Need advice/help from people who have potty trained their cats

We are in the midst of attempting to potty train Miss Matty (whom I call “Little Bit”), using a system that we saw working for a variety of people on YouTube. The system involves adapting the cat to the toilet bowl over a period of time. It is a kit called Litter Kwitter, and involves… well, hell. This is hard to describe.

Here is a link to the product: Litter Kwitter | Cat toilet training system

The idea is that you fill the middle portion of the whole unit with flushable cat litter (which is damned expensive). The unit then fits over your toilet, and as the cat gets used to perching up there, you switch to the second ring, which is hollow and has less litter. Then to the third ring, which is even more hollow, and has even less litter. And finally, to remove the entire unit such that the cat is doing as shown in YouTube videos and on the web page referenced above.

There are a couple of problems, though. One, our cat is large. Huge. She is a Rag Doll breed, and is the size of a good size possum. Or for you city folk, she’s the size of a good size apartment dog. That’s one problem. In other words, she has been used to a big litter box, and not this small ring of litter.

But maybe even more importantly, she is used to feeling litter under her feet when she goes potty. And so what she does is stand in the middle ring, with her feet in the litter, and potty all over the fake toilet ring — if she’s lucky enough to hit it.

Now, we started with the whole unit on the floor. (On top of plastic liners.) We then moved it up to the toilet as instructed, but she balked at jumping up that high just to pee or poop. And so we made a special box, and cut it out to accomodate the Litter Kwitter, lifting it only a few inches of the floor.

She’s using that, but as I say, only by standing in the litter and peeing or pooping on the lid.

How do we get her used to standing on the smooth part and doing her business in the litter part?

You can’t train a cat to do anything it doesn’t want to do. Dogs will try to learn stuff just because it pleases their human. Cats will learn stuff because they see a benefit in it for THEM. They might like their humans well enough, but they don’t want humans to get any bright ideas about who is calling the shots in the relationship.

Some cats are very intelligent, and will learn quickly. My Siamese girl learned to make a vocalization that sounds like “Mama” because I praised her and petted her the first time she did it. 8 years later, she’ll still do it if you ask her to say mama, but you’d better be prepared to fuss over her.

On the other hand, my husband’s cat still hasn’t learned that he has to be sure to jump high enough to get into the sink, because he won’t get any traction on that sink (it’s a freestanding sink). He jumps up, expects to be able to claw his way the rest of the way, and totally fails to achieve his goal. We’ve had him for more than a year, and he’s been jumping, or failing to jump, into the sink for at least 8 months. It’s funny to watch, but I feel sorry for him too. I’m just very glad that he will use the litter box.

All this is to say, if your cat is used to feeling her litter under her paws, then she might not EVER switch. And frankly, I wouldn’t press it. If she is very good about using a litter box, you don’t want to confuse her. She might decide that ANY smooth surface is OK to eliminate on, and then you’d find your night stands and occasional tables used as places to pee and poop.

Dear lord. That hadn’t even occurred to me.

I think that some cats just won’t adapt well to potty training and you may just have to accept that. I’ve thought about trying it with my cats but I think that only a couple of the cats would use the toilet. I have two cats that will occasionally pee in the sink who might be able to adapt that behavior to the toilet. But one of them does it to be social, she only does it when I’m on the toilet, so either she’d adapt well to the toilet or she wouldn’t want to wait for me to get done and just keep peeing in the sink.

Posting from iPhone for the first time!