As you can imagine, cats do not like to wear clothes and they are very good at wriggling out of things.
We tried various kinds of diapers (cloth, as well as disposable) and several techniques for securing the diapers to her rear end.
Based on advice from others who have had to outfit incontinent dogs or cats, we tried a onesie, a 1-piece bodysuit intended for small infants that has snaps in the crotch area.
It took some custom modifications, but we finally ended up with a solution that seems to work just fine: Cherny wears a disposable diaper under her custom onesie (both of which have a hole cut out for her tail 🙂
This setup works wonderfully.
The outfit stays on her and the room no longer smells.
In fact, we moved Cherny out of the Special Needs Suite, since we are no longer worried about cleaning up after her.
You can see from the photo above how absolutely adorable Cherny looks in her outfit.She is very good about wearing it and she is patient with us when we change her diaper.
Because of the risk of rash, we change her at least three times/day.
In addition, we bathe Cherny (well, her butt, at least) three times/week, just to be sure that she stays as fresh as possible.
She is also very patient about her bath and fusses very little.
Although Cherny is very well behaved about wearing the outfit, she does not really like it and she clearly feels constrained in it, moving less than normally.
Because of this, we have instituted a new procedure of allowing Cherny free time to play without the outfit.
On warm days, after removing her diaper in the morning, we move her into the Solarium associated with her suite (see floorplan) and let her run around “buck naked”.
She enjoys her time “outdoors” (see photo below) and we can just hose down the floor after we bring her in and put her diaper back on.