How to Toilet Train Your Cat

Video Transcript

"We are here today in this fabulous little bathroom to talk about how to toilet train, that is train your cat to use a human toilet. Now this process can take months so you want to be sure that you can have a dedicated bathroom that you can have your cat use. So what we have done here is we start out by putting the litter box on the ground right next to the toilet. So you are going to want to get your cat used to using the litter box in this little room next to the toilet. There is a product that you can use that you can add to the, an herbal product, an herbal additive that you can add to the litter box that will help attract the cat to the litter box that can be an added benefit as you move through the phases. You want to move through this phase very slowly and you want to make sure that the litter box is stable at all times. So we start out by just raising it just a little bit. The idea is that we are going to raise it more and more and more until it is at the same level as the toilet. As it gets taller you may want to duct tape your old magazines or books together just to make sure that it is real stable because the last thing that you want is to have the litter box slide anywhere or fall. You are going to want to have some sort of step stool just to make it easier for the cat to get up there and not have to make a lot of really calculated jumps. You want to make sure that the box is secure so the cat is not going to end up tipping it over or anything. You may want to use a slightly smaller box. It may actually take you a while to get the cat from the point that they are down on the the floor using the litter box to where they are actually up on the top of the toilet using the litter box. This is going to take a different amount of time for every cat and you may find that it gets up there and they are kind of like not so interested in using the toilet up there and then you may have to lower it again and start building up to the top of the toilet again or you may have a cat that is really fine with doing it. You are going to life the lid. Now there is a product you can buy that actually fits right into the toilet here that has, starts out with no hole and it gets a bigger and bigger and bigger hole. It is basically a litter box that is fitted into the toilet and the idea is that you start with no hole, get the cat used to sort of perching its paws on the seat and pooping into the litter box and it can scratch around and stuff and then the very first step is to open up that hole a little bit so that you can see the water come through and that is where the real decisive moment comes. Your cat may be like there is no way I'm using that and then you may want to take a step back and go back to using the litter box. You may also want to keep your eye out whenever you see the cat using that. You may want to give it a treat, give it copious praise. It is kind of like potty training a child. So you are going to have that little hole. You want to be sure that you are using a litter that is flushable because you will get litter that falls through into the water and you don't want it to clog up your plumbing. So you have your flushable litter. You have your basin and then you have your little hole. If your cat is comfortable with that little hole which is a big stopping point for a lot of cats, then you can start making the hole a little bigger, a little bigger, a little bigger and basically the idea is, and you can use a little, pick up something at the hardware store to line the inside of the hole so the litter doesn't fall right through but as it gets bigger and bigger the goal is to get it big enough so that there is just a little bit of litter on the outside and then there is no litter at all. The cat is just perched on the toilet and pooping right into the toilet."