Hi there folks,

So here's an update for you on the toilet-training of my cats.

After Phoebe decided that water in the bottom of the bath was not going to stop her from peeing in there I had to take drastic action.

After I got wee baby in bed, I saw Phoebe sneaking quietly past me into the bathroom, so I followed her in there. And locked the door behind us.

She seemed to think I was there to either be nice to her or give her a doing. I did neither. I just sat on the edge of the bath and waited. She spent a long time just staring at me as if to say 'what?'. Then her bodily processes started getting the better of her and she began frantically searching for a place to do her business. Of course, with me sitting there making sure she didn't go anywhere unsuitable, she wasn't quite sure what to do (or at least acting bloody stupid).

So I gave her a nudge in the right direction by actually putting her on the toilet seat and scraping at the (clean) litter that was in the tray. She wasn't amused the first couple of times, looking down the hole in the tray and jumping down rather quickly. But after a few times of putting her up there, she obviously got the message. She did her number two, which dropped right through the hole, making a plop! She seemed a little bewildered by the unusual noise but carried on regardless!

Eeeeeeexcellent!

Boy did I praise her after that. And it seems to have stuck with her too cos when I got up this morning there was a tiny patch of wet litter at the edge of the hole in the tray. As mentioned in a previous post, Joey's liquid deliveries are far from tiny, so I knew it was her. I assume the rest of it went through the hole.

So we're moving forward! Goody.

I'm going to be very careful now not to get too eager to move on. Phoebe obviously objected when I cut the hole from about 1 inch across to more than 2 so I'm gonna leave things just the way they are for the time being. Once it becomes a regular habit for them, I'll slowly increase the size of the hole again.

I'm also gonna leave the litter as it is: a thin layer covering the bottom, cos as the hole gets bigger there won't be much room for it anyway.

See how it goes.