It came. In all its kitschy, injection-molded goodness, the “World-Famous” CitiKitty cat toilet training kit graced my doorstep this week. It was almost like Christmas as I tore the plastic mailing sleeve apart to unveil the cheerfully-designed, primary color-clad box emblazoned with a cat proudly standing upon his new territory. I knew this was a moment I would remember for a lifetime.

Alright. All hyperbole aside, I am pretty excited to see this thing and how it actually works. It’s embarrassingly simple—slip it over the toilet seat, fill it with litter, and take out the concentric rings every week or two to help cats acclimate to—um—doing their business in the commode.

I’m eager to give you all the low-down on the marvel of American patents that is CitiKitty, but our feline family is still in the “pre” stage; currently we are acclimating Ravi and Mowgli to a new brand of flushable cat litter. Dubbed “World’s Best” and at $8 for a small bag, it better envelope each cat deposit and turn it to gold. To its defense, the new litter is proving to be better than our current Tidy Cat supply as there is less dust and smell of foul, piney aroma.

The name of this game is patience. The well-designed training guide recommends camping out at each step for two weeks when training multiple cats. That means this little adventure will take us well into summer. But to never have to unearth a little brown treasure from my favorite furballs makes it all worth it.

Stay tuned for part two!

My wife Sarah has always been partial to cats. When we got married I adopted that same partiality. Five years later, our family has grown to include two Bombay cats named Ravi and Mowgli. They are great to have around and provide endless amounts of entertainment. However, as any cat owner surely knows, cats produce a less-than-entertaining smell from the litter box. Now if us humans were as fastidious about cleaning as our feline residents, the litter box would get cleaned out daily. Somehow, the minutia of life inhibits us from keeping up with such a consistent schedule. That is why I was intrigued when I came across the following article title in a recent search: How to Toilet Train Your Cat.

Now in all fairness, my wife had this idea—based off a similar article—shortly after we got our first cat, Ravi. She embarked on the patient journey of teaching the “king” of our house how to take a new throne. I was skeptical at first, but thought it might prove beneficial. As the process furthered, Ravi knocked a box full of sawdust-based cat litter into the toilet bowl. The resulting “clump” incited some good-natured ribbing from me to Sarah and subsequently ended the toilet training of Ravi.

Several years later, I’m reminded that Sarah had a great idea and I just wasn’t patient enough to power through the softball-sized glob of litter in the toilet. There’s absolutely no reason why our cats can’t enjoy the refinement and modesty of modern plumbing like Sarah and I do. So to eat my taunting words from several years ago and try to rid my house of the biting smell of ammonia-scented pine, I am revisiting the task of toilet-training our cats.

I will try to document this comical journey and post as many pictures as possible (and appropriate) at the sake of the dignity of my cats (and possibly myself).

In the meantime, I encourage all readers to post your thoughts as to the success of this project as well as any experiences you may have had trying to shape the bathroom habits of your pets.