Cat toilet training with two cats - one gets it, the other doesn't

Question

We have two cats. We bought the City Kitty kit for toilet training. It worked flawlessly for one cat, but only some of the time for the other cat. We made it up to the last ring before she started having problems, so we started the process over again. This time we are taking much longer to give time for the second cat to catch up, but she still pee's on the floor a few times a week. We spray the bathroom floor with cleaner with lemon scent, because we learned that some cats don't like the lemon. We find it hard to reward her if she goes in the toilet because she wont go if we watch her.

Does anyone have experience solving this problem?

Answer 1

Toilet training is a bad idea.

1) As your cats get older, they will develop pain in their joints and stop jumping and balancing. It could also start earlier due to injuries or genetics. Then you'll have to deal with pee all over the floor. And it will be hard to untrain by then.

2) It also makes it harder to travel with the cats or bring them over to a different house, or move.

3) Since the pee and poop will get flushed, you cannot take a look at them to check for parasites or other illness symptoms.

4) Also because of the flushing, the cats will lose one of their main ways to mark their territory. It could very well be that they will be more stressed, start fighting among themselves, scratch your furniture or pee outside to make up for their missing marking ability.

5) If you have guests, it could very well be that they leave the lid down or seat up, which may lead to pee outside or a toilet-drenched cat.

6) If you or someone else has stomach issues and needs to use the toilet for a long period of time, then the cats will have to go somewhere else. Same if someone wants privacy to shower and closes the door.

7) I would prefer if you don't potentially flush toxoplasmosis bacteria down the drain.

Answer 2

I did some research to see if we wanted to toilet train our cat. Like the person above said, there are some concerns and a lot of people don’t recommend it. However, I know it can work for some!

There are some YouTube videos about toilet training cats. For the most part it seems like a really difficult process and totally is a hit or miss depending on the cat. I don’t find it surprising at all that one cat isn’t getting it. Honestly, I’m not sure if you can fix it!

I’ve heard cats can get upset when their litterbox is displaced and there are changes. The cat could be really uncomfortable with the toilet and just struggle to figure it out. I’ve heard that cats will poop other places or poop on the seat and cover it with the litter from the tray.

One thing that may help is a reward system? Not sure how well that will work, but maybe you could try offering treats whenever they are on the toilet.

Another possible idea is to keep the cat in the bathroom for some time to only give it the option of using the toilet.

You could also slow down the process of making the litter tray hole larger. Give the cat some time to realize he is now using the toilet as a litter box without quickly making it too complicated and scary.

Long story short, I totally get how ideal it would be to have a toilet trained cat! No litter, no scooping, and no stink! But with that said, I’m not sure all cats are capable to be trained to do this and it fails for a lot of people. If you are insistent on the cat learning, though, I bet over time they could figure it out.

Sorry I didn’t have better options on how to fix it! Best of luck!

Answer 3

This is a little older, but for the sake of people reading it, I'd like to say that My cat learned to use the toilet in less than a month, and never looked back. We traveled with her a number of times (flight and cross country driving) and she never had a problem. I would just take her to the toilet in the hotel room/friends house, put her on it, and she got it right away.

She never had problems jumping onto the toilet, even at age 20, but anytime I reverted to litter for any reason, she had no issues with that. Cats love litter boxes.

Toilet training my cat was one of the best things I ever did. Litter is disgusting, and expensive. Not all cats will go for it, but I'd say give it a go. If it works out, great. And you can always go back to litter.

For the op, probably I'm too late, but maybe a different system would work better. I used a silver kitchen bowl that would securely sit in the toilet bowl, put the seat down over it, and put litter in the bowl. On the first day I picked her up and put her on the toilet a few times so she would understand the litter was there now. Over time I put less and less litter, until there was none. Once my cat was used to that I started to put a little water in it. I added a little more each time to get her used to the sound of water instead of litter, and then eventually took the bowl away.