Bathroom Schedule for CH Cat?
My family and I are fostering Fluffernutter: ~7 weeks old female kitten with severe cerebellar hypoplasia (CH). She is unable to walk or even stand unassisted. As such, I doubt she will ever be able to use a litterbox by herself, being unable to navigate to get inside nor able to prevent herself from getting messy while trying to leave. As it is now, she is able to expel waste herself but usually ends up flopping around in it and needing a bath, which she does not particularly enjoy. Her current schedule is odd as well, sometimes pooping every other day to pooping multiple times a day. Despite eating a lot of food, she is not pooping as often as I would expect from a kitten. Would it be possible to train her to go to the bathroom on a schedule by stimulating her to poop at certain times of the day? My concerns are twofold:
- Is this possible?
- I would stimulate her after breakfast and dinner, then eventually introduce a litterbox for her to stand in while I do it. Once I stop stimulating her, the hope is that she associates the litterbox with bathroom time and also has gotten into the metabolic schedule of pooping after eating. Could this work or would she abandon the schedule once she is no longer being stimulated?
- Is this ethical?
- She does not enjoy being stimulated to use the bathroom. This is understandable, I don’t think I would want that either. I don’t want to cause her unnecessary stress just for my convenience.
Please let me know your thoughts on this! I will also be cross-posting to subreddits for CH and other neurological disorders. Thank you for reading.
edit to add: Cerebellar hypoplasia is also known as “wobbly cat syndrome.” Fluffernutter gets around by flopping on her sides. She is able to clean herself and eat by herself, provided she has a stable wall to lean against or area to wedge her butt into. She is able to coordinate herself well enough to play with toys. She enjoys cuddles and being held.
While she doesn’t enjoy bathtime or being stimulated to poo, she does not show extreme signs of stress like biting, growling, or hissing. She just tries to wiggle away from me.