Out of town, out of order

After a couple successful weeks toward potty training, my husband and I went out of town for a week.  While we were gone, two of our friends kindly welcomed the cats into their home.  We set everything up like it was at home with the litter box on top of the toilet.  The first few days were fine, but it started to go downhill after that.  One of them peed on a chair of theirs then the next day, Jerri was found trying to "cover up" her pee on the cat bed I had provided.  After a couple more "accidents", my friends took the cats back home a day earlier than we were suppose to return home.

When we arrived home, the litter box remained on top of the toilet for a few more days with no problems.  I caught Tom in the act and I thought I would share this picture.

After a couple days of getting things back to normal, I moved to the next step by placing the litter in a turkey roasting pan and dropping it down into the toilet.

We closely monitored the litter that went unused for about 24 hours.  We picked the cats up onto the toilet and placed them inside the litter to show them where it was, but this didn't seem to help.  The next afternoon we found a very large amount of urine in the corner of the couch on top of the two throw pillows.  Unfortunately at the time, we had a friend visiting town for a wedding of a mutual friend who would be sleeping on the couch.  My husband quickly steam cleaned it to get rid of the horrible odor cat urine leaves behind.  For the remainder of my friend's visit, we had the litter box set up next to the toilet as well as the pan dropped down into the toilet.

A few hours after dropping my friend off at the airport, my husband and I went out of town for a few more days to end our last week of vacation.  While we were gone, the cats stayed home and three of my friends came to check on them at least once a day each day.  While we were gone, the litter box was placed back on top of the toilet since the roasting pan wasn't working so far.

Now we are home for good (until further notice) so it's time to get serious about getting them to go down in the toilet!