- if you're not going to be using the toilet during the cat-training period, couldn't you drain the toilet, put a trash bag in it and over the outside, put down the seat, and fill the whole thing with litter? (And rake manually as needed...) Then remove the bag of litter after the cat has learned?

There's also this:
http://www.catseat.com/, which is really cool, but really expensive.

I've also thought about buying a cheap toilet seat, and sort of mounting it to a plastic container and using that as a litterbox for a while to get the cat used to standing on a toilet seat... Never tried it, though.

Good luck...

-e.

Hey i like the idea of progressively using less and less litter and then eventually adding water to the bowel.

I have been trying to toilet train for about 1 month now. I purchased the little nesting mixing bowels from walmart. There are like 5 sizes or something. The largest fit nicely into my bowel and i......ok from the beginning

I turned off the water supply to the toilet. (hopefully you have more than one toilet in the house, if not....probably not a good idea to try my method.) I drained the toilet, and the tank, of all the water. stuffed the toilet drain with plastic bags, making sure that i can reach at least the tail of them later to pull them out, but still protecting my plumbing. Then kept filling the toilet with those neverending grocery store bags until the bowl, resting on top of the bags, was at a good level. I've been weaning my kiddos down to smaller and smaller bowls.
And all 3 have kept up. The big guy, my bengal, urinates without problem but is offended that i make him aim his poo so well. I think i'll back up, put the big bowl in and try the vanishing litter and appearing water trick.

Oh bTW....As for the flushing problem. I have an automatic flusher, that i recently purchased. I haven't gotten to use it for real yet on the cat toilet. But it's wireless and has a little infrared sensing unit. then it flushes after the body leaves the toilet. I have it set up on the wall beside the toilet so it can see my little guys, instead of above where it might miss them and flush away the kitten! Sorry, had to giggle at that mental picture...I know I'm bad. sorry.

Anyways...these things are currently on clearance from frontgate.com. "autoflusher" Be sure to get the wireless one! so there's nothing hanging out the back of the toilet for the furry kids to chew on.
J

I just followed that link to http://www.catseat.com and watched all the videos and everything! I WANT ONE! Like another user had said, "the holy grail" of training. To not expose have my cats tracking... to not have the expense of litter? To not hear a loud expensive machine "cycle" throughout the day and night... to not have to expose their lungs to nasty litter dust. I really, really hope this works and I'm going to obsess over it and try it out!!! VERY EXCITING! I was holding out for a litter revolution, but this just seems to make so much more sense.