Hi, Molly.  There's nothing you can do, as far as I've learned, that'll
keep an overachiever from overshooting the lower corner of the litterpan.
(I call Nicky an overachiever, b/c he tries SO hard to make sure he's as
far into one of the the low corners of the triangular box as possible that
he overshoots it entirely.) The way I solved the problem was to get a
regular cat litter pan with higher sides on all four sides-he really
doesn't have trouble getting in, even when he was only two months old; they
hop pretty well-and he no longer overshoots.  We only use the triangular
box with the two low sides in their travel cage, and then we place
newspaper under the outside of the low corner that he prefers to catch
the misses.  He now never misses at home, and the travel cage is easily
cleaned.
 
On a related topic, for those of you that helped me with suggestions for
littertraining my "spite pooper" (thanks again for the term, Diane!),
Finnegan, he's been three weeks with only one accident!  For those of you
with hard-to-train babies, there is hope!  Finnegan came to us as a 5.5
month old who had never had to use a litterbox outside his cage.  He would
find a different spot to poop in every time in our bedroom, where they roam
most days while I work in there, and even right next to his toys and all
the towels, etc., I had on the floor to discourage him from thinking of
the floor as a pooping place.  He even pooped right next to a sleeping
Nicodemus one day!  After months of having my bedroom floor covered all
along the edges with towels, sheets, T-shirts and toys, he'd get completely
broken of one spot, then go on the sleeping towel in an entirely new place.
Then two months later he'd go in an old spot again!  I was getting SO
frustrated.
 
Then we took him to my parents' house for Easter, and he went once on their
(hardwood, thankfully, not their new carpet) floor while there, and since
then has only pooped on OUR floor once!  I guess visiting Grandma was a
good influence!  So there is hope, ye with messy ferrets, that with many
months of patience, lots of loads of poopy/peepy laundry, bottles of
vinegar-and-soda-water and Febreze, vigilance when they first wake up
("WHAT are you doing?!?  You go to the litterbox!"-and he actually DID
understand me and would stop and run sheepishly to where I was pointing)
and consistent scruffing and moving to the litterbox, that you, too, can
have an accident-free, formerly-unlittertrained ferret!  (It helps that
Nicky was never tempted after the first day Finnegan was here to break
his own good litterbox habits despite Finn's going all over the floor.)
 
Sorry for the length of the post-just wanted to share my experience!  We've
had Finn since Valentine's Day and I am psyched to have FINALLY trained
him!  I don't even have to watch him with a squinty, warning eye to
encourage him to use it when he first gets up!
 
Dooks!
 
-April
[Posted in FML issue 3404]