Truce
Late last evening, an emissary from the "Catifada" entered my room and delivered to me a manifesto.
This manifesto listed a number of demands, including "not moving the food bowls", "not moving the litterboxes", and "giving new toys if out of the house for more that 3 days". Besides the last demand I thought these were reasonable requests and I read further... towards the end, amidst lots of incendiary language regarding "the little one who chases and screams", an obvious reference to our daughter, was a compromise.
The "prisoner" would agree to use the litter box if he could be released from the bathroom for the evening. The "prisoner" would use the box before the release occurred.
My wife and I concurred and quickly agreed to this truce.
The truce, while on shaky ground has so far held. No new "roadside bombs" were left in the kitchen today. A new catnip-filled carrot was offered to the "prisoner" as a show of good faith and all seems well. We will see if tensions flare again. If they do, the punishment to the "prisoner" will be swift and strong.
As for trading, I've had some solid trades early today and now I'm taking it easy. I caught a nice early run in TNH, BTU, AGU and a nice short in CROX. And other smaller gains elsewhere. One complaint is that I haven't sized into any of these runs. Still, without any significant losers to note (besides one in CPT, a piece of shit stock that has now been removed from my screens) I feel I am solidly in the green.
I will now be patient and scan for solid setups. It's about closing strong instead of giving it back.
4 comments:
How old is the prisoner? Our little bundle of bombs is almost a year now, and a few months ago we started to train her to use the toilet instead of the litter box. It was a tense month with some active monitoring and a few insurrections, but the result is great: no more stinky cat box, no more changing the litter, and a happy prisoner. She still scratches which means water splashed about, but we're trying to discourage that now.
Wow, you're like the guy from Meet The Parents, huh? That's great you were able to train you cat like that... I've always dreamed of being free of the litter box.
As for Doc the Prisoner, he's 3 years old. He's the runt of the litter and a bit of an idiot. I seriously doubt we could train him but I guess you never know til you try.
Is there some method you used?
-DT
DT,
Meet the Parents? Maybe, I don't remember. I saw it in a book of my dads maybe 10 years ago and immediately turned it on to my cat. Great idea.
If you google for "cat toilet training" or variations, you'll find thousands of articles on how to do it. Two of the cats I trained were started around 8mo, one was about 4yrs. It takes a bit of patience while the cats learn but once they get it, they seem to have no problems. The toilet is cleaner and doesn't smell as much as litter boxes which the cats like.
There are lots of ways of doing it. The way that I've done is:
- place the litter box beside the toilet
- slowly prop it up with magazines or newspapers until it is at the same height as the toilet bowl
- move the litter box on top of the toilet, leaving the boxes/newspapers beside for the cat to jump onto
- replace the litter box with a colander or mixing bowl filled with litter and placed in the toilet bowl. Make sure it is strong enough to hold the cat!
That will be pretty simple and the cat shouldn't have any problem. Now comes the tricky bit. I found that after each change the cat would protest a bit and need encouragement but after a time or two, would do their thing. So make the changes slow enough to give cat time to adjust.
- slowly remove the amount of litter in the colander
- cut a small hole in the colander and place litter around the sides
- slowly increase the size of the hole while decreasing the amount of litter
- when the hole is big enough, remove the colander entirely
Other people use a mixing bowl and instead of cutting a hole, slowly fill with water. I don't like that because it's messy and smelly.
You may have to watch to make sure the cat is placing their feet properly and to encourage them.
The first process took us about a month and was painless. The second process (removing the litter and cutting a hole) took about 4-6 weeks and the cat would use the floor behind the toilet about once a week. When there's no litter, the cat bombs in the colander will stink something awful unless you're on hand to dump them into the toilet, but once the hole gets bigger, that's not a problem.
So, a couple months of stink and attention and then freedom. For myself, it's so nice to not have the cat litter scattered about the house.
Good luck.
Tyro,
Yeah, in Meet the Parents the character played by Robert DeNiro teaches his cat how to use the toilet.
That's a very interesting technique. I'm intrigued. Given the hatred around here for the litter boxes and given the fact that they are not being used, I'm going to try and convince my wife to give this a shot.
Our problem though would be that we have 3 cats... it may be hard to train them all at once.
We'll see. Thanks for the detailed instructions. It really gave me an idea of what's involved!
-DT
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