How to Toilet-Train a Cat

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Dr. Carrie Burhenn and I'm a Veterinarian at the Feline Medical Clinic in Vancouver, Washington and I'm here today to talk to you about how to toilet train your cat. This is an interesting question that I've been asked a couple of times as a Veterinarian. Universally, I usually try to discourage this behavior amongst owners to try and train their cat to do this because it's not a normal behavior for cat to learn. And especially as the cat ages and becomes more arthritic, the cat may decide against using the toilet and if there's no alternative such as a litter box for the cat to comfortably use; if a cat ever once falls into the toilet, it probably never want to use the toilet again and then you will have a cat whose urinating outside the litter box or defecating outside the litter box or its toilet on places that you do not want it to go. Some owners still insist and they're actually are kits that you can buy at some pet stores that will help you acclimate the cat to a toilet surface and eventually use it. But again, this is usually reserve for younger cats and the cats don't ever learn to flush the toilet so they may use the toilet but you still have the floaters to deal with. So you may want to consider buying a really good litter box and keeping it scoop religiously twice a day and you'll find that that's actually far cleaner than ever training a cat to use a toilet."