Start of Amber Stage

The amber stage is one of the hardest for the cats. Many changes happen at the same time:

• There is a hole in my litter box!
• There is water bellow my litter box!
• How am I suppose to stand there and pee somewhere with these huge gap in the middle of the way?!
• What if I fall?!

For these reasons I would recommend the multicat system of LK.

Since we did not have it, we just decided to try it like that. Big mistake. Some cats can do it without problems, but most cannot (neither can Lee). 

She did not pee for a whole day. She went up once of twice, put her head inside the hole and started drinking water! Or she was just sitting there.

Our Lee in her amber toilet. Normally there is litter in the ring, we had just cleaned it.

We then though we had gone too fast and put back the red ring. She went to pee even before we had finished adding all the litter. Poor kitty, she was holding for a long time!

We started looking for solutions on the internet for the problem. We found of course the multicat system, which has a much smaller hole:

Not our cat, random image from internet. Look how much smaller the hole is!

We decided not to buy this system in addition (you either way need the main kit to adapt the multicat system, so buy both of them if you can) because of the shipping costs basically.

The other solution was to try the cardboard method. You basically fix a cardboard under the hole and cut a tiny hole in the cardboard. Every few days or when your cat is comfortable enough, dig a bigger hole in the cardboard.

Attention:

• Thoroughly impermeabilize the cardboard by putting duct tape around it (all the corners, every single cm).
• Every time you open a hole, put tape around the edges of the hole to avoid pee from soaking into the cardboard.
• Make sure to tape it very firmly to the ring so your cat doesn't rip it apart and fall inside the toilet bowl.
• Also use tape to avoid pee to go between the cardboard and the ring. It usually forms a puddle in the central part of the ring that will run under the ring and get stuck between the ring and the cardboard. That will smell really bad to your cat!
• Change the cardboard every few days (4-6). You will be impressed on how dirty and smelly it can get. (that is why I think the multicat system is a better choice).