toilet train my cat

Anyways. Noko’s home and rather unhappy with his quarantine but he and Ome seem to be getting along better each time they get into close proximity. The vet showed me how to irrigate the abcess drains to keep them open so he can continue to heal and while I’m not convinced I’m doing it right I’m plugging away. This chaos is made complete by the fact that Bill’s away for the week so I get to try to subdue this wriggly cat by myself as I stick a syringe filled with hydrogen peroxide into one of two open incisions. I can guarantee that he’s not enjoying it but I think that I enjoy it even less.

Noko’s also getting clindamycin for the infection and I suspect that that rates almost as high as the irrigation procedure on his poop list. It’s a liquid that I add to his food and this morning he actually stuck his foot in his breakfast to try to sort out the chunks that weren’t tainted by the nasty stuff.

It is worth it because Noko’s a wonderfully loving little cat (or he was before I started tormenting him with stinging bubbly cold fluid two or three times a day) but I hate having to inflict what must feel like the cruelest abuse on him.

Firstly, thank you for your kind thoughts and comments. Noko had been doing well but he’s back at the vet for an overnight visit. Last night when we were giving him his antibiotic meds we noticed a pronounced and very firm bulge on the lower part of his abdomen. His incision looked to be healing nicely, he hasn’t been picking at it and doesn’t need an elizabethan collar, he’d been eating with gusto and there were no problems as far as using the facilities went so we were stumped.
I trotted him in to see Dr. Shannon this morning and she was stumped too. X-rays showed that his surgical wound was healing nicely and that the mass had nothing to do with it. It turned out to be an abscess . . . a nice little welcome home gift from Ome. Unlike Peter and Sophie’s v-e-t experience, Ome decided that Noko smelled weird after his 6 day absence and probably kicked the snot out of him when I wasn’t looking. I never saw signs of full battle but I did catch her engaging in a bit of hiss and smack.
The end result of this latest adventure is that Noko will be quarantined when he gets home with strictly supervised visits so that our loving siblings can readjust to each other without a war. Also, where a normal cat would have a drain shunt installed to keep that abscess clean and healing? Noko’s not getting one on the grounds that he might eat it. Is it just me or is that sort of funny in a grim and morbid way?

It’s been an eventful week for us. Last Tuesday Noko started vomiting with greater frequency than usual (he’s a cat, he pukes, we understand this) but by friday he ended up at the v-e-t-s office where we found out he had a bowel blockage. It turns out that he’s one of those wonderful kitties who eats anything he finds on the floor. After surgical intervention to remove the chunk of dog toy he ate (the toy itself had been thrown out months ago because it’d been torn into said chunks) he had to stay at the animal hospital for monitering and post op care. I was finally able to bring him home today and he’s doing well but I’ve put the litter bowl back in the toilet to remind him that that’s where he needs to go. I’m also hoping to make his life a little easier by not forcing him to balance while his incision is still fresh.

Well, Wednesday started with a trip to the V-E-T and while Dr Shannon doesn’t think that the bladder infection has anything to do with Ome’s unhappiness with the toilet, I suspect it does. Incidentally, she also thinks that toilet training is terrific as long as the cat in question isn’t unhappy. Anyways, in spite of managing to get herself a nice little infection, she’s back to using the toilet again and the auto flusher has been unplugged for good.

Yesterday we installed the flusher. It came with no instructions at all but Hubby figured it out and put it together . . . it worked perfectly. We mounted the sensor on the toilet tank (it just sticks in place) and totally removed the toilet lid (which we were going to do anyway in order to be certain that the lid couldn’t be mistakenly closed)
Anyways, we don’t know which of the changes sent the cats over the edge but someone was so upset that he/she pooped on our bedroom carpet and then peed on the puppy bed. They wouldn’t even venture into the bathroom to eat (we’re having to feed them in the tub thanks to our voracious and sneaky puppy.
End result? Toilet lid back on, auto flush disconnected and two cats who are deeply upset with us. sigh

have you guys seen www.mycathatesyou.com ? It’s rude, crude and profane but pretty darn funny.

Also the auto flush unit came today. I’d hook it up myself but I’m an instruction reader and it doesn’t have any :-P

We are going away for a week in October and were discussing what to do for the cats. We don’t want to board them, because they’ll be back on the box if we do, and we don’t have anyone who could stay here/come in several times a day to flush . . . Well, hubby went looking and found a wireless electronic eye that will flush the toilet as soon as the cat’s done with it. It should be here in a couple of weeks and when we get it installed, I’ll let you all know how it works.

The packing tape and foil are all gone. I can once again set things on counters in the bathrooms without the aggravation of trying to remove layers of packing tape when I pick them up again. Noko and Ome are using the toilets with no problems and as far as I can tell, they’re both willing to use the master bath in a crunch . . or even if the guest bathroom toilet just hasn’t been flushed. Noko continues to run into the bathroom to witness the flushing and I continue to perk up and smile at the sound of non-human tinkling.

Good luck everbody and remember above all things, BE PATIENT!

It has been worth it!

I’m not quite ready to declare myself one of the “I have done this!” crowd because my bathrooms are still crackling with foil and tape but today one of the cats used the toilet in our bathroom. I’ve been threatening for weeks to put the CK in there and never got around to it but I suspect that when Noko locked himself in there (he does this on a regular basis) he had to go, looked around, and concluded that THAT ceramic bowl was the same as the other one . . . and used it. I’m so proud. Not to mention lucky that I have such cooperative little beasts.

So my mother was bragging on her clever grandcats the other day and the person she was talking to piped up and said “But it’s illegal to put cat feces in the water table via the toilet because cats carry different pathogens”. He couldn’t offer any proof and we think he’s wrong in part because I don’t think that fecal matter goes straight into the water table regardless of whether you’re on septic, sewer, or even an outhouse for that matter. Also, if it was illegal, why would they make so many flushable litter products? And who exactly would police this? And how????

This is all I’ve been able to find on it . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/02/MN251955.DTL

In the end maybe we’re going to all have to go underground with our illicit toilet activities :-p

I still say it’s worth it grin