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We can potty train our kids, but what about our cats? Do any of the products offering feline toilet training actually work?
I don’t know anyone who has a toilet-trained cat. But that doesn’t mean I think they can’t work. Enough testimonials exist for me to believe that potty training kitties is possible, but with one major caveat: it takes a lot of time and a lot of mess.
MSNBC Health published an article detailing the feline toilet-training process, complete with interviews with animal behaviorists, cat trainers, and real-life people who successfully taught their cats to use the toilet.
Before you begin to train your cat to use the toilet, you should know that just because some cats can be trained, not all cats can. Cats are notoriously picky, and if your feline doesn’t even like it when you change its brand of food or litter, it might not take well to such a major upheaval.
If months have gone by and your cat still isn’t any closer to using the toilet, it will probably never do so. If you have an outdoor cat that does its business outside much of the time, having that freedom will likely discourage it from using a toilet inside.
The first step in potty training your cat is to choose the product you will use. Most toilet training products are similar: they feature decreasing sizes of rubber or plastic rings that sit over the toilet seat, keeping the cat from falling in until it learns to balance.
Certain brands hold decreasing amounts of litter within the seats, which might be more useful, if messier, for the training process. Cats are hardwired to bury their waste, so they seek out areas to use where they can do so.
As your cat uses the toilet more and more, you reduce the size of the rings on which they sit until eventually they’re just sitting on the toilet seat. As the process goes on, however, keep a few things in mind.
Your cat will have plenty of accidents during this process. You’re training it to do something completely unnatural, so it’s going to be a bumpy (and messy) road.
Cats will not wait once they decide they have to go, so if the bathroom is occupied they’ll find somewhere else to go. A spare bathroom that doesn’t get much use is ideal as the “cat bathroom.”
Even if your cat learns to use the toilet it might not do so forever. Just one negative experience — one fall into the toilet, for example — is enough to deter even a years-long toilet-trained cat from ever using one again.
Remember that one of the biggest ways to monitor our cats’ health is to pay attention to their waste. Are they urinating and defecating consistently? Does everything look normal when they do so? Without the task of cleaning up the litter box, it will be harder to keep track of this vital aspect of feline health.
While your cat might learn to use the toilet for the rest of its life, chances are it won’t flush. That’s the single biggest deterrent to me when I think about toilet training my cat. I don’t want to deal with a used, un-flushed kitty toilet. There are some products on the market that flush up after your cat, but they’re at least $200.
If you’re determined to potty-train your cat know that it is possible, though there is no guarantee your cat will take to it. Just keep these things in mind and stay dogged, and you might be rewarded with a litter box-free home.
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*(This image by Mrs. Peck is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
