Number two, two times

After no accidents since Thursday, I found poop on the bathroom rug near the shower twice today. :-(

As a side note, this weekend something funny happened.  I was in the bathroom doing my thing, brushing my teeth, washing my face, and taking my sweet time.  When I got out, my husband said to me, "Geez!  You were in there for a long time! I need to go!"  No sooner than he said that, Tom ran into the bathroom, jumped up on the toilet and peed.  Guess my husband wasn't the only one waiting on me!  haha!  Our next place needs at least two bathrooms.

Number 1: great! Number 2: not so much...

I'm excited to say that things are still moving in the right direction!  The cats were doing great and using the toilet consistently.  Jerri is a very private toilet user, not that I blame her, but Tom doesn't mind going right in front of us.

He jumps right up on the toilet, finds the right place that feels good to him, puts all four paws on the seat, and squats to "go".  I pees right into the water in the center of the hole in the pan.  Afterwards he tries to cover it up by pushing all the litter into the water.  When I catch him in the act, he immediately gets his catnip and we are both happy!

Since the last post, I made another cut to the roasting pan to make the hole a bit wider.

(I'm not sure why the picture is flipped)

Like I mentioned, Jerri jumps down as soon as I am about to catch her in the act, so I only have footage of Tom.  He has had no problem with peeing in the toilet.

However....pooping is a whole different story....

After cutting the hole larger on Sunday night, this is what we found on Monday morning.

At first we assumed it was Jerri since she is the one who gives us the most trouble, but a few days later, I was getting ready for work and saw Tom pee and start meowing as he circled the toilet.  I knew he wanted to poop, but for some reason he wasn't.  I had to run to work so I warned my husband to keep an eye on him.  About 30 minutes later, he sent me this picture.

He had gone over to the rug from the bathroom (recently pooped on a few days prior that was placed in a different place waiting for laundry day) and relieved himself!  

That was yesterday morning and I'm still trying to figure out how to overcome this.  **knock on wood**  There have been no accidents since this and I have found their poop inside the toilet a few times so I'm hoping we are over the hump.  We plan to stay at this step for at least another week, maybe longer, to ensure we don't take any steps backwards.  I'm also going to read more information online and see if there are any suggestions to keep moving forward.

We are moving in the right direction!

Things have been going pretty well with the potty training.  The cats have not been allowed into the living room or bedroom when we are not around and all the rugs have been removed.  With these supports, they have been using the litter pan inside the toilet consistently!  Jerri is still not covering up anything she leaves there and Tom scoops all the litter into the toilet when he uses it.

After one week of consistent success, I made another cut to the litter pan to expand the hole a little bit.

They have been using the litter pan like this for the past two days with no problems so far.  I never see Jerri using the toilet, but this morning Tom decided to do his business when I was in the bathroom getting ready for work.

Movin' on up! to the next step!

After two weeks of making pretty steady progress, we are taking another step toward the cats using the toilet.  The cats have been using the toilet consistently, or so I thought.

Tonight, after several weeks of "talking the talk", we finally "walked the walk" and removed the rug that was under the former litter box.  It was completely soaked in wet, yellow fluid!  I suspect the coverage was from over the course of months, but there was definitely moist areas making me think this has been an area for "relieving" themselves since they have been using the roasting pan in the toilet...and I'm pretty convinced it's only Jerri.  But, now the rug is gone, in the dumpster, and not coming back.  With the cats still not permitted to be in the living room or bedroom when we aren't around, this leaves only the toilet.  I hope that I won't have to remove the area rug from under the kitchen island or the runner in front of the sink/dishwasher/oven.

I have seen both cats using the roasting pan inside the litter box on a regular basis.  They tend to each "go" twice a day.  Tom consistently pushes all the litter down inside the toilet to cover his mess while Jerri leaves everything to be seen and smelled by us.  A few times, I have still found remnants on the toilet seat and down the side of the toilet.

Thank goodness for Clorox Disinfecting Wipes!

We have been stagnate for the past two weeks with no changes to the amount of litter, use of catnip, and size of the hole in the roasting pan.  Now it's time to step it up!  I cut a small piece of the pan making the hole a bit larger meaning less space to stand and less litter.

Updates to come....