Toilet training

[laralove]

Has anyone here toilet trained their cat?

 

[mani]

Do you mean trained a cat to use a human toilet?

If so, no.  I don't think cats really like it all that much.

 

[laralove]

That is what I mean. I know some have done it to great success, I was just wondering if anyone active on the forums now had tried it (to success or otherwise). 

 

[lilin]

 
Has anyone here toilet trained their cat?

Nah. I've met cats who are trained this way. They will do it because you train them to and they want to please you, but they seem unhappy about it, and most of the ones I've met have semi-regular incidents of going outside the toilet.

A litter box is actually a decent proxy of what cats like to do with their waste in the wild. Sandy areas where they can dig and bury suit them best.

Cats also like that with a litter box, their smell is always there. Even if you can't smell anything, they can still smell themselves on it. They know it's theirs. Some cats get weirded out right after the box has been thoroughly scoured.

You can't observe feces or urine to track their health either. Given what expert illness hiders cats are, I would worry I might miss something that I could have caught if I'd been scooping a litter box daily. I used this just the other day, actually (I was being a worrier and made a mental note to pay attention how much Pia had urinated in 24 hours). Can't do that if you just flush it all away.

I'm happy to just let a cat be a cat and do the closest thing that I can offer to their natural behavior, which just so happens to be a great tool for me as well.

 

[laralove]

Good points. I hadn't considered these things!

 

[jamaal]

I actually did that.  You go through the stages of moving the litter box higher and higher and then you put it on the toilet, you cut out a small hole, then in 2 weeks another hole etc....I did it with 2 cats, one would use it but once I had to make the hole in the litter and she could see the water beneath she wouldn't use it and started eliminating elsewhere.  The other cat loved it, it was like she had been waiting to go in the toilet like the rest of the humans!  It just depends on the cat.  The one who loved it was actually the older cat, 12.  She liked seeing, or hearing "her business" go into the water!!  It's great to have a cat that uses the toilet, no litter, no smells....too bad only one would use it! I had the litter box for the one who didn't use it, and the older one preferred to use the toilet.  So it does work for some cats.  It is weird to have to use the bathroom and you go in, turn the light on and the cat is sitting there using the toilet!

 

[gibbyandgravy]

Lol that would be weird to find the cat there in the middle of the night.

I had two cats that I tried to toilet train. They did really well, until I was on the stage right before removing all the litter. After that they started peeing in the tub. Luckily for me it wasn't on the floor. I just put them back to a litter box. I think if I had just had my male cat it would have worked, but I needed to go slower for my female and that way my mistake.