📅 Wednesday, 12 August 2026 · No. 136

Ninety-Nine Percent Litter Trained (Wife Gets the One)

🏠 Home Setup · ✎ 6 min · by Azmi in Meknes

Azmi's note My personal log from Meknes, not vet advice. Just what I did and saw tonight.

I am Azmi, writing from my flat in Meknes, and after a year of living with Coco I have accepted an uncomfortable truth: he arrived without an instruction booklet, so I am writing one myself. This is the owner’s manual for one Coco unit, compiled from daily observation, stray droppings, and a wife who has learned to keep a towel within arm’s reach. If you share your apartment with a small fluffy machine who works perfectly except for one mysterious feature, this manual is for you.

Model overview and specifications

The Coco unit is a compact apartment model, soft-coated, with excellent box habits and one unexplained quirk. Under normal conditions he hits the litter box ninety-nine percent of the time, which sounds like perfection until you do the arithmetic of a rabbit who passes dozens of droppings a day. One percent of a large number is still a scattering of stray puffs across the rug, and I have learned to read them the way sailors read weather. A few dry rounds near the box mean business as usual. A trail toward the balcony means somebody got excited mid-hop. Nothing here worried me once I learned the pattern, and I log the unusual days the same way I track everything else in my litter corner setup and cleaning log, because notebooks remember what tired evenings forget.

His temperament specifications are as follows: affectionate, territorial about exactly one human lap, deeply suspicious of laundry baskets, and capable of producing joy at a rate far exceeding his body weight. He runs on hay, attention, and routine, in that order. He requires daily floor time, a steady feeding rhythm, and an audience for his faster laps. He is compatible with apartment life, with rugs, and with my schedule, and he is mostly compatible with my wife, except for the single documented issue described in the troubleshooting section below. I should note plainly that I am a diary keeper, not a vet, so anything involving urine changes, straining, strong odor shifts, or sudden habit collapse goes to my rabbit vet first, and the manual defers all health calls to the clinic.

Installation: preparing the litter corner

Correct installation determines ninety percent of performance. Our corner holds a generously sized box, because the single greatest upgrade we ever made was replacing a cramped starter tray with a roomy one he could fully turn around in. I fill it deep with his usual litter, top it with fresh hay at one end, and place it where he chose to go rather than where I wished he would go. Rabbits vote with their droppings, and the wise keeper counts the votes instead of arguing. The box sits away from his food bowl but within the same territory, against a wall so he feels sheltered on at least one side while he does his business.

Cleaning follows a steady rhythm rather than a grand weekly event. I scoop daily, refresh hay often, and wash the box with a rabbit-area cleaner before any smell tells me I waited too long. For the chalky residue that builds up in corners I use the plain cleaning approach I described in my vinegar cleaning notes for the white funk, rinsed thoroughly and aired until no scent remains, because a box that smells wrong to a rabbit is a box that gets boycotted. Random stray puffs around the apartment dropped sharply once the box grew bigger and the cleaning grew consistent, which taught me that most so-called misbehavior is really a design review the rabbit is conducting on my setup.

Normal operation: the ninety-nine percent

In daily operation the Coco unit is a pleasure to run. He wakes, visits the box, eats with ceremony, and naps in a sunbeam like a retired gentleman. Visitors assume he is fully trained in the dog sense of the word, and I always correct them, because rabbit litter habits are their own beautiful category. Ninety-nine percent means the box gets the urine nearly every time and the great majority of the droppings, while a light confetti of dry rounds marks his favorite routes. I sweep without resentment. Those puffs are scent posts, little signed notes reading Coco was here and all is well, and a home with zero stray droppings is usually a home where the rabbit feels too nervous to claim anything.

The one percent clusters around excitement, territory, and haste. A new bag rustling, a guest arriving, a sprint interrupted by an urgent need, and suddenly there is a puff on the rug that was never part of the plan. I do not scold, because scolding a prey animal for a bodily function only teaches him to fear me, which is the opposite of the entire project. I place a stray dropping back in the box without commentary, blot any wet spot promptly, and carry on. Apartment life continues, fluffy and mostly tidy, and the manual records this as expected behavior rather than a fault, because perfection was never in the specifications.

Troubleshooting: the wife-targeting feature

Every manual needs a troubleshooting section, and ours has exactly one entry. Symptom: the unit remains dry and correct with me, yet releases a small stream on my wife almost every time she holds him. Duration: months. Severity: damp but survivable. My wife, to her enormous credit, has responded with the official protocol, which is towel first and questions later. She drapes a folded towel across her lap before accepting delivery of one rabbit, holds him a little higher against her chest where he feels secure, and keeps sessions short enough to end dry. Bad luck or policy, we asked ourselves for weeks, and the honest answer appears to be a little of both: excitement plus a lap that smells like a beloved rival for his favorite human’s attention.

Our queued fixes are unglamorous and patient. We booked the long conversation about neutering with our rabbit vet, and I leave every judgment about timing and suitability to the clinic rather than deciding it at the kitchen table. We enlarged the box, steadied the cleaning rhythm, and made sure he empties himself in the tray before lap time rather than being lifted mid-need. We also gave my wife her own bonding rituals with him at floor level, where no bladder has ever been surprised by a sudden lift, so that her scent becomes associated with calm floor picnics instead of aerial incidents. Progress is gradual and damp patches are rarer, and the investigation continues with cuddles entirely uninterrupted, because no troubleshooting step in this house is allowed to reduce the total volume of affection.

Warranty terms: love without conditions

The warranty on a Coco unit is unusual in that it runs in the wrong direction: he promises nothing, and I promise everything. I promise the box will be clean, the hay will be fresh, the vet will be called promptly for anything beyond my diary skills, and the wife will be defended, dried off, and celebrated as the good sport she is. In return he delivers ninety-nine percent, a confetti of puffs, and the undignified comedy of a rabbit who cannot hold his intentions whenever his second-favorite human picks him up. It is, all things weighed on the kitchen scale of domestic happiness, an excellent bargain. Manual version one, written on the rug in Meknes, to be revised whenever the unit issues a firmware update in the form of a flop.

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Written by Azmi

I track my rabbits' diet, weight and naps to see what works. Photos are mine, mess included. Say hi on the contact page.

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