Jack and Jinxy

Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro) said in “Meet the Fockers” that he trained his cat to use the toilet instead of the litter box by putting a bowl in the toilet, and over time removing the litter and ultimately the bowl, until the cat began using the toilet like anyone else in the house.

A funny bit, but as it turns out this is a legitimate method of toilet training your cat. While flying back from San Clemente recently I was flipping through a SkyMall magazine and for $19.99 found “The City Kitty” toilet training kit.

With Zetta’s recent pregnancy forbidding her from touching the cat box and my hatred of the stench of urine, I thought to myself, “I have go to try this”. The idea of not having a litter box in our condo was too good to be true.

So a few days ago, the City Kitty training Kit arrived at my office. My team laughed out loud when I opened the box. One of them bet me cash money that I couldn’t do it. But I am not deterred. I took the bet. My cat is smart. When I got home, I took the cat box outside and filled a little toilet shaped tray with flushable kitty little between the toilet and the seat and put my little genius on top of the toilet.

He looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. And so begins the journey.

*UPDATE*

It’s been 3 weeks since we began city kitty training! So far so good. We are on the 2nd ring of 5 and the cat is now reliably going 1 and 2 right in the toilet. He does still play with the litter and I’m a bit concerned that weening him off is going to be the toughest part, but so far so good. Stay tuned!

*UPDATE II*

After 3 months we unfortunately abandoned the city kitty.   Kitty was great at peeing in the toilet, but the splashing water on his but when pooping was too much to handle and kitty kept just going next to the toilet on the dry granite tile.   Patti, I owe you a dollar.

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