It's the most wonderful time of the year

The most wonderful thing has happened here in the A&R household. (No, I'm not talking about the baby.) The second cat has finally started using the mechanical litter box! We bought a Litter Robot at least six months ago, hoping to reclaim the bathroom that had been taken over by the cat box. The one cat started using it immediately, but we realized several days later, when he had an accident, that the second cat wouldn't use the machine. We tried showing him that there was litter in there, shutting him in the bathroom all day, making him sit by the litterbox - nothing worked. He was terrified of it. He obsessed over it, spending hours at a time sitting at the bathroom door, watching it. We put a small litter box for him to use by the machine, hoping the proximity would help to ease his fears. We intentionally didn't clean it often, hoping to encourage him to transition to the machine. Eventually we took the box away, at which point in time he started using the drain in the tub. We had pretty much given up hope, when poop stopped appearing in the bathtub. I kept an ear out, and the next time I heard a cat in the box I peeked my head in and saw his head sticking out of the machine. Success!