Toilet training cats is one fad that's gone mainstream. Ann Marie Chaker of The Wall Street Journaldecided that she would join the ranks of the litter-free cat owners. It took her one year to toilet train her cat and her other cat is in training now.
Products aimed at helping owners train their cats have sold well in recent years: CitiKitty Inc. sold 7,000 kits of its training system in 2009, compared with 2,100 its first year in 2005. Norman, Okla.-based Evolve Products LLC sold about 2,000 CatSeats this year, compared with 500 six years earlier, when it first hit the market. Canadian entrepreneur Aston Lau says sales of his "Toilet Trained Cat" book and CD have doubled each quarter since he released them a year ago, though he declined to divulge the number of units sold.
The methods vary, but the process goes something like this: Every few days or weeks (depending on the cat), start moving the litter box from wherever it is to the bathroom until your pet finds itself next to the toilet. Once the cat is accustomed to the box's new location, begin the process of elevating the litter box—again, every few days or even weeks—until it is level to the toilet seat. (At our household, we built a tower of pizza boxes, affixed to the floor with duct tape.) Once the cat is jumping up comfortably to get into his litter box, you must find a way to transition the litter into the toilet—and then (this is the hardest part) gradually get the cat acclimated to the water in the toilet instead of the litter he's more used to.
