Mentioned to the wife that I wouldn’t mind getting a pet cat. She doesn’t seem that keen & reckons the house’ll end up stinking of cat piss. Not having owned a cat before, I naively though that you just bung a tray of cat litter down and that the cat’ll just start using it – based on the old ‘yea, but cats are cleaner than dogs like’ idea. The wife burst out laffing at this! hmm…errr wonder why?!! She reckons it can take quite a bit of effort to properly house train a cat – surely it’s not that bad – Is it?!

We have 2, never had to do anything to house train either. I think they’re born trained!

Plonk it down in the tray all the time when it’s a kitten, they learn quickly.

a few incidences of rubbing their nose in it then chucking them in the litter tray will have them using it in no time, also if they do shite somewhere be sure that you pick it up and put it in the tray (when you put the shittynosed little bugger in there).

after that they get used to it, then (if the can is going to have outside access) you move the litter tray towards an open window, then outside.

alternatively if the cat is going to be housebound: http://home.gci.net/~divs/behavior/toilet_cat.html

personally I prefer birds.

I hear a few seconds in a microwave can work wonders but don’t over do it….

Cat litter first, then have catflap fitted as it gets older,
cats just know what to do, i once had three cats the only problem is they
start thinking the house is theirs

2 cats here. Betty and Wilma (which is offputting when the swinnertons ad on the left comes into view) were 3 months when we got them from the rescue centre. Out in the garden first day, feeding the roses and never a problem.

They do own us though 😀

As above plonk in litter tray it will soon get the idea.
Make sure litter tray is not near food bowl (it wont crap near where it eats).
Once cat has got used to using tray gradually move towards back door to house etc over a few weeks finally placing outside door.
then remove completely.
Hey presto cat will go to door when it feels the need and crap in your neighbours garden.
One last thing if you are out of the house for long periods of time (i.e. at work all day) and the cat is in the house you may have to provide a tray for this occasion as they become distressed if they have nowhere to crap (just like women)!
😉

As others have said, getting a kitten house trained is a piece of p1ss. Although with your missus attitude, and can’t help feeling that any cat living in your house might not be the happiest bunny in the street. A goldfish maybe ?

Actually, their mother shows them what to do. This is why you should only get kittens when you know the source and leave them with their mother as long as possible….

Also, cats pee inside, even though they know better, when there are emotional/pecking order type issues, if you missus really doesn’t want a cat you will have problems.

What HELS said.

Our little cat was removed from the litter too young. We got her at 8months old and 6months later she still only uses her tray for a number 2 about 20% of the time – often somewhere near it instead.
She will wee in either her tray or our other cat’s litter tray though, but occasionally does do it in the laundry basket too! 🙁

We started letting her outside recently and she’s not using the litter tray inside at all. 😀

Wheras the older cat that was with mum & siblings til 10weeks in a home environment, has never given us any problems…

The little one is 1/3 the size of the bigger/older cat, but she’s ruling the household now – another consequence of being removed from the litter too soon, she’s waaay too assertive for her own good!

whats all this litter tray nonsense, just throw the bugger outside at night and let it back in on the morning, just like the flintstones. Thats what our cat got used to (tho we got him when he was a few years old), only kept him in twice in the time we had him and he crapped on the carpet both times, so from then on out he went, rain/wind/snow, never did him any harm and he was always back straight at your feet for his breakfast… tho it meant he was a lazy bugger during the day as he’d been out prowling all night ;0)

We have litter trays because due to various reasons they’ve had to be kept inside most of the day for 6months!

Had numerous cats, never had a problem litter training them (until we got ferrets too, then they didnt like sharing trays, naturally). After the initial kitten stage where you train by simply acclimatising them to going in a tray they’ll be fine. Sometimes you get an odd cat that never gets it, but its fairly rare.

My auntie is a pedigree breeder and keeps all her cats inside, which I dont agree with – this tends to make them less happy and controllable. IF you dont have a garden to let a cat out in I feel its a bit cruel to keep them at all – they LOVE being outside and its rare to find one that doesnt try to get out all the time, but possible. You dont know what it’s like when you first buy it though!

Cats, assuming you dont get a scatty one with mental issues, make for far less smelly homes as they’re very clean critters and dont smell in general like dogs do (until they get very old and unable to clean themselves properly).

if tiddles does a mess, 5 minutes on defrost. that’ll whip her into shape!

You can train a cat to use the toilet – but unfortunately not flush it.

Once it has stated using a litter tray move the tray next to the Karzi. Then get one of those kiddy toilet seat things that fit over the loo seat with a tray / bowl under it – fill it with cat litter and put it over the toilet – then remove the tray, then remove the kiddie seat. It takes a few weeks and there might be the odd accident but you end up with a cat that pees and poos in the loo.

’tis true – I know several people who have had success with this.

You can only train a young cat tho – once they are a few months old they seem to lose the ability to learn

I found a little ferral chap a few years ago, tray down, crap/pee etc. from day one. still didnt stop the little get being out allnight and getting him self splattered on the rosd 😕 Poor little bugga!

yep, most cats learn for themselves. just leave a litter tray in a room somewhere and put them in it every now and again. After a very short while they pick it up. It’s much longer to train a dog than a cat. Cats like to wee/poo in loose soil so the litter tray is more attractive to them anyway.

One important thing to do with dogs and cats is if they do anything not where they’re supposed to, clean it up immediately. Both animals will return to the scene of the crime if any of the smell remains.

TJ – thats excellent, if you start them young dont they just fall in the loo ? 😀

What the others said about litter trays.

If it’s a male cat it’ll start to mark it’s territory at about 6 months or so. Trust me on this one: a wife that’s not overly keen on cats is unlikely to be any more enthusiastic about them when it pees on the bed… 🙄

At that point it’s off to the vet, snippity snappity…

Contrary to what STATO says, don’t let your cat out at night. Current advice is keep it in from dusk till dawn – it is then less likely to kill and also less likely to get run over.

Get a female cat they are much more fastidious than males and they wont mark their territory by pissing in the house.

My cat is 10 years old and she hasnt used a cat litter tray since she was a kitten. We have only had one accident when she was ill and crapped on the bed never mind we needed a new duvet anyway.

Cats want to poo and pee outside in loose soil. Plus their mothers show them how to do it, and also how to clean themselves. That’s why you SHOULD NOT take them from their mothers when they are tiny cute fwuffykins, it’s not fair on them. We had one like that and she didn’t know how to clean herself properly. Coupled with very long hair, that meant little sh*t kisses everywhere she sat down if she got messy.

So +1 for above – don’t take em too young, let em go outside and you’ll never have to smell cat pee. The only ever time I can rememer one of our cats peeing inside in 20 odd years and 3 cats is when we went away for a long weekend one time. We thought she was out, but she’d actually got herself locked in the downstairs bog thanks to its automatic door closer. We came home and all her food was uneaten, and she was nowhere to be found. Then we started hearing miaows.. we looked high and low.. She’d been in the lav all weekend but even then she’d tried to wee in the plant pot rather than on the floor, bless.

pantsonfire – WRONG!! Sorry, but we have got a female cat that we got from the Blue Cross rescue centre.
I think she has some kind of anxiety thing going on with cats in the neighbourhood and we are having real trouble with her spraying all over the f-ing house to ‘mark’ her territory…..

She goes near the front door and the patio door in the lounge. She goes in the hall way and seems to take real pleasure in spraying on anything you leave in the hall – camelbak, shoes, take bag out of car and leave in hall for 5 mins – cat will spray on it. A friend who also has a cat stayed over and we warned he to shut all her stuff in the spare room. She bought her bag downstairs just before leaving and in the time it took her to put her coat on, the cat had sprayed on it. She also goes on things that we leave in the bedroom – I got a pile of clothes out the night before the WS1 race at Thetford in November, so I wasn’t banging cupboard doors at 7am on a Sunday. Went to put my clothes on and realised she had sprayed on them – luckily there was a large fleece covering everything, so it was just that she ‘marked’. Grrrrrr.
We have to ensure that the kitchen door is closed or she jumps on the workstops and sprays over whatever takes her fancy – 2 toasters we have had to chuck away, she goes on the fruit bowl, the control thing for the heating…..you name it.

We have been to 2 different vets about it. One suggested a plug-in air freshener thing that is meant to release a ‘cat soothing’ chemical. Well, she certainly seemed more chilled out, but this just meant that she was happy to spray absolutely anywhere. We gave up on that.
The next vet suggested limiting her access to the whole house, which we have done and seems to help a bit. He also recommended buying a heap of food bowls and putting a small amount of food in them, wherever she sprays. Because cats won’t spray near there food it should stop her going there. We have tried this and she just finds alternative spots.
The vet has suggested next we get an animal behaviour expert in and/or try some kind of tablets that chill cats out (like valiujm for cats) but I am not keen on that.

Annoyingly, the girlfriend reckons that this has only happened since i moved in, so perhaps it is something to do with me being in the house now…..some kind of power conflict or something.

hels you seem to know what you are on about – any words of wisdom? I wouldn’t like to have to get rid of her, but we are thinking of redecorating most of our house and I don’t want it sprayed in cat p1ss after spending £100’s on it.

Well, ta for all the feedback. I work from home,to-ing & fro-ing between the house and garden workshop , so the cat generally won’t be on its own for more than a couple of hours. I was gonna keep the cat in at night, which is the reason I was asking about house training – I’m hoping it’ll just kip all night and not wander ’round scent marking
(sounds like my plan for a manky old tom-cat is a no-no :wink:)

😆

I’m hoping it’ll just kip all night

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Be prepared for getting your toes chewed.

HAHAHHA!

One of ours goes for the toes at every opportunity once he’s awake, t’other one just rubs her face all over you til you get up & give her some attention.
When i’m working in the shed/garage, older cat will come & hang out with me, is kinda cool.

I’d say don’t keep it in all night, you’ll get trouble. Put a catflap in the back door and keep the kitchen door closed (or however your house is set up). We did this in our house when I was a kid and it worked just fine.

Remember to teach them to stay away from the microwave! Especially after you’ve had one to many stella’s 😐

Stumpy01

It sounds like a classic pecking order issue/anxiety issue. I have never had a cat that was that bad ! You have to make it feel good about itself, if you have tried the plug-in thing I don’t know what to suggest. Rescue cats can often take a long time to settle in and feel secure. I think she is maybe being bullied somewhere outside the house too by another cat, hence the spraying inside. A quick patrol with an airgun might help. (joking, no really)

One cat we had once was like this (we called her Tiddles) and I am afraid the only solution was to pretty much bar her from the house, we just let her in the laundry via a cat door to eat and sleep at night. Gradually reintroduced her as she got more comfortable and she was eventually fine.

Good luck – and like with children try not to blow up and smack her or anything when she is bad, that will make your problem worse.

Hels….

We’ve had the cat for perhaps 5yrs now, so she should be settling in OK!
But when we got her, the centre said that she doesn’t tolerate other cats and whenever I have seen her in the garden and another cat appears, it’s not pretty.

It doesn’t help that she seems to be a bit of a wuss and quite often gets an ass whupping.
She does seem like a very anxiosu cat though, and she won’t tolerate being picked up or anything like that, so I do wonder if it was something to do with how she was brought up as a kitten.
Our vet recommended a SuperSoaker water pistol ready by the back door to shoot at any other cats that get in the garden (but the cat can’t grip it very well 😆 )

And yes, we have been told not to shout at her when she does wrong, but it’s difficult not to.

you’ll get trouble.

what kind of trouble do you mean? Neither of ours go out at night, no issues here. Keeping them in is current RSPCA advice.