Toilet-train your cat!

Stage 1: Litter Box Beside the Toilet

The purpose of this stage is to get your cat accustomed to hopping up onto the toilet to do her business. This will be the easiest stage of the training, and most cats can blow through this fairly quickly. (In fact, if your cat is young or you know that she's easygoing and adaptable, you can try skipping this stage altogether and move on to Stage 2, although following through with this stage will definitely help ease your cat into the next stage.)

Start by moving the cat's litter box from wherever it is to the side of the toilet. Make sure she knows where it is; if necessary, pick her up and put her in the box to show her where the new location is. Your cat should pick this up fairly quickly; cats determine an appropriate place to go potty largely based on smell and where they've gone before, so as long as they can detect the familiar smell of their litter, they should have no problem with the new litter box location.

Now that your cat has gone at least once in the new litter box location, it's time to gradually raise the box until it's level with the top of the toilet seat. Find something sturdy — for example, a cardboard box, or a stack of newspapers — and raise the litter box a couple of inches. (Don't use magazines or anything that's too slick, otherwise the litter box will slide around, making kitty feel insecure.) Wait a day or two for your cat to do #1 and #2 in the raised litter box, and once you're certain that she's gotten the hang of it, raise the box another couple of inches. Keep doing this until the litter box is level with the toilet seat.

Somewhere along this process, your cat will learn to jump up onto the toilet seat first and then step into the litter box from there. Of course, you've trained yourself to keep the toilet seat down and the lid up like we've discussed, so kitty is getting accustomed to navigating around on the open toilet seat.

Once the litter box is level with the top of the toilet seat, move the litter box over so that it's sitting directly over the seat. If you've noticed that your cat has been hesitant to make the previous changes, you may want to move the litter box over the toilet seat gradually — move it halfway onto the seat at first, then fully over the seat. Also, make sure that the litter box is secure — we don't want the litter box to move around and potentially fall over! If necessary, use some duct tape to tape it down to the toilet.

At this point, feel free to get rid of the cardboard boxes or newspapers that you used to raise the litter box — we won't need them anymore.