Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
You can train your cat to use the toilet
Thankfully, litter boxes could be a thing of the past
THE apartment Daniel Freudberg shares with his girlfriend has two bathrooms. One is used by the couple and visitors. The other is used by their 7-monthold kitten, Kal, who does all his business in there – on the toilet.
“We never bought an actual litter box,” said Freudberg, 27, an Arlington, Virginia, retail store manager who so strongly believes in cat toilet-training that he has encouraged his boss to try it. “I love it, honestly.”
Many people treat their pets like furry children. But within that demographic is a small minority of cat owners who have taken pet humanization to the next level by eschewing litter in favour of sharing the toilet with their animals.
Toilet-training cats is surprisingly possible, evangelists say, and the benefits are great: No litter box smell. No gravelly grains underfoot. No scooping. (Just flushing, because thumbless felines are no good at that.)
Is this a growing group? It’s impossible to say; no one tracks cat toilet use. But there’s enough of a market to support feline toilet-training kits with hundreds of reviews on Amazon, as well as two new books on the topic.
One is the 25th anniversary edition of the pioneer volume in this subject area, Paul Kunkel’s How to Toilet Train Your Cat, which promises success in 21 days.
The second, Toilet Train Your Cat, Plain and Simple, is by Clifford Brooks, a Silicon Valley writer who says the process takes three months and loads of patience but is well worth it.
“We are an elite group, those of us who train our cats” to use a toilet, said Brooks, 56, who is now working on a book about cat-walking and medita- tion. “Most people say, ‘My cat can’t do that.’ And I’m here to say all cats can do it.”
Jee Lee, a reporter in Washington, has a 2-year-old tabby, Hanuri, who now uses the toilet. “I remember when she went for the first time. I was so proud of her,” Lee said.
She taught Hanuri using a product called CitiKitty, and it took two rounds of training. Lee, who said she is a “little bit like a clean freak,” finds this all far preferable to a litter box, though she said it baffles her friends.
“Even if they love their cats, they don’t want to share their toilet with their cats,” said Lee, who sometimes takes Hanuri along when she goes out for brunch. “We share the toilet. We share everything.”
Whether toilet- training is good or enjoyable for cats is unclear. Sarah Ellis, a cat behaviourist and co-author of The Trainable Cat, said in an e-mail that it is a skill she has never wanted to teach.
For one thing, she said, burying waste is a natural behaviour for cats. For another: “If they miss, I would not want cat feces on my human toilet where human members of the family go to the bathroom.” – Washington Post