Day 44 -- Finally, progress!!

These past weeks have been excruciating.

Training Kratos to poop with all four paws on the toilet seat has been extremely difficult and frustrating. Everyday, I rush home, hoping that he hadn't used the toilet yet. Then, I set up shop in front of the bathroom door, and basically wait and wait and wait for Kratos to muster up enough pooping desire to enter the bathroom. Every time Kratos comes close, I jump out of my seat, and follow him into the bathroom, quietly so as not to scare him. When he inevitably hears me and turns around, I force myself to smile and nod my head in approval to encourage him further. If I am very lucky, I might be able to catch him use the toilet twice this way; on most days, though, I can only catch him once, and on some days, when Kratos just refuses to use the toilet, or sneaks into the bathroom when I'm not looking, I would waste a whole night of Kratos-stalking for naught.

Even Kratos must be getting creeped out by my unnatural scatological obsessions, as demonstrated by this picture strip taken by my roommate:

Every time I catch Kratos using the litter bowl, I try to move all four of his legs onto the toilet seat. And every time I succeed, I give him some treats. But all this work didn't seem to be having any effects; Kratos was still standing in the litter bowl every time, getting yummy treats without much improvement.

Frustrated, I decided to push him a little more. Last week, I added some water into the litter bowl, covering up some litter, so that it became some kind of nasty litter swamp. It kind of worked -- Kratos only tentatively touched the water (and yes, tasted it), but had no desire to stand in this soup. He then took a while moving around on top of the toilet trying to pee, and eventually did indeed pee with all four paws on the seat -- but in the wrong posture!!

That totally did not work.

I was feeling really hopeless; it's just too stressful to stalk a cat every minute of every evening. And I was getting ready to call it quits, if it weren't for this magical morning today, when Kratos suddenly decided to be interested in not standing in the litter! He attempted to do so:

Three legs on the toilet seat ain't bad!

Thankfully, his interest continued into the evening, when he took his daily dump after his dinner. I filmed Kratos as he tried, several times, again and again, to position himself with all four paws on the toilet seat, until...

SUCCESS!!

It's a little silly to feel so happy that Kratos is now finally able to poop with all four paws on the seat, when in fact he was able to do it on Day 11! Letting him get used to standing in the litter was the worst mistake I made -- one that took more than 30 days to correct. But that may have been simply beginner's luck; now Kratos does it with much more deliberation, and much less scratching of litter beforehand as well.

I'm going to let Kratos get used to this for another few days, but I feel great. Once he masters staying on the seat, it seems only a matter of time before he will be able to do so without any litter at all...

Wow. This might work after all...