# What animals can be housebroken/litterbox trained?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-animals-can-be-housebroken-litterbox-trained/256157>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 21, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-animals-can-be-housebroken-litterbox-trained/256157 "2004-07-21T08:03:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-animals-can-be-housebroken-litterbox-trained/256157/21 "2004-07-25T17:28:31Z")

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Hamsters can. They’ll pick a place in their cage and use that spot all the time. If you put a little bit of kitty litter there you can just scoop it out.

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**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-animals-can-be-housebroken-litterbox-trained/256157/22 "2004-07-25T17:53:47Z")

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> [@Gravity](#):
>
> the usual of dogs, cats, ferrets.

I’ve read before that ferrets can be, out ours didn’t “get it.” It seemed that they thought the litter pan was _ground_ so if they dug in it, they could get out. Didn’t matter what type of litter was used (even the pressed paper pellets which were very unground-like), they always emptied it trying to tunnel out.

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**Author:** ![rjk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ed655f/32.png) [@rjk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjk)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-animals-can-be-housebroken-litterbox-trained/256157/23 "2004-07-25T17:56:31Z")

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> [@medstar](#):
>
> What about full grown tigers in zoos? I know that household cats can be litter-box trained; would a tiger just require a much larger litter box? Or would he/she go wherever they felt like it?

Are _you_ going to argue with a full-grown tiger? Not me!

Since they are cats (although _very_ big ones), I suspect they’d share much of their behaviour with domestic cats and be happy to use a litter-box, but that’s a WAG. Do we have anybody here who knows for sure?

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