Mission Impossible, Day 19

Ok, I suppose it's time for a kitty-cat potty training update. As you can see from the pictures, the kitties are no longer using their litter box. They have been going potty on the potty for the last week or so, but that by no means they are fully potty trained yet!

First, I thought I'd try potty training the old-fashioned way, by putting some plastic wrap over the top of the toilet, and putting some litter on top. I did a good job of securing the plastic wrap to the toilet so the cats wouldn't fall in, but I forgot to account for the fact that Spam would immediately poke a hole in it with his claw! Yep, so it wasn't long before our toilet was filling up with non-flushable kitty litter. I was able to stop the hemmoraging of litter into the toilet before it got too bad... but that was the end of the plastic wrap attempt. After that, we went back to the litter box on top of the toilet step for another five or six days.

Next we tried using several layers of garbage bags, reinforced with a piece of heavy brown paper in between. This worked very well in keeping litter from getting into the toilet, and the kitties got used to sitting on top of the toilet to go potty.

In the meantime, I did some research on the web about kitty-cat potty training. Last August a company called CitiKitty started selling a kitty-cat potty training device. It's a piece of molded plastic that fits over your toilet bowl and under the seat. It's about an inch or inch and a half deep (to hold the litter) and has concentric, perforated holes that you remove one at a time to help get kitty used to making shi-shi and unko in the toilet. So last Monday, I ordered a CitiKitty online. It arrived on Wednesday, and the kitties began using it that night.

On my way home from hiking today, I picked up some flushable cat litter, and and thus we have moved on to the next big step - the removal of hole number one!

Of course, any time anything is happening to the litter box (or potty), Spammy's got to be the first one there to check things out and use it. In a previous post, I mentioned that Spammy likes to stick his paws in the water bowl and sweep the water out onto the floor. Well, he still likes to do that. Which explains why he keeps sticking his arm into the little hole in the middle of the CitiKitty, and getting the water all over the litter!