Why should cats use the toilet?

By popular demand, a full-on explanation of why I might want to teach my middle-aged cats to use the loo - necessarily there is comment here that one probably wouldn't want to read while eating dinner, so be warned.

There are in fact many reasons why I might want to attempt such a feat, but there is one overwhelming reason.

For the sake of completeness, the many reasons might include:

• To see if I can,
• So that I can say that my kit(s) are cleverer than anyone elses.
• To watch unsuspecting people's faces when they walk into the bathroom,
• It would be handy when living on a boat,
• My cat-sitter would appreciate it,
• And I've forgotten the others, but I'm sure I'll be reminded when I get home tonight.

The overwhelming and most immediate reason though, is a cat who moved in two doors down a couple of years ago. He is a big silver tabby with white socks, so when in polite company, I call him Socks. Otherwise he is known as that f@(£ing little $&^t.

Socks is a boy - a fact that has been verified several times while running away from me as I call his (non-polite company) name - in his full male prime He is also an alpha, which means that he thinks he is master of all he surveys.

Much fighting has taken place over the last couple of years. At its worst point, it included incursions into my kitchen and an attempt to spray everything in sight - this latter was only attempted once that I know of, and the contents of a full glass of orange juice sent him home with a very strange and strangled howl.

Ultimately though, my three middle-aged wimps kits have agreed that all he surveys includes my back garden (but not the kitchen), so he likes to sit outside the cat-flap and box it. Or leave a poo there. Although he hasn't done that in a while. Now I think on it, he hasn't done it since...

I keep a large squeezy bottle full of... fluid... by the back door. By fluid I mean it varies. Mostly just water. Sometimes there's lemon juice in there too. Sometimes there's squash in there. Once there was washing water with a bit of fairy liquid - that was an accident. Once it was water with a large dollop of onion grave - that was not an accident.

... on one occasion I emptied the litter tray and then realised that I was out of litter when just a few tiny granules rolled out of the bag. So I went dashing off to Tesco to get a new bag, and by the time I came back, one, or more likely two, of the kits had been for a very long pee. Dutifully in the tray with the few granules of litter swimming around desperately trying to soak it all up. Socks boxed the cat-flat and in one of those moments of absolute clarity, I took the tray into the room above the back door and tipped the contents out through the window.

Note that I have no intention of hurting the little $&^t, just scaring him. This has worked and it is now scared of me.

So now it only terrorises my tribe when I'm not there. Which is not quite how I'd envisioned things turning out, and I now have three cats who religiously use the litter tray as they will no longer go outside unless I'm there to guard against intruders. Or I have the hoover out.

As you can imagine, 24 hours worth of cat poo and pee x3 in a tray in my bathroom is not pleasant, to put it mildly. So if I can get one, two or all three to use the toilet, it's got to be an improvement.

I have been told by, and have read of, many people who have succeeded in training their cats to use the loo and that as long as one is patient, it can be done no matter how old the cat. Of course, the methodology does vary, as does end-result occasionally.

One poor lady spent three months of painstaking training to get her three beautiful pure-white kitties to do their business in the toilet, and ended up with three off-white mogs that thought the toilet was their private drinking fountain.

Wish me luck.