Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The next step in the quest for a potty-trained cat.

As I mentioned a while back, we are trying to toilet train our cat, Booboo. After a month of having Booboo's regular litter box on top of the toilet, we made the move to a smaller litter box that sits within the toilet, almost flush. (Haha....) Anyhow, we got the red litter box, but it was slightly too big, so S used a blow torch to melt the plastic to the right size to fit the toilet securely. The box holds in place perfectly now!

We filled the box with litter then brought Booboo in to check it out. Booboo climbed up to inspect the new arrangement, but seemed a little hesitant about the toilet seat aspect of it. He sniffed but did not use the litter box.

After several hours and no evidence that he had adjusted to the new set-up, we decided we should take a smaller step before we introduce the lid. So here is our current set-up:

Since we made this adjustment, Booboo has been using the litter box. We figure we will keep it this way for maybe about a week or so, before we put the lid back down. After he gets used to balancing on the lid, we will begin taking the next steps to wean him off the litter box.

So....slowly but surely, we are making progress.

4 comments:

  1. I was JUST thinking about you guys and the potty training the other day, so thank you for the update! It is enthralling. :)

    (And hello there, Booboo! I miss you!)

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  2. Hihi. :) Come visit Booboo! I know he would love it, as would I! :)

    Booboo had a little accident over night and missed the litter box somewhat. Sigh. Not what we like to wake up to. I think we need to try to show him the "right" way to stand and which way to orient himself. I guess he likes to face in, instead of facing out. Any ideas how to help with this? Not sure if we can teach this or hope he learns how to stand right when we put the toilet seat down...

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  3. can i tell you how my husband wants to be updated on your progress with this? lol he's OBSESSED with the possibility of potty-training our cat.

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  4. @Elizabeth: It cracked S and I up that your husband is super interested in this. :)

    Here's the update...over the weekend we decided that putting the seat lid down might help with the reduction of any "outside the box" spillage. And it has been doing the trick so far. The problem is Booboo is a bit long, so he doesn't fit so well in this small litter box. We hope that when we add the hole in it, he will just figure out how to navigate and eventually figure out how to stand on the seat and "go" when there is no way to continue to stand in the litter box. We are taking the process very slow though, because we read sometimes people go too fast and the cats don't adjust well and regress in their progress.

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