The Prince of Darkness and Poop

So far, today sucks.

First it is Valentine's Day, which means I'm already a little on edge. I have never much liked Valentine's Day, it's one of those holidays which creates a lot of expectation with no justification. Flowers are nice, but not to fulfill some artificial obligation. I can only watch so many romantic comedies before I want to shake Meg Ryan until she stops being so neurotic. And god knows I don't need another white teddy bear holding a giant red heart that says "I Wuv You." (Side-note, why are Valentine's teddy bears always white? Aren't polar bears supposed to be pretty vicious?)

Second, I'm starting to feel a little ill and had trouble getting up this morning.

Third, Toby is the devil. Seriously, he's like a little grey Lucifer.

It is 8:30. I need to get to work. I'm standing in the bathroom applying eye liner, and Toby starts wailing. These gut-wrenching cat sobs, like he's being torn apart. At first I think that he just needs some alone time with the toilet box, so I leave him alone in the bathroom. He follows me, still meowing pitifully. So I pet him for a while. And he purrs and stops whining.

After a few minutes I think it's safe for me to continue getting ready. So I walk into the other room to iron my pants. Toby is not happy with me. From the kitchen I hear him starting to scratch at my bed. I run into the other room, just to catch him mid-poo. I shout at him and, without thinking, grab him by the scruff and run him into the bathroom.

Here's the thing about a pooing cat. Just because he's 4 feet in the air does not mean he stops pooing. After throwing tabby Satan into the bathroom, I look back to see a trail of little round cat poos from my bed to the bathroom.

I don't think Toby's "accident" had anything to do with the potty training, other than he doesn't like it. He's just an asshole. But the toilet training, combined with my jackass of a cat may just be too much for me to cope with.

(Don't judge my drawing too much, this was done during my lunch break.)

If I Succeed....

When I was about 10, my father and I went to visit my paternal grandmother in Madera for some event, the details of which I have long forgotten about. What I do remember is that midway through the event I excused myself to go use her restroom. Only to find that the toilet was clogged. Though my initial reaction was to just walk away, there were two reasons that I could not do this, 1) I really needed to pee and, 2) everyone at the event would assume that I had clogged the toilet, since I was the last one to use the restroom. There was no plunger in sight, so I approached my grandmother and quietly announced that someone else had clogged the toilet. To which she responded:

"If you clogged the toilet, just say so. Don't blame it on someone else."
"No, no, no," I explained, "it was like that when I got there."

At this point one of my three aunt's asked what the problem was.
"Your niece has clogged the toilet and is trying to blame it on someone else."
"Nonono, it was not me."
"Honey, don't be ashamed of it," my favorite aunt said.
"It's much worse to lie about it," another aunt chimed in.
"We don't like liars in this family," my grandma stated.
My youngest aunt had been sitting quietly through the conversation, glass of wine in hand. Suddenly she chimed in: "You need to flush twice if it's that big."

At this point I was nearly in tears. To be perfectly honest, if I had clogged the toilet, I would probably lie about it. But I hadn't. It was not my fault. It was one of the people in this room, one of the many people looking at me with judgment in their eyes.
"Ididn'tclogthetoiletandyou'reallreallymean. And I have to pee!!!"

Finally at this point my father stepped in and I was rescued.

The point of this story? Assuming I succeed in training the cats to use the toilet, I will spend the rest of their lives having to explain to my friends that it's Bear and Toby's fault. The toilet is not clogged, and I did not forget to flush. It was the cats.

Step Two (The First Hole)

Despite rumors to the contrary I have not given up on the toilet training experiment. However, I fell behind in my blog due to the cats unforeseen reaction to me prematurely moving on to Step 2.

After my previous post the cats were doing well. There was still the occasional accident outside the toilet, but that seemed to have more to do with the fact that I work over 8 hours a day and I have two big cats who use the litter box frequently.

So I decided to remove the first section. This was a gross process and I will spare you the details.



The flesh tone of the litter only makes the shape of the hole more inappropriate.

The cats did not like the new hole, and lashed out at me in the only way they knew how... by pooping on my bed and peeing in a pile of freshly washed laundry.

Needless to say, the cats have not been allowed in my bedroom since we started Step 2.

After a few days they warmed up to the hole. While there are still accidents, those accidents are primarily limited to a spot on the floor just in front of the toilet. And if the bath mat is in the way, the cats are very considerate and lift it out of the way before they poo on my floor.

The accidents are also becoming more limited as their aim improves. About 1/6 of the time, the cats make it directly in the hole, meaning that the other cat is willing to use the litter.

As awkward as it sounds, it's incredibly gratifying to simply flush my cats poo.