Cat is toilet trained, sorta

I've been meaning to follow up on the Litter Kwitter toilet-training thing, in part because my mom was so smugly confident that it wouldn't work. At the same time, I wasn't sure going into detail about constipated cats was the best material for my music-, clay-, and grammar-centric blog. But as you've observed, I've been low on material lately, and what is kitty litter if not clay, and what is a caterwauling geriatric cat if not atonal? So here goes.

12-year-old Homer is a sprightly domestic-short-hair lap cat with silky black fur that has recently started going gray. Homer is constipated 24/7. According to the vet, that makes pooping painful for him, and because Homer has the brain of a cat, he draws a logical cat conclusion: "it hurts when I poop, therefore the litter box is biting me in the butt. It is safe to pee in the litter box, but pooping should be conducted elsewhere."

"Elsewhere" previously meant sneaking around the house and finding a spot on any carpet, so long as humans weren't looking. Pooping was still no fun, but it was better than going in the biting box. When done, Homer would tidily stroke the carpet a few times with his paws. This stroking is a coarse and primitive instinct: in his 12 years, Homer has never once realized that the purpose of the paw sweep is to cover his waste, and he has always stroked the vertical side of the litter box instead of the litter itself.

To coax him back into the box, we tried kitty laxatives, new litter boxes, extra litter boxes, cleaner litter boxes, and different litters, and none of it worked. Then we discovered the Litter Kwitter.

Here's the thing about the Litter Kwitter, though: you have to follow through. After your cat achieves success with Stage 1 (pan on the floor), you begin Stage 2 (pan clipped to the toilet seat). If you interrupt Stage 2 to use the toilet yourself, you must remember to put the pan back on the toilet seat instead of leaving it on the floor. That is how we failed, and it's too late now to take a step back and try again, because Homer has moved on.

But don't gloat yet, mom! Here is what Homer learned: "The toilet is tall, and I am too stupid to figure out how to jump up there tail-first (head-first is fine, and good for an occasional drink, yum!, but I am too stupid to figure out how to jump head-first and then turn around); yet my humans do not like it when I poop on the rug. I must page them when I need help."

Homer now has two routines to choose from, which I have translated from his Feline description into English:

"(1) I shall imitate the humans. When humans sit on the toilet to poop, I shall join them and Get Into Position on the bathmat."

"(2) in case no humans are pooping when I have to go, I shall meow plaintively, like this: 'meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.' When a human answers my call, I shall Get Into Position."

If you pick up Homer and put him on the toilet before he is In Position, he will jump down and go find a new spot on the rug or bathmat. But if you wait until he's In Position--poised with muscles tensed, on the verge of pooping (see photo)--well, then he's kind of stuck that way, so you can pick him up, carry him through the house, and put him on the toilet seat, and he'll stay there until he has finished his business.

After he uses the toilet, I praise him with an effusive "good kitty, goooooood kitty!", which makes him proud and reinforces the desired notify-the-humans behavior. Then he rewards himself by going upstairs to the bathtub for a drink of water from his People Cup, which is another story altogether.