Big Renovations = LK On Hold
Exactly as the title says…
We’ve been undergoing lots of renovations at our house. And I mean LOTS. Read the rest of this entry »
Secret Stash?!
I certainly hope not anyways…
Ever since we made the minor change of removing the clear plastic sheet, we have not seen Phobos go pee once, nor seen any evidence of him going. It’s been about 2 days. O___o;;
Phobos seems to look at the hole with some interest, or rather, more interest than before. I think the size now puts him off a bit.
But then this morning, lo and behold, he finally goes after much encouragement from Ian and I. Yay! But then he made us late-ish for work because he decided to go just when we were about to leave, and we had to stick around til he finished so we could clean up the LK. Booooo!
We noticed that when he peed, he did so by ’emptying’ into the tray area. Which leads me to suspect that either he has been able to hold it all in for like, 2 whole days, or he’s been peeing elsewhere and we just haven’t found it yet. Third option, but highly unlikely, is that he was peeing in the toilet, and that he just managed to get it all in the toilet and none in the tray. I am very skeptical about that. I’m super worried that he’s probably peed somewhere like in our bedroom (NO THE HORRORS!) because while normally the door is kept close when we are home, the renovation people who are working on our master bathroom, have NOT been closing the door. So the kitties have had access to our bedroom for the last couple of days…
Well he peed today this morning so here’s to hoping we don’t find anything in the bedroom later today.
…A Little Surprise.
I like surprises. But what was in store for us today was not a nice surprise. Oh no. We got home from work, and what did we find? Yep. Phobos left us another one of his special “surprises” on the floor in front of the toilet. The only plus side to all this is that at least he’s doing it on the linoleum side of the bathroom instead of on the carpet, as there is carpeting in 2/3 of the bathroom (ugh, yes I know it’s weird and gross to have carpeting in a bathroom; annoys the heck outta me!) where the LK is located.
HOWEVER, I do forgive the little bugger because the LK was filthy, as Phobos had so nicely filled it with pee. And as we have found, he will refuse to poop in the LK if it’s filled and dirty, and he usually goes to pee just before pooping, so we usually need to be home to clean up right away so he can get to his ‘secondary business’. I am just hoping we can progress enough to the Green stage, in which case Phobos may not have the problem of filling up the tray as the hole will be bigger, therefore Phobos should be able to pee mostly into the toilet. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, so I can only hope that we might progress to Green stage.
Because the Amber stage was all filled and dirty, we decided to wash it out again, and like we had planned, we removed the plastic bit. Even though we didn’t expect to be washing it soon, we thought it would be okay to remove the clear plastic as there was only really a bit left, and it seems like the cats don’t really rely too much on it anymore. But I guess we shall see…Crossing my fingers!
If the cats continue to use the LK as normal, then we will have officially gotten to the true Amber stage using its original sized hole… finally!
***News Flash: Ok, I just found Deimos using it, so there’s one cat. Though he was the easy one…we’ll have to see if Phobos will take to the change.
Still Goin!…& At a Pretty Steady Pace.
Long time no see! Again…Sorry, my bad…Last post I said I would try harder but I guess I failed at that. >__>
Well I’m here now! So as for what’s going on…
Last time I wrote, we had the Litter Kwitter setup on the floor…basically almost the very first step. Which seemed like such a regression considering we had them up to the LK being on the toilet on the Amber stage.
AGAIN?!
Phobos did it again. *sigh*
He took a crap on the bathroom floor, in front of the toilet. The Litter Kwitter was completely clean, with nothing in it. I’m not sure what to make of this, since I’m pretty sure he pooped in it yesterday. Even though I didn’t see him do it yesterday, I was sure it was him because his bum kinda smelled. (Yes I smelled it, I needed to check which cat did the deed. ok?!) But now I’m not so sure?
I definitely know it wasn’t Deimos who pooped on the floor because I watched him go a couple hours before just when I got home from work. The LK was full of pee so I cleaned it out and Deimos immediately peed in it. I cleaned the LK again after he finished, and guess what? Deimos came right back two minutes later and decided then was a great time to go poops. How typical of a cat. So I cleaned the LK yet AGAIN and it stayed that way. I even sprayed enzymatic cleaner into the LK itself in the middle in hopes of minimizing smell to the cats. At this point I heard Phobos meowing in that way he does when he wants something urgently… like going bathroom. So I picked him up and placed him near the LK. He sniffed at it, tried to cover what he smelled there (even though I had taken out the offending bits), and then walked away.
Ian thinks that because I sprayed the LK, it might’ve diminished the smell too well, so that Phobos wasn’t able to figure it out and hence why he went on the floor. But I find that really hard to believe. Ian also reasoned that maybe because there was poop in this lidded container we had in the corner that we hadn’t emptied yet that Phobos thought he was to go there? I’m also wondering if maybe Phobos might have a problem going to the bathroom like it’s hurting for him, and he’s associated that pain with the LK? His poop didn’t seem abnormal… but it’s a possibility I’m willing to consider.
Should probably get both kitties checked out anyways.
On a lighter note, on the way home today, I heard a commercial on the radio today. It was about a girl asking Santa for a “Zoo Zoo Pet”, and he kept offering other things, making it out like this “Zoo Zoo Pet” thing was near impossible to get. I looked it up and found out it was called Zhu Zhu Pets, which are basically motorized plush hamsters that act like real ones. They are supposed to be an alternative to real hamsters, as they don’t require feeding or cleaning, and they won’t get sick or die but you would get the benefits of owning something that behaves similarly to a real hamster.
I thought that would be kind of a neat toy for the cats, but then sadistic came to mind. Is it wrong for me to want to give the cats something close to the real thing, even though it isn’t real? I would never buy an animal for the pure sake of entertaining my kitties, but is it in a way morally wrong to be giving them a mechanical AI that behaves in the same way? Well it would still be loads of fun for them, I think. Or it could possibly make them super aggressive. They tend to get possessive of objects that are kind of furry, so I imagine they are pretending they’re prey that they’ve caught. Makes them growl at everything and everyone who gets near.
Oh, scratch that idea:
“Zhu Zhu Pets™ were made for people! Don’t let any real animals play with your Zhu Zhu Pet.”
Ah that’s too bad. They seem kinda interesting though… maybe I’ll get one after the Christmas hype? And just happen to forget about that rule about letting real animals play with them, heh heh heh.
First Post, Second Attempt
Hello! I’m sort of new to blogging as I’ve resisted the trend to blog, but after getting my two kittens, I felt that it would be great to share them with the world. This blog would also serve as a way to document all the fun and not-so-fun adventures these two cuties get themselves into.
We adopted two kittens from a shelter, one black male, and one cream coloured with points male. We chose to adopt two kittens because Ian’s 16-year-old cat, Jim (RIP old friend), had just passed away and because we both work full-time we wanted to give the kittens company.
We decided on the names Deimos and Phobos. Deimos being the black one as he instills dread in one with his superstitious nature! Phobos being the cream one with wide blue fearful eyes.
Deimos and Phobos cuddling in their new bed
Doesn’t Deimos look kinda evil in this picture?!
My boyfriend (Ian) and I have been attempting to toilet train our kittens after learning about this cat toilet training system: Litter Kwitter. I ordered a kit off of eBay and we started training them sometime in late October. Phobos and Deimos were already litter trained so when we introduced the Litter Kwitter (aka LK), they took to it right away. They were about 5 months old when we started the training, and now are about 7 months.
All was going well and we managed to progress through the steps, until in the middle of the Amber stage, Phobos started pooping consistently on the floor. Phobos had pooped on the floor before, but at this point, he had pretty much given up trying to poop on the Litter Kwitter and was going directly on the floor around the toilet. I got so frustrated and I got angry at him one day which I think made him turn to other places. We found his droppings in our water boiler room and one day we even caught him going there again, and he had even wedged himself under some intricate pipings behind the water heater which I thought was very strange for a cat, and then I suspected that Phobos was stressed about toileting and was forced into wedging himself in a weird position to go bathroom. Phobos was also peeing in the LK even as he was pooping on the floor, (of which is a common problem with this training) but then one day I realized I hadn’t seen him even go on the LK. I looked around the house, and finally I checked a pile of towels which were sitting on top of our washing machine and they reeked of cat pee. It wasn’t wet either, so Phobos must have done it awhile ago. Funny that neither Ian or I noticed it, I guess the towels absorbed the pee really well and masked the scent. I stuffed the towels in the machine…there will be no more of that!
So after that, we tried a few things, like putting the Red stage on the floor, newspapers on the floor, and leaving both Phobos and Deimos in the bathroom when we weren’t home or sleeping (which was most of the time unfortunately)…but we’ve now come to the conclusion that we’ll have to revert back all the way to the beginning stage of the training to retrain Phobos to go in the right place and make sure he’s comfortable with it. It’s too bad, because Deimos was getting along fine with the Amber stage which was the main reason I didn’t want to start all over again. But as the multi-cat training goes, you can only progress as fast as the slowest cat.
I’m sure that if we were training only Deimos by himself, he would’ve been on the green stage by now. He was a LK ‘whiz’ so to speak! (har har, excuse my pun).
Oh well. The LK combined with flushable kitty litter is MUCH much MUCH easier to clean up than your standard litter box. I also really don’t want to give up, because I’ve seen the potential in this training, so I’m going to persevere until the day comes when both kittens are fully toilet trained! So here we go again, hopefully our second attempt will go much more smoothly…
So we’ve taken the LK and put it on the floor with the Red stage, with plenty of litter inside. I left the water filled jugs behind the toilet to deter Phobos from going there. So far, so good, both cats have gone on the LK, and Phobos just did his poops on the Red tray, YAY!
insanekitten
Double Trouble Tails 