A couple of readers have asked about Opie… ask and you shall receive :) Here he is sitting on “Odder’s Throne,” so named because he loves to steal my seat!
When he was a kitten, he used to sit on the edge of the tub while I took a bath; one night he was had a little too much fun with the bubbles and fell in! He looked like a little otter as he tried unsuccessfully to climb back out, so he’s been nicknamed The Otter ever since, Odder is the Danish spelling.
I adore this little monster! I’m always smooching him and asking, “why is he so freaking cute?” And Robert just says, “because he’s a cat and you’re a woman.”
However, for a dog guy (and despite what he’ll admit to), Robert has become quite taken with this silly orange moggie… he’s even trained him to sit on command and to come when he whistles. Now I wish he’d train him to use the toilet and to not eat my houseplants ;-)
Gracey is not my name.... says
We had a cat that used the toilet…..my mom was yelling at my brother all the time for not putting the seat up…one day I walked in the bathroom and our cat was squatting over the toilet using it!
Sage says
That’s so cool! Were you able to completely transition it from litter box to toilet? We have a tiny apartment and I hate having the litter box in our living space, up until now I’ve been able to have it off in its own little space.
WILDSIDE says
My sweet cat (who chose to live with me after being a stray) was very interested and curious in learning the mechanics of toilet flushing, as she was with cooking in the kitchen, but she was a wee little thing and would have fallen in so we kept the toilet lid down. Later, I learned that cats were being trained to use the toilet — missed opportunity there! I’m quite certain she was willing to cook all our meals for us — and choose and lay out our clothes for work (fashion was another interest of hers), if but only she had had opposable thumbs.
Thanks for the pic of Opie — he’s a gorgeous guy and should be every girl’s dream!
(So I say the above, serious with lots of winking.)
Gracey is not my name.... says
No, he only used it to pee…he’d still poop in the litter box..and we had two other cats…an older female and a young male tiger cat…although the male tiger cat also did it a few times…
Anonymous says
Sage – A very old book called “No Naughty Cats” by Debra Pirotin has a section on training your cat to use the toilet instead of the litter box. I never tried it, but if her method is as good as the rest of her advice, it might be worth a try.
Sage says
Thanks for mentioning this book! I bought it when Opie was a naughty little kitten, but hadn’t remembered that it has a bit on toilet training your cat. I’m sure I just dismissed the idea back then.
Anyway, it came to Denmark with me, so I’ll dig it up and hand it over to my Opie trainer extraordinaire and see what happens.
WILDSIDE says
I keep hoping I won’t check in here anymore! But LOVE this shot of Opie. Please be gentle with him. He’s been doing it his own way for awhile. But I found my kitten so eager to please and so grateful and willing fit in with her new human community that she’d try this and make it work.
But it takes a special sort of cat.
WILDSIDE says
And Opie just might be that…