how to train your cat to use a toilet...

tired of smelly litterboxes that seem to need cleaning every day? train your cat to use the toilet!

yup, its possible, for tons of pics and videos, check out this site.

www.kittygoespotty.com

as for flushing, ive seen a vid of a cat doing it online, but i imagine that would be rather hard to teach. remember, theyre cats. if you suceed with this, be glad you got them using a toilet.

Step 1 Set the mood...

cats are creatures of habit, and generally react badly to majior changes of any kind. to start with, move kittys litterbox to the bathroom if its not already there. leave next to the toilet for at least two weeks, if the litterbox was in a completely different area of the house, expect an accident or two if your cat is older. say no firmly, and place them gently in the litter box. some cats are particularly stubborn, and might need to be shut in the bathroom with food and water for a night.

Comments

[superMacaroni]

What if my cat poops in the tub?

[dragonsniper]

lol

[a_abbond]

The last step is too rushed!
Once the litter inside the toilet has been there for two weeks, you should cut a small hole in the middle, wait until the cat has adapt.
Then cut a larger hole, and wait.
Then an even larger hole.
All the while reducing the amount of litter.
This is how the cat will get accustom to the toilet.

[indomitable]

this is my first instructable, any advice is appreciated. :)

[Twotim221]

Well, the title is wrong.

[indomitable]

ahahaha! i wondered how long it would take someone to notice! its been so long i had almost forgotten about it myself! too funny.

[schaadrak]

Great Instructable. I would advise against doing this with smaller kittens, since they could accidentally be flushed into the sewers where they would ultimately come in contact with some toxic waste, grow to an enormous size and terrorize a large metropolitan Japanese city.

[MacHaddock]

HAHA lol lol :D

[hishealer]

I love that "standard household cat" pic, but I have never had a "standard" cat.  I always get the ones with big personalities!

[zomfibame]

this is a very cool ible; and it is cool that you can train a cat to use a toilet... that said I'm not too sure I'd wanna' share my toilet with my cat, not the least of which would be coming home from work to find cat logs in the toilet.
 ;-)

[swinding]

Hmmm - I tried this with my tom cat. He REFUSED to stand on the edge of the toilet for step 4 and, instead, stood in the little tray inside so that he nearly fell in several times. This, however, did not stop him from peeing up there. Once I took the tray out of the toilet, though, he stopped using the toilet and did all his business in the tub. Back to the box. I like the idea of a kiddy potty chair - that might help - the toilet training kits for cats have a sort of flat bottom in the pan you put on the toilet. With the kiddy seat he might not be able to get good footing! What a blessing a toilet-trained cat would be!

[lorax56]

I did it! Now I need another bathroom. You see, I'm tapping my foot impatiently waiting my turn because HE'S in there.

[AlbinoBlackSheep]

jesus is a square circle.

[zimmemic25]

?

[shetibo]

oh im soooo trying this!!!!

[Jesus10555]

How do you make them shut up, My cat is a whore, and just wants to get outside to go get laid, and We're not letting her out.... so she won't shut up, and ....yeah

[cneu]

maybe if you thought to get your cat spayed she would stop wanting to out and get laid and meow all the time it's not rocket science dude- there are lots of low cost spay neuter clinics if you knew anything about cats you would have figured this out.

[Kelani]

My mom had one like that. Yowled for 6 months. We took her to the vet, the vet took her into a back room, put on a rubber glove and...violated her. Cat hasn't said a damn thing since.

[indomitable]

get her fixed. lol.

[Jesus10555]

I will try this... my sister is paying though, she brought home the damn thing, lol.

[indomitable]

hehehe, if you found the cat on the streets, most states have a feral cat spaying program, in which they will pay for the spaying and neutering of the cat. one thing: if you tell them youve had the cat indoors, its no longer feral, so say its a cat thats been comming around, youve been feeding it, and were considering keeping it. to find out if there is such a program in your area, call the local animal shelter. :)

[Jesus10555]

hehe, sounds good, except my sister already called and made an appointment. her money, lol. I'll tell her about i though

[tristan993]

pretty awesome

[DWRead]

I tried, but when the hole reached a certain size the cats refused to use it anymore, even when I went back to the pan with a hole. Tried a second time but couldn't get past the critical point. After a week of finding poop everywhere except the toilet, my husband requested that I give it up as hopeless. The man's a saint but this was not gonna work.

[LancePenney]

Too bad dogs won't do this. Great tip! I'll try this on the next cat I get cause the one I have now has been using a litterbox in the basement for 15 years and probably won't get into this habit.

[canida]

If you've got pictures/videos of your succesfully-trained cat, add them in. Otherwise, whoa- this is a major time investment. Have you successfully done this? If so, can you teach the cat to flush?

[wombat7]

my cat peeing video
me and my cat in the news

[xenobiologista]

I like your cat's name. Pets named after different species are always funny...my kid brother had one called Mr. Mousie 'cos he was pretty small.

[wombat7]

cool! thanks

[gibandy]

awesome!

[wombat7]

thanks

[indomitable]

ive seen a video of a cat flushing online before, and yes, ive sucessfully done this. i dont have any pics of it though, this was before i got my dig camera. my cat never did flush. lol.

[indomitable]

heres a vid of a cat using a toilet... you can find quite a few online.

[RaNDoMLeiGH]

A friend of mine did this but when it got to the part where you put a pan in the bowl, he switched to a flushable litter and a sturdy disposable baking sheet. He cut holes in the pan, starting in the middle and getting a little bigger each week, to get the cat used to hearing "plop plop" sounds. Eventually there was just a little bit of rim, at which point he just took it out from the seat and voila! The cat was completely trained. You'll want to use just a SMALL amount of litter (maybe even corn cob?) so that it doesn't clog the toilet. We got a cat from the shelter who perches on the edge of the litter box; we suspect he was toilet trained, but he doesn't seem to show any inclination to use the toilet. Maybe he was in the shelter too long and needs to be re-trained. Boy, it would be nice... gotta try this!

[HOMEPIE64]

i have a kitten about 6 1/2 months old is that a good age to old to young??

[Kelani]

At that age, they'd be lucky to be big enough as not to fall in. Try to set your at down on the toilet seat. If it spreads its legs out and all four can't easily reach the seat, that cat's still too small.

[HOMEPIE64]

she has grown just a wee bit from the day of the comment and has huge paws so when i finally get to it she will hopefully be big enough.

[Kelani]

Be very careful to make sure the cat gets no nasty surprises with this, or you may never train them to do it. Case in point: A friend of mine patiently worked with her cat well over a year to toilet train him. Finally, one day she saw the cat walk into the bathroom and heard him jump on the seat. As she was sneaking to the bathroom to watch, she heard a glorious *plop plop*. She was elated. The cat was finally doing it! No more litter box!

She peeked in as the cat was just finishing his business. As she put it, when the cat habitually tried to cover the nonexistent litter, his remaining paws slipped off the seat and he fell headfirst in the bowl. The impact and cat's frantic attempt to exit the bowl caused the seat to fall and whack the cat on the head, knocking him back in. The impact of the seat then caused the *lid* to close, again whacking said cat back into the bowl. Cat stopped fighting at this point (or perhaps was just dazed) and sat in the bowl yowling mournfully until she went in and opened the lid. Cat then exploded from bowl and vanished somewhere in the house for the next 36 hours.

The upshot is, cat will no longer enter that bathroom OR walk past its doorway. If he wants to go to some point beyond the bathroom, he stands in the hall and yowls until she comes, picks him up, and carries him past the doorway. Obviously, further toilet training is out of the question as far as he's concerned.

The moral: Tape the seat and lid. Or install rubber pads n the seat for paw grippage.

[orlanka]

In step 4, I've also used salad bowls. A larger one for resting on the toilet bowl and a smaller one to float after they got used to big one. Yes this whole process takes a lot of time. Oddly, that first sound of waking up to the sounds of your cat peeing in the toilet is glorious.

[tradergordo]

Haha, I'm a bigtime cat lover and have two cats. I also read a book on toilet training your cats (it was at my local library). I really tried hard to do it, but my cat's just weren't havin' it! I got sick of cleaning poop off the bathroom floor and eventually went back to the old liter box. I really would like to have toilet trained cats though. I think some cats can do it, others just won't. My cats progressed nicely though the initial stages, and they used the liter on the bowl, and had no problems jumping up there, but they did not progress well after that and they would not do their business while keeping their feet on the toilet seat. Also they got very angry at me (lots of crying) and confused about what they were supposed to do. Maybe I just needed to take it even slower - the book gave a detailed plan, and every step of the way is supposed to be slow (a week at each step?) and if they aren't making progress, you go back to the previous step. This is good advice. Just be mentally prepared for the extra stress on your cats and yourself, during the training which could last for months.