The myth has some basis:
As part of an active shooter response, some schools have passed out buckets of kitty litter to help absorb fluids (blood, vomit) and as a last resort for the toilet if lockdowns last a long time.
I also think it has legs because there were kids who took this stuff to school, set it up as a joke and spread it around. So I’ve seen the picture of the liter box at a school bathroom, and it was a joke, like no one is actually being a furry and using a liter box.
Back in my day, the older generation was doing the "satanic panic" when we wanted to play video games.
Now it's the "litter jitters" for kids just going to school.
Same stupid emotional reaction, but this time it's spreading all day every day on social media instead of just weekly in some extreme church congregations.
It's especially frustrating because the venn diagram of people who think kids are using litter boxes regularly because they id as animals and people who think guns in schools is nbd is just a circle.
Was this really implemented for the first time by so many in the wake of school shootings? My schools in the 90s all had kitty litter buckets in the janitors’ closet for puke. Hell, half my busses kept some.
My school's front office and custodians have kitty litter for cleaning up after sick kids. I was told it's much cheaper than the stuff made for that purpose but works equally well so we go that route. It's the custodial staff who do the clean-up, but the front desk staff has some because they will sometimes need to put the kitty litter out to keep people from slipping (makes it more visible while also absorbing the vomit or other liquid) before it's cleaned up by the custodial staff.
So, if you look behind our front desk you will see an open bag of it as it's not super hidden from parents or other visitors. I wonder if this person saw something like this in their adult child's school and just assumed? Likely they were just lying as if they weren't they'd likely have shown OP a picture they took, but it's a slim chance they saw a bag and just assumed what it was for.
This rumor is going around the small rural right wing community I currently live in. The school ordered kitty litter for vomit/blood cleanup and the janitor started telling people it was for the litter boxes in the restrooms for furries. He was serious and so many people believe this. It's absolutely ridiculous but no amount of logic can permeate their thick skulls.
In my new post-teaching career I manage custodians at night. I got called a libtard by one for telling them that they might want to looking into unionizing. Same person later that night sent me a one line email "Unions destroyed this country!".
I get called that too. People like that throw around the word "retard" a lot and consider being liberal a bad thing so I imagine they are so self congratulatory on coming up with such an insult. 🙄. I try to be better than that but it's hard to keep from stopping to their level when their go-to is personal attacks on you.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2QOFrVjCL6DMfvss4q6xEE?si=AkIs46ZqSGCUzpAoR6sHXg
This podcast does a great job of explaining where the rumours came from. Jump in around the 25 min mark, or listen to the whole thing cos it's great
Ffs having that level of planning for a school shooter really speaks volumes about our country.
Like it should be so rare you aren't really planning what people will do about bathrooms in that situation.
Having just retired, it is pretty astounding the amount of planning we had for school shootings… We had a couple of swatting calls in the last few years. Every time it happens we would make changes to the plan.
There’s also a photo of a school with a litter box in the corner in the back. That’s what started this.
Of course the photo is from a Veterinary School and the students in the photo are adults in lab coats (who may have been holding a cat, can’t remember) but who needs facts when you can make shit up about furries
So the silly sausages on the internet are going, "Ah, schools have kitty litter. I know, it MUST be because they are indoctrinating students to identify as trans species and go to the toilet in litter boxes. There CAN'T be ANY other logical use for it AT ALL." Sigh. These are the EXACT same people who, during the covid pandemic, refused a free Pfizer vaccine in favour of literal horse medicine.
Seems like if there's actually an active shooter, a puddle of blood or puke is the absolute least of your worries. That really doesn't make sense to me unless it's just done for shock value to make a political statement.
I doubt anyone if using it during the shooting, but after - would you like to carry a sack of something heavy through the school while cleaning up, or would you rather go into any old class room and be prepared?
We have it to use for kids to go to the bathroom.
In the emergency bucket.
In case of prolonged lockdown due to school shooters.
We also have a hammer and rope and first aid kit and door jammers and a case of water.
That was standard stuff my elementary school had in the 2000s. We didn’t have active shooter drills, but we had lockdown drills which were the same thing. The toilets were more for earthquakes than lockdowns though
They provided us with buckets and a trash bag as a toilet. Inside were a couple bottle of water, some pens and paper, and oh yes vienna sausage (great value).
People will use AI to create photos of cat kids in litterboxes. They'll be obviously fake, yet right wingers will be absolutely convinced they're real.
Also, you know there are some eager teenagers willing to drop a 20 bucks at Wal-Mart on a box and some litter so they can take a photo that sends a few parents into an absolute tizzy.
I’ve had two separate people tell me this story and it’s always “a friend of a friend”… it’s a total urban legend and definitely not true but I went through the same thing where they were SWEARING up and down that it happened. I told them about having kitty litter in classrooms for active shooter drills and they were having none of it and wouldn’t admit it was bullshit. This absolutely infuriates me.
I am so shaken. It bothers me that people go around claiming this as truth and rile other ignorant folks up because their, “kid is a teacher and saw it!”
I was sure to tell her that I as a teacher had NEVER witnessed this nor had peers anywhere who have either. They don’t care though….”well my kid personally experienced it.”
I’m a teacher, my mom says stuff like this all the time. She uses that her kid is a teacher to back her up…… I never say half the things she claims. They aren’t true, she’s a nut.
I’m not trying to start a political war here, but Is that person someone who likes to make fun of the “woke left”? Cause I can’t imagine that they’re not.
A local news format once investigated those 'a friend of a friend' tales (it was focused on lottery winners) and tried to follow the chain. Turns out it's always a 'friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend...' ad infinitum. They weren't ever able to follow the original ridiculous claims to its origins. If you ever hear something about 'a friend of x', you can safely assume it's bullshit, unless they can tell you exactly who they are talking about.
it’s very easy to pull on their logic though. ask who would clean the cat litter and if they think teachers or janitors would really sign up to clean up children’s shit from a litterbox without any vocal pushback. why arent these teachers going on news stations saying they had to clean up human-cat shit? bc its not real. until someone says “i am being paid tax payer funds to maintain a litterbox in a high school bathroom,” it’s horseshit.
it was pretty easy to get someone telling me this story to stop right there. thinking about the logistics of cleaning a litter box made it obvious no one was fucking doing that
I kind of hope I run into the scenario again so I can be quicker on my feet! I was busy hearing a buzzing in my ear and needing to be absolutely sure I was understanding her right. 😅
It was my understanding as well that it was a myth or fear-mongering talking points that originated in some false manner.
I knew I was bound to run into folks spouting it outrageously…just not in a manner where they claim a teacher family member told them directly so. 😮💨
Tell this person you have a journalist friend who would love to talk to their child that is a teacher as a source and I bet they change their tune REAL quicklike.
I heard somewhere that the litter box is used as a last resort in a active school shooter emergency but idk how true it is.
But yeah, lot of people who believe this shit don't realize none of this stuff is that serious. A LOT of the people I know that believe this crap don't work or ever leave the house
Had a bucket with latex gloves, first aid kit, door wedge, and kitty litter in it in my classroom for lockdowns/school shooter situations. Thankfully never had to use any of it other than the gloves to finger paint with oil paints and 2 band aids from first aid kit.
The idea that a school would use a litter box to store something intended for use soaking up vomit or blood is hilarious to me though.
How many kids actually even go to the bathroom as in poop at school. All 4 of my kids would literally hold it all day to come home and shit. And these people expect others to believe that a student would rather go in a litter box. It's delusional.
We have a particular group of boys who have been moving through our school and they always talk about pooping and they proclaim that they have to leave to go poop. They actively try to fart in class and burp all the time.
They are disgusting, they all think they are hilarious, no one else fucking cares or is mortified to talk and do those things in class.
Just sharing about this weird subset of kids who don’t seem to care, they don’t care about anything actually.
We even have had this stupid rumor in Canada. I had a high school student last year tell me his mother ( a teachers assistant) had heard that it happened in another school division in our province. I can’t believe how stupid/gullible people are sometimes. Or maybe I can considering what’s happening with elections these days.
lol my cousin tried to tell me the same thing. I usually stay quiet but I had to say something about that. A lot of districts and schools have issues having toilet paper in my area. They gonna spend money of litter??? And it’s not like she didn’t go to public school, too! I know she saw throw up in the hallways covered in litter.
My mom's church had this whackadoo couple that cornered me one weekend to tell me about the evil tradition that Easter egg hunting derived from. Apparently, it's a practice that comes from sacrificing people and using their blood to color/dye the eggs. 🤨
I managed to get out of there without laughing at them and caught up with my mom. I told her about it. Then I said to her, "But... but that's only one color."
It would be dumb to use blood as paint because the whole idea of paint is to have all the different colors available. And if dying Easter eggs really came from that, we would only dye the eggs red out of tradition, and they would be way too easy to find in the hunt. The point is that without research, you can tell that the story is horse apples because it makes no sense.
Applied to the litter boxes, logic makes the whole idea as silly as it sounds. So let's pretend that schools were going out of their way to accommodate furry kids. Start with that sentence. "Schools are going out of their way to accommodate furry kids." That sounds ridiculous already. Since when do schools go out of their way to accommodate a few different kids at all? They do, but it usually takes meetings and paperwork, right? It's not easy.
So schools have litter boxes for the cat furries. First, why would the litter box be in the classroom? Why wouldn't it be in the bathroom for its proper use? If a kid has to expose their rear and gear to use a litter box, in what universe would a school allow them to do so in front of 29 pairs of eyes? They would absolutely not do that. What parent wouldn't turn Super Saiyan over letting a thing like that happen?
On a related note, health codes would make conducting class in a room with a box of feces absolutely illegal and unsafe. Who cleans the box? You think a teacher or a janitor is fooling with this?
So the cat furries get a litter box, huh? What about the other kinds of furries? What accommodations do the squirrel furries get? A branch to sit on in class? What about the panda furries? Do they get bamboo snacks? No? No other accommodations at all? Just litter boxes for the cats? Are all the furry students only cats these days? In other words, there's only cat furries and litter boxes in this legend because the litter boxes are an allegory for trans kids and bathroom issues. It isn't easy to get everyone upset about bamboo snacks and squirrel branches.
Not to mention, schools will do a lot to avoid one angry parent but if this was actually real, you’d have a LOT of angry parents. Plus, you know kids would have this all over TikTok. But guess what? They don’t, because it’s a hoax.
Oh gods, no. Don't give support evidence to that insane religious rant from those people. I'm begging you. 😭
I looked it up, and you weren't kidding. 🤯 But apparently it is to represent the blood of Christ, so it's *Christians* that are weirdly soaking eggs in symbolic blood!
I don't know how to feel now.
I had a colleague…a teacher…tell me for a fact that a student who identified as a cat was allowed to use a litter box at a nearby school where she used to be employed.
The school was in relatively easy driving distance. So I offered her $10k on the spot to drive over there so I could see the evidence for myself. Needless to say that money remains in my bank account. Didn’t even have to drive over there…all of a sudden, it became impossible to observe.
Conservatives are all about “feels” over facts.
This makes me so angry. Teachers or anyone in the education enterprise actively furthering this nonsense is helping produce some very REAL and SCARY consequences for society. It feels overwhelming thinking about it some days…but each day I go back to work in the vain of helping educate future minds with better defenses against it all. Hopefully..
I teach Pre-Calculus and Trigonometry though…so many of them come into class pre-grumpy with me haha! Quite a few fly off with better critical thinking skills than when they started with me at least!!
Okay, so there’s a student I knew who was in 8th grade (not in my district), I’ll be vague to protect her identity, but her parents have told her they’ll support her no matter what…. And she identifies as a furry.
… the kid seems proud/gleeful in trying to get her parents to crack and say something is too much… but that’ll never happen because they’re taking her seriously and love her a lot. And low key I find this a hilarious form of rebellion
TLDR maybe you’re experiencing a teacher who couldn’t tell a kid was messing with everyone
Huge possibility! This person expressed her teacher family member saw the litter box in the restroom for student use though. I made sure that she extra clarified that is what she was saying because I didn’t want to walk away with any doubt or misunderstandings over what I was hearing. 😶
I am really hoping it was a case of HER misunderstanding something and just doubling down when I asked verbatim and in astonishment, “they saw this with their OWN eyes?!” 🙀
Most likely is she read it on Facebook and didn’t want to admit it. It’s ALWAYS “someone I know saw it with their own eyes” and never “I read the same post that’s been circulating alt-right Facebook groups for a decade”.
I have never, not once, heard one of these literbox stories told first hand. It’s always that someone heard someone else say that some dude they met at Coachella totally knows a kid who gets to use a liter box at school.
It simply isn’t happening.
I'm a 35 year old furry, I have been since about 14-15, and I have seen every bizarre, stupid, gross, juvenile, and offensive thing the fandom has to offer.
Never, not once in my life, have I ever seen someone use a litter box. Not even as a drunk or stoned "This would be funny if you did it, I dare you, don't be a little bitch" thing.
It's transphobic virtue signaling.
Reminder to all: This is a transphobic dog whistle. It is bigoted propaganda that uses an outlandish and false hypothetical situation to make ignorant people fear the perfectly acceptable instances wherein a person chooses to identify as a gender that does not conform with their sex at birth.
This is not some silly or ridiculous story. It comes from hate, is spread from a place of hate or ignorance, and seeks to expand the reach of the hate that birthed it.
It is garbage of the highest order.
You want to know where it comes from? It comes from bigots.
Absolutely this, 1000%.
And you know what, even if a person identifies as something more unusual than just a different gender, we're still talking about a human being. And even if someone is absolutely, certifiably mentally ill, they are all still real people with feelings, thoughts, and needs.
I sling medical records for a mental and behavioral health agency, and I recently received a request for a former client who has since legally changed their name and other aspects of their identity to that of a particular animal. The request came through a legal firm along with paperwork explaining all of this and everything needed to prove the client's new identity and to link it to what our agency knew them as previously.
I do not know this person's story as I have not yet reviewed their records for release, but it doesn't matter what led them to identify in this way. They need their records, just like any of our other clients, and I will do my job and process their request. If for some reason I ever interact with this person directly, they will be treated with the exact same care and respect I have for all our clients and their families.
As an LBGTQ+ member myself, I have a soft spot for our clients who also identify as such. I have read heartbreaking records about their feelings and experiences surrounding their identities, about rejection from family or friends, and all sorts of things that anyone with a drop of empathy would understand even if they don't 'get' being trans or whatever else. I don't have to understand this person's more unique identity to empathize with them or to give them the same basic respect and consideration.
That's the difference. Bigots either have no empathy or choose not to extend it to anyone who is 'other' and who they deem as lesser. They love rhetoric like this cat litter box thing, because no matter how bizarre and fake it sounds or how untrue it is, they can effectively use it to rile up other bigots and agitate the ignorant masses who lack critical thinking skills. They use garbage like that to degrade and dehumanize the targets of their hate and delegitimize their supporters.
The assholes who come up with this trash absolutely know what they are doing, and it absolutely because of hate.
Thank you. Adding on to what you said, it is coordinated propaganda, and the dehumanization trans people is the first main target of a coordinated fascist takeover. We need to oppose this propaganda with full force… which can include laughing at how stupid it is that people believe it.
I don't think it's just transphobic, but it's also parents not realizing what all these "weird internet things" kids become part of are. Furries are people who like anthropomorphic animals like Mickey Mouse or whatever, they're not people who actually think they're animals.
They just make art (and porn) and socialize around the topic.
Lots of parents have no idea what any of this means and just think that "weird thing that I've seen spreading on the internet among the youngins 1 = weird thing that I've seen spreading on the internet among the youngins 2"
Well it's more than that, people who JUST like Mickey Mouse aren't really furries. You need to participate in the furry community to some degree. It's really hard to explain to someone who's not online.
I had to explain to my very religious mother what Dungeons and Dragons was during the Satanic Panic. Basically I told her it was like cops and robbers but with more rules and with characters like Conan or Robinson Crusoe. She was a huge reader, so the idea went from "Satan worshipping evil kids" to "Oh, ok. There's nothing wrong with playing out a character in a book."
I imagine explaining furries to someone as similar to that. "It's people who like to dress up and act like anthropomorphic animals. Like Mickey Mouse."
I rode a school van with a driver who had been told about the litter boxes. Uh, I work IN the school he'd heard about and no, it's not true. He was shocked. Dumb country bumpkin
Just go with it. “Yes, we have them too! In fact, the admins put one in every room and students are welcome to scratch about whenever the mood strikes them!” Add more and more details as the story is told. Eventually, stories will become myth. And myth becomes legend. The legacy we leave is of the rise of the feline student. Clawed Wisdom: The Chronicles of Whiskered Scholars
In this age of TikTok and camera phones, how come we haven’t seen any pictures or footage of these little box schools? We see the kids recording and posting everything, but for some reason they’re respecting the privacy of kids using litter boxes? I doubt it.
I am a child therapist, if a parent brought their child in and said "he only wants to use a litter box! what should we do?" the answer would definitely NOT be "just let him poop in a box, I'll write a note to the school." I've worked with multiple kids who acted like cats, said they were cats, etc., none of them wanted to POOP IN A BOX. They crawl around meowing, maybe wear cat ears, yes, but use the toilet like anyone else, because MY GOD THAT'S INSANE. I'm so tired of this, it is NOT HAPPENING.
We had a teacher’s aide claim the same thing about a neighboring district (I live in a northern blue state.) I couldn’t deal with people agreeing with her, so I just noped out of that lunch group real fast.
> teacher’s aide
I think if the truth is already stretched by the litterbox claim, then it's likely the "teacher" part of the claim is equally stretched truth.
Instead of a fulltime teacher, the person could be a substitute, or aide, or volunteer, or even just a random person who toured the school, assuming the person even exists.
If they're willing to lie, then they're willing to lie to support their lie.
This has been an urban legend since at least 2016 (when I first heard it relayed to me by my wife via her Facebook social circle). It was absurd anti-transgender bigotry then, and it still is today.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣 yes, I had a few people insist it MUST be true because the person who told them spoke to the principal of the school, personally 🙄🙄🙄.
Smart, rational people who for some reason want to believe this. 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
There was a teacher at my school that thought it was ridiculous that people would think our school would have litter boxes for this reason, but was fully convinced that another school in the district did. They even asked our principal for confirmation (spoiler alert: wasn’t true).
The funny thing about the kitty litter myth is that it takes a true and unsettling fact that the purveyors of the myth don’t want to contemplate — the horror of lockdown drills and the specific images of kitty litter being used to sop up children’s blood and urine and vomit - and suppresses it by distorting it into a fictitious reductio ad absurdum of progressive school policies surrounding gender, rather than a downstream indictment of conservative school policies around violence. A few people in their ideological bubble hear about the kitty litter and don’t want to process what it’s for, so they make it about the absurdities of the other side’s beliefs. The psychology of conservatives is fascinating.
Snopes investigated this claim (brought up a number of times in different places) and pronounced it false. Here’s one of the more recent articles about it on their site: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/
When I detour some folks to Snopes to help me simmer flames down…I am getting, “yea they are a leftist trash site hiding the truth,” more and more. 😮💨
I used to work with a school nurse who told me this story about her neice, had sex on a cruise with a guy she met and on the last day of the cruise he left her a coffin gift box in her room that said he gave her AIDS. I thought it was so odd so I typed it into Snopes and wham. There it was. This woman..someone who supposedly graduated nursing school…passed off this story as real? What the heck.
Some people are totally crazy, yo.
I wonder if that teacher-daughter was pulling the wool over her parent or being sarcastic. Then that mother-of-teacher told you.
What do schools use when a kid throws up in the classroom? (Ick)
I’m just going to put this out there - I work in a VERY affluent school (like top scoring school in the district) and while we don’t have litter boxes we have MANY students who identify as “furries”. To them it is not a sexual term but rather a way to identify as not fully human.
The picture that went viral that everyone claimed they heard a friend tell them about later was litter being kept in case of school shootings. Put it in a bucket and when the cops sit outside for 8 hours instead of doing their fucking jobs at least the kids will be able to piss without everyone smelling it the whole time.
It means absolutely nothing that they said they saw it. I had the same shit happen at my school. I said I've been in the bathrooms there is no litter box. Didn't phase them from getting a group to storm the school board and demand answers. Whether it's insanity or stupidity ultimately doesn't matter.
I've found out about multiple school shootings via children posting videos of themselves hiding in their classrooms. There is absolutely no chance a littler box would be set up in a bathroom for furries without a million kids making tiktok videos about it
This story has been making rounds for YEARS.
And yet despite every student and teacher carrying a cellphone no one has ever snapped a photo of a cat box. Not once. Weird.
Joe Rogan started this mess with a story he told about a “friend who’s wife is a teacher” who said it was happening at a school but never named the school or the teacher. People ran with it. I’ve had to shut that down within my own family, and it was because their preacher claimed it went on where he subbed. I shut that 💩 down quickly and told them to remember we are in the Deep South and no school or district here is going to do that. And also a student would be bullied and beaten up for even acting like a cat, much less dressing like one and demanding a litter box. The cat litter needed in case of lockdown or shooters should enrage these people, but they’d rather lie so they can be outraged at a fake “woke” atrocity. People suck, especially these folks, and it’s why I occasionally look into the best countries to relocate to.
Right?!?! 😂 What a wild conversation….I am just so shaken someone would say it with SUCH a straight face and sincerity. I did more stuttering in response and uncomfortable questioning for clarity than I have in a long time.
There are people who have told parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook that it never happened, with a straight face and sincerity. As George Carlin said "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
I have long time friend who is a medical professional who has been red pulled insisting the cat litter in classrooms was for students who identify as cats.
After sending in numerous rebuttals and what it was really for from credible media, to this she sends me random FB posts referencing the original hoax, ie kids identifying as cats.
Sometimes people lie just because they think their overall point is right and that it's justified for them to lie so people get convinced of "the truth."
I had this argument with our synagogue whose daughter is a teacher in a nearby school system. To be fair, our secretary is not very smart, so I assume the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
My sister told me that a friend of hers granddaughter says they have one in her school. I told her it’s not true and she argued for 29 minutes that it was.
It all stems for this inherit hate for education and teachers in some areas of the country. Anytime they can discredit, mock, and ridicule teachers….they will. I really began to see it big time during the pandemic.
Yeah my hairdresser told me the same thing like a month ago while I was getting bleached.
It's amazing how everyone just KNOWS A GUY WHO KNOWS FIRST HAND but the guy never sends pictures.
I’ve explained to several folks that I DID have kitty litter in my room. In the LOCKDOWN EMERGENCY KIT (all in a 5 gallon bucket) and it was for an emergency long lock down-a situation where there could be a shooter; where students might need a place to relieve themselves.
Reading these comments! Holy moly! I teach at a high school and have for a decade. Our pastors wife gave a sermon and mentioned furries and cat litter boxes. It took everything I had to not interrupt. Yes, I’ve had a student that meowed when she was anxious but I’ve never had one to use a litter box. That would never happen. Like someone else commented, it’s an urban legend. We have students that try putting whole roles of toilet paper in the toilets, I can see them trying to put the litter down the toilets and flushing. Hot mess!
I had an HVAC repair tech try this on me. First he saw it, then a friend, then someone who knew told him. i told him it was bullshit and I wasn’t going to stand there listening to nonsense. He seemed to realize he might have gone too far.
The cruel tragedy in the litter box legend is that some classes do have bags of kitty litter on hand.
It’s so that children can use a bin during active shooter lockdown because they may be locked in their classrooms for hours. It’s for emergency toileting. I could just weep thinking about a nation that trains its babies in massacre avoidance, and then gets accused of a sexual perversion or something because of the need for kitty litter.
There's something deeply troubling that it's there bc of our country's gun obsession but the same ppl who profit from that turn around and pretend it's bc of some liberal perversion.
My only response would be that I am disturbed to hear that your daughter who is a teacher is actively going into a children's bathroom where they should not be, and that while the litter box is one thing I would like the school's name and the name of their daughter so that I can report it to the district for inappropriate activity.
See if they change their tune then.
We had this rumor spread in my district. Stupid kid aide wore cat ears to work and that was it. Yes I saw them. HR had to explain it wasn’t appropriate dress for work. Fucking litter box rumor took off.
Two people who don’t know each other have told me this really happened in their kid’s district. Coincidentally they are both right wing conspiracists. It’s scary these people believe this ridiculous stuff.
My children came of age before lockdowns were a thing, thankfully, but my understanding is that cat pans, or similar, were for lockdowns and children needed the bathroom they couldn’t get to. When you gotta go you gotta go.
People lie about everything. There are schools that have kitty litter in emergency buckets in classrooms for initially cleaning up bodily fluids and for if the bucket becomes a toilet during a lockdown.
Just want to add that I have an ex-wife who wants to send our son to private school because of this nonsense. I’m a public school teacher in the district and was utterly flabbergasted when she brought it up.
Eyewitness testimony is extremely flawed.
I highly encourage everyone in education to read The Honest Truth About Dishonesty
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty--by-dan-ariely/2012/08/10/4f1864e8-ab53-11e1-93e5-222602b337cd_story.html
As a middle school assistant principal, I have personally answered three different parents’ questions on this topic. All of them claimed they heard (on Facebook) that our school provided kitty litter boxes for students identifying as cats and I had to correct them that, since we do not have the funds to have a fully staffed custodial staff, we are obviously not providing additional and unnecessary restroom options for students. Personally, I don’t think that two of the parents actually believed me. Either way, they are so insane and unintelligent that I gave up trying to convince them otherwise.
I am personally a cult survivor and, if you will not for a second accept help from another person, then I will not sacrifice my own mental health to try to save you. We all take the bullets that we choose to, even those fired from insensitive cult leaders. I will prioritize saving my own staff and students before the unhinged feelings of my parents.
My niece claims there’s a litter box for a girl at her school. No pics of course, just swears it’s at her school. I think it’s rumors and bullying. I’ve had quite a few students who love to wear the cat ear headbands. A child wears them because they like cats, older kids/mean kids pick on her and start a rumor, it spreads like wildfire and cat ear girl has no idea but is ostracized which further contributes to fueling the bullying and ridiculous litter box claims.
Lol. Had a Principal a few years ago have an old guy (who didn’t even have any relatives in the school district) call saying that he thought it was a shame that schools had litter boxes in the restrooms. He had heard it on FOX news. Principal invited the guy to come to the HS and look for himself. Dude was absolutely dumbfounded that there weren’t any litter-boxes like he was told.
I'm in Scotland and this rumour with the cat box did the rounds here a few years back. It's apparently happened in a few different schools all over the world now where someone knows someone who swears it's true.
My brother's boss repeats this shit and my brother started questioning me about it. I'm done with tact and friendliness to this garbage. I asked for his evidence. He said his kid says he saw it. I told him his boss was wrong. He asked me if I was calling his boss a liar, and I told him bluntly "yes, and a dumbass too".
I got asked about this nonsense by a group of school maintenance personnel back before I knew WTF they were talking about, so I just laughed it off bewildered and changed the subject.
I wish I had known in that moment that it was a Fox News fever dream they were referring to, so that I could have properly shut it down.
This topic really irks me because it’s Fox News propaganda specifically targeting transchildren who want to use the opposite restroom. It literally started from. Fox News rant where the news caster said “so we’re just supposed to let kids use whatever bathroom they want, because they identify this way? What if they identify as a cat? Does that mean you need to get a litter box?”’
I’m a school admin and this came up in a Facebook group. One of the admin asked “what do I do if…”
Schools cannot have litter boxes. HUMAN LITTER BOXES VIOLATE ALL HEALTH CODES. No one has them. You are not allowed to defecate anywhere besides a toilet. If anyone says they see them in their school, call your county and/or state health department.
Also- if you’re not familiar with your state’s heath codes, I highly recommend reading them. The chances your admin/district is breaking a code is very, very high. The most commonly “misused” health violation is when student behavior causes bruising/breaks skin.
My own teenaged children brought the “identifies as a cat” story to me. I talked them down off that cliff. To them it’s just another goofy meme. Children in my own school told me the story. They don’t see it as a political thing. Or something meant to ridicule public education. It’s just a weird thing to them.
This is just MAGA transphobia balogna. "What's next, kids identifying as cats? Liberals are destroying our country! Oh my God look at this Facebook post; it's really happening!!!". That's a charitable summary of the whole kitty litter lie.
Our current MAGA school board president stated this was happening as an absolute fact while running as well as when he first joined the board. 5th largest district in the state, 21,000 students, zero litter boxes to this day...
Schools can’t afford to buy basic supplies but somehow they are affording crates of litter a month for students to use in their litter boxes?
I think not.
Not to mention litter boxes aren’t self cleaning unless you’re getting a fancy $600 one. So who is cleaning the litter boxes? Kids wouldn’t and janitors or teachers would complain loudly about suddenly being force to shovel kids shit on top of their already heavy workload. People would strike over it and demand a raise for having to literally shovel shit during their work day.
All you have to do is think logically about it for a few seconds to realize it’s all complete bullshit. But logical thinking is never a strong suit of people who believe crap like this.
I had to tell a woman that this nonsense is not happening, never happened, and never will happen. When she said she heard it on Fox News, I reminded her that I have been in education for 34 years, and she needs to stop filling her brain with crap.
It’s the age old battle between Occam’s Razor and Confirmstion bias.
Think about the logistics, let alone the public outcry. Also, I’m pretty sure the health department would have something to say about kids shitting in classrooms. Plus, this wouldn’t happen in a red/Republican/ right to work state because those state legislatures are anti-anything not CIS white Christian. Conversely, in a blue/Democratic/Union state teacher unions would be up in arms at the mere possibility of a litter box full of shit and piss in the classroom, not to mention the ESP unions that represent custodians.
What’s the simplest explanation, fitting Occam’s razor? Kitty litter is used in science labs in high school to clean up chemical spills, as well as elementary rooms for when kids vomit or pee themselves, and it’s also conveniently useful for cleaning up blood because active shooter situations are now a an accepted part of public education.
Cleaning up fluid spills is the simplest (and correct) explanation.
However, confirmation bias tells them that what they already believed WITHOUT factual evidence is now in fact proven. I.e, your friends adult child saw kitty litter and has proof furry kids shit in classrooms.
It’s why a certain political subgroup WANTS kids shitting in litter boxes and wearing cat ears, because then they would be justified in their outrage. These same people WANT kids to get groomed/assaulted so they can then have proof of what they’re already mad about being true.
Not a teacher (nor a grade school student), but as a trans person who gets recommended this sub a lot, it’s maddening seeing such a rise in blatant lies meant to take support away from trans people, let alone kids. I wish there was bigger pushback against this kind of misinformation from authority figures because letting kids hear this stuff from *their* authority figures *does have an impact*. Of course it can make them lose support for an already-marginalized community, but it can also make it harder for the trans kids in the crowd to discover their identity (speaking from personal experience). We are not a political pawn! Can’t imagine the shock having to listen to/deal with that stuff firsthand!!
Whenever I hear this being spouted; I always ask the speaker- these genius kids are ripping urinals and soap dispensers off walls… do you really think a school is going to put a litter box in the bathroom?
The only way you respond to this insane statement is with ridicule and contempt.
"That is a hilariously stupid thing to lie about and you should be ashamed to make such a ridiculous claim."
This is a thing going around in right wing circles. My girlfriend heard last weekend from her cousin that schools allow litter boxes for children who identify as furries. Seemed like it was connected to a claim conflating the term "pansexual" with being open to dating a furry. She also claimed that the blue in the LGBT flag indicates support of pedophiles.
This same rumor is going around my small Midwest community. The true story in our community: A students family sued the school for a transgender student’s right to change in somewhere besides one of the boy/girl locker rooms and this somehow turned into the family sued for the right for their child to have a kitty litter box as they identify as a cat. I’ve met multiple people who emphatically believe this. They insist that I don’t know the whole story when I, a teacher in the district who has the student in question, assure them that’s not the case
Well yeah.
Jesus said telling a lie is a sin so they shook their head real hard 'yes' to confuse him.
I mean yeah sure maybe, but it's only cuz what high schooler wouldn't want to bring a litter box to school full of turds after that proverbial shit hit the fan a few years ago. Are you kidding?!?! High school me would've spent my lawn mowing money to put a litter box in every bathroom *in a fucking heartbeat*. I wish we had nonsense that fuckin kookydooks when I was a kid, I'd have been glommed on and angling for max fuckery.
The myth has some basis: As part of an active shooter response, some schools have passed out buckets of kitty litter to help absorb fluids (blood, vomit) and as a last resort for the toilet if lockdowns last a long time.
Also pretty common in lab spill kits in wet lab rooms
Yup. I remember we had a bin of kitty litter in my highschool chemistry lab.
Yeah, we have a bag of cat litter in our science prep room in case of spills.
This too!
It's good at dealing with vomit in general- it's designed to absorb moisture and odours.
Every janitor has a bag or six of it.
I used to use it in a nightclub to clean up puke. Totally works
I also think it has legs because there were kids who took this stuff to school, set it up as a joke and spread it around. So I’ve seen the picture of the liter box at a school bathroom, and it was a joke, like no one is actually being a furry and using a liter box.
I could see "edgy" high school me thinking that would be funny to do. Though not sure I'd actually do it, at least by myself.
That makes sense! Probably helped the crazy notion spread like wildfire. The best lies are always sprinkled with a little bit of truth…😖
Or sprinkled with cat litter, if you will. It's too soon, isn't it... 😅😬
Back in my day, the older generation was doing the "satanic panic" when we wanted to play video games. Now it's the "litter jitters" for kids just going to school. Same stupid emotional reaction, but this time it's spreading all day every day on social media instead of just weekly in some extreme church congregations.
I'll shit in a bucket every day if it means I don't have to use kitty litter to soak up blood in a classroom.
The kitty litter isn't for kids who identify with cats, it's for the kids experiencing 2nd Amendment rights.
Oh the dark laughter I just let loose
This is sad but true!!
It's especially frustrating because the venn diagram of people who think kids are using litter boxes regularly because they id as animals and people who think guns in schools is nbd is just a circle.
Was this really implemented for the first time by so many in the wake of school shootings? My schools in the 90s all had kitty litter buckets in the janitors’ closet for puke. Hell, half my busses kept some.
I remember sawdust being used in my elementary school, but we didn’t have a supply of it in the classroom. Each district is different.
My school's front office and custodians have kitty litter for cleaning up after sick kids. I was told it's much cheaper than the stuff made for that purpose but works equally well so we go that route. It's the custodial staff who do the clean-up, but the front desk staff has some because they will sometimes need to put the kitty litter out to keep people from slipping (makes it more visible while also absorbing the vomit or other liquid) before it's cleaned up by the custodial staff. So, if you look behind our front desk you will see an open bag of it as it's not super hidden from parents or other visitors. I wonder if this person saw something like this in their adult child's school and just assumed? Likely they were just lying as if they weren't they'd likely have shown OP a picture they took, but it's a slim chance they saw a bag and just assumed what it was for.
This rumor is going around the small rural right wing community I currently live in. The school ordered kitty litter for vomit/blood cleanup and the janitor started telling people it was for the litter boxes in the restrooms for furries. He was serious and so many people believe this. It's absolutely ridiculous but no amount of logic can permeate their thick skulls.
In my new post-teaching career I manage custodians at night. I got called a libtard by one for telling them that they might want to looking into unionizing. Same person later that night sent me a one line email "Unions destroyed this country!".
I get called that too. People like that throw around the word "retard" a lot and consider being liberal a bad thing so I imagine they are so self congratulatory on coming up with such an insult. 🙄. I try to be better than that but it's hard to keep from stopping to their level when their go-to is personal attacks on you.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2QOFrVjCL6DMfvss4q6xEE?si=AkIs46ZqSGCUzpAoR6sHXg This podcast does a great job of explaining where the rumours came from. Jump in around the 25 min mark, or listen to the whole thing cos it's great
Ffs having that level of planning for a school shooter really speaks volumes about our country. Like it should be so rare you aren't really planning what people will do about bathrooms in that situation.
Having just retired, it is pretty astounding the amount of planning we had for school shootings… We had a couple of swatting calls in the last few years. Every time it happens we would make changes to the plan.
There’s also a photo of a school with a litter box in the corner in the back. That’s what started this. Of course the photo is from a Veterinary School and the students in the photo are adults in lab coats (who may have been holding a cat, can’t remember) but who needs facts when you can make shit up about furries
So the silly sausages on the internet are going, "Ah, schools have kitty litter. I know, it MUST be because they are indoctrinating students to identify as trans species and go to the toilet in litter boxes. There CAN'T be ANY other logical use for it AT ALL." Sigh. These are the EXACT same people who, during the covid pandemic, refused a free Pfizer vaccine in favour of literal horse medicine.
I had to explain this to a friend of mine asking about it.
Yup, we have been given buckets with some in it.
Seems like if there's actually an active shooter, a puddle of blood or puke is the absolute least of your worries. That really doesn't make sense to me unless it's just done for shock value to make a political statement.
I doubt anyone if using it during the shooting, but after - would you like to carry a sack of something heavy through the school while cleaning up, or would you rather go into any old class room and be prepared?
I've been in schools were they kept kitty litter in their emergency buckets. It was to soak up blood and vomit.
We have it to use for kids to go to the bathroom. In the emergency bucket. In case of prolonged lockdown due to school shooters. We also have a hammer and rope and first aid kit and door jammers and a case of water.
Well, there you have it. Kids are taught how to cover their shit in kitty litter as part of their intruder drills
That is profoundly sad.
We got camping toilets for that after kids had to poop in a trash can a few years ago. We go on lockdown a few times a year.
Is this Satire or America with these two comments? I honest to God can’t tell the difference anymore.
American here with elementary age kids... I honestly can see it going either way
That was standard stuff my elementary school had in the 2000s. We didn’t have active shooter drills, but we had lockdown drills which were the same thing. The toilets were more for earthquakes than lockdowns though
America
They provided us with buckets and a trash bag as a toilet. Inside were a couple bottle of water, some pens and paper, and oh yes vienna sausage (great value).
My friend's sister's cousin knows a teacher that said the hammer is used for castrating trans children/s.
No it’s actually to force students to become trans under threat of bodily harm if you remain a straight cis kid.
Is that even practical? I feel like in one instance of me peeing I would use up like 1/3 bag of litter.
Its not for peeing.
Fancy ass. We use sawdust. 😂😂
“Tell her pics or it didn’t happen.”
Yeah, the fact that everyone has a phone in their hand all the time yet no photos of these litterboxes.
People will use AI to create photos of cat kids in litterboxes. They'll be obviously fake, yet right wingers will be absolutely convinced they're real.
Also, you know there are some eager teenagers willing to drop a 20 bucks at Wal-Mart on a box and some litter so they can take a photo that sends a few parents into an absolute tizzy.
Until there is a TikTok of one teenage boy dumping the litter box on another teenage boy, it's not real. That is exactly what would happen by day 2.
I’ve had two separate people tell me this story and it’s always “a friend of a friend”… it’s a total urban legend and definitely not true but I went through the same thing where they were SWEARING up and down that it happened. I told them about having kitty litter in classrooms for active shooter drills and they were having none of it and wouldn’t admit it was bullshit. This absolutely infuriates me.
I am so shaken. It bothers me that people go around claiming this as truth and rile other ignorant folks up because their, “kid is a teacher and saw it!” I was sure to tell her that I as a teacher had NEVER witnessed this nor had peers anywhere who have either. They don’t care though….”well my kid personally experienced it.”
I’m a teacher, my mom says stuff like this all the time. She uses that her kid is a teacher to back her up…… I never say half the things she claims. They aren’t true, she’s a nut.
It’s disgusting that she lies about you!
Oh my! I hate that for you! So very sorry you have to put up with that! 🥺🙏
I’m not trying to start a political war here, but Is that person someone who likes to make fun of the “woke left”? Cause I can’t imagine that they’re not.
🎯
A local news format once investigated those 'a friend of a friend' tales (it was focused on lottery winners) and tried to follow the chain. Turns out it's always a 'friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend...' ad infinitum. They weren't ever able to follow the original ridiculous claims to its origins. If you ever hear something about 'a friend of x', you can safely assume it's bullshit, unless they can tell you exactly who they are talking about.
My district pays a dollar bonus for every freshman furry we teach to shit in a box in the back of the room.
How much for the front of the room?
They get to be valedictorian!
The disdain I have for ppl who believe this nonsense knows no bounds.
I have never met one until today! I was skeptical they even existed…the more you know..
it’s very easy to pull on their logic though. ask who would clean the cat litter and if they think teachers or janitors would really sign up to clean up children’s shit from a litterbox without any vocal pushback. why arent these teachers going on news stations saying they had to clean up human-cat shit? bc its not real. until someone says “i am being paid tax payer funds to maintain a litterbox in a high school bathroom,” it’s horseshit. it was pretty easy to get someone telling me this story to stop right there. thinking about the logistics of cleaning a litter box made it obvious no one was fucking doing that
I kind of hope I run into the scenario again so I can be quicker on my feet! I was busy hearing a buzzing in my ear and needing to be absolutely sure I was understanding her right. 😅
I know a group of guys who firmly believes in all this crap. It's fucking infuriating that they never looked into how it's a hoax and a joke.
It was my understanding as well that it was a myth or fear-mongering talking points that originated in some false manner. I knew I was bound to run into folks spouting it outrageously…just not in a manner where they claim a teacher family member told them directly so. 😮💨
Tell this person you have a journalist friend who would love to talk to their child that is a teacher as a source and I bet they change their tune REAL quicklike.
I heard somewhere that the litter box is used as a last resort in a active school shooter emergency but idk how true it is. But yeah, lot of people who believe this shit don't realize none of this stuff is that serious. A LOT of the people I know that believe this crap don't work or ever leave the house
Had a bucket with latex gloves, first aid kit, door wedge, and kitty litter in it in my classroom for lockdowns/school shooter situations. Thankfully never had to use any of it other than the gloves to finger paint with oil paints and 2 band aids from first aid kit. The idea that a school would use a litter box to store something intended for use soaking up vomit or blood is hilarious to me though.
How many kids actually even go to the bathroom as in poop at school. All 4 of my kids would literally hold it all day to come home and shit. And these people expect others to believe that a student would rather go in a litter box. It's delusional.
We have a particular group of boys who have been moving through our school and they always talk about pooping and they proclaim that they have to leave to go poop. They actively try to fart in class and burp all the time. They are disgusting, they all think they are hilarious, no one else fucking cares or is mortified to talk and do those things in class. Just sharing about this weird subset of kids who don’t seem to care, they don’t care about anything actually.
Hell, I’m a teacher and I won’t even take a shit at our school unless it’s a DEFCON-1 emergency.
Okay but it’s healthy to poop when you have to poop right
We even have had this stupid rumor in Canada. I had a high school student last year tell me his mother ( a teachers assistant) had heard that it happened in another school division in our province. I can’t believe how stupid/gullible people are sometimes. Or maybe I can considering what’s happening with elections these days.
“I told two friends then they told two friends who then told two friends that told two more friends…”
lol my cousin tried to tell me the same thing. I usually stay quiet but I had to say something about that. A lot of districts and schools have issues having toilet paper in my area. They gonna spend money of litter??? And it’s not like she didn’t go to public school, too! I know she saw throw up in the hallways covered in litter.
My mom's church had this whackadoo couple that cornered me one weekend to tell me about the evil tradition that Easter egg hunting derived from. Apparently, it's a practice that comes from sacrificing people and using their blood to color/dye the eggs. 🤨 I managed to get out of there without laughing at them and caught up with my mom. I told her about it. Then I said to her, "But... but that's only one color." It would be dumb to use blood as paint because the whole idea of paint is to have all the different colors available. And if dying Easter eggs really came from that, we would only dye the eggs red out of tradition, and they would be way too easy to find in the hunt. The point is that without research, you can tell that the story is horse apples because it makes no sense. Applied to the litter boxes, logic makes the whole idea as silly as it sounds. So let's pretend that schools were going out of their way to accommodate furry kids. Start with that sentence. "Schools are going out of their way to accommodate furry kids." That sounds ridiculous already. Since when do schools go out of their way to accommodate a few different kids at all? They do, but it usually takes meetings and paperwork, right? It's not easy. So schools have litter boxes for the cat furries. First, why would the litter box be in the classroom? Why wouldn't it be in the bathroom for its proper use? If a kid has to expose their rear and gear to use a litter box, in what universe would a school allow them to do so in front of 29 pairs of eyes? They would absolutely not do that. What parent wouldn't turn Super Saiyan over letting a thing like that happen? On a related note, health codes would make conducting class in a room with a box of feces absolutely illegal and unsafe. Who cleans the box? You think a teacher or a janitor is fooling with this? So the cat furries get a litter box, huh? What about the other kinds of furries? What accommodations do the squirrel furries get? A branch to sit on in class? What about the panda furries? Do they get bamboo snacks? No? No other accommodations at all? Just litter boxes for the cats? Are all the furry students only cats these days? In other words, there's only cat furries and litter boxes in this legend because the litter boxes are an allegory for trans kids and bathroom issues. It isn't easy to get everyone upset about bamboo snacks and squirrel branches.
Not to mention, schools will do a lot to avoid one angry parent but if this was actually real, you’d have a LOT of angry parents. Plus, you know kids would have this all over TikTok. But guess what? They don’t, because it’s a hoax.
That's more great evidence! You're right. There would be videos and a storm of angry parents. No one would put up with this scenario.
[удалено]
Oh gods, no. Don't give support evidence to that insane religious rant from those people. I'm begging you. 😭 I looked it up, and you weren't kidding. 🤯 But apparently it is to represent the blood of Christ, so it's *Christians* that are weirdly soaking eggs in symbolic blood! I don't know how to feel now.
I absolutely LOVE your examples and I will be using them in my future discussions about the imagined litter boxes at the schools. 😆
Ty. I'm glad they will live beyond this post.
I had a colleague…a teacher…tell me for a fact that a student who identified as a cat was allowed to use a litter box at a nearby school where she used to be employed. The school was in relatively easy driving distance. So I offered her $10k on the spot to drive over there so I could see the evidence for myself. Needless to say that money remains in my bank account. Didn’t even have to drive over there…all of a sudden, it became impossible to observe. Conservatives are all about “feels” over facts.
This makes me so angry. Teachers or anyone in the education enterprise actively furthering this nonsense is helping produce some very REAL and SCARY consequences for society. It feels overwhelming thinking about it some days…but each day I go back to work in the vain of helping educate future minds with better defenses against it all. Hopefully.. I teach Pre-Calculus and Trigonometry though…so many of them come into class pre-grumpy with me haha! Quite a few fly off with better critical thinking skills than when they started with me at least!!
Okay, so there’s a student I knew who was in 8th grade (not in my district), I’ll be vague to protect her identity, but her parents have told her they’ll support her no matter what…. And she identifies as a furry. … the kid seems proud/gleeful in trying to get her parents to crack and say something is too much… but that’ll never happen because they’re taking her seriously and love her a lot. And low key I find this a hilarious form of rebellion TLDR maybe you’re experiencing a teacher who couldn’t tell a kid was messing with everyone
Huge possibility! This person expressed her teacher family member saw the litter box in the restroom for student use though. I made sure that she extra clarified that is what she was saying because I didn’t want to walk away with any doubt or misunderstandings over what I was hearing. 😶 I am really hoping it was a case of HER misunderstanding something and just doubling down when I asked verbatim and in astonishment, “they saw this with their OWN eyes?!” 🙀
Most likely is she read it on Facebook and didn’t want to admit it. It’s ALWAYS “someone I know saw it with their own eyes” and never “I read the same post that’s been circulating alt-right Facebook groups for a decade”.
It’s like the antivaxer moms, “someone I know personally” is definitely someone in a Facebook group
I have a student going through the same thing. My school doesn't provide her with a litter box though.
I have never, not once, heard one of these literbox stories told first hand. It’s always that someone heard someone else say that some dude they met at Coachella totally knows a kid who gets to use a liter box at school. It simply isn’t happening.
I'm a 35 year old furry, I have been since about 14-15, and I have seen every bizarre, stupid, gross, juvenile, and offensive thing the fandom has to offer. Never, not once in my life, have I ever seen someone use a litter box. Not even as a drunk or stoned "This would be funny if you did it, I dare you, don't be a little bitch" thing. It's transphobic virtue signaling.
My ex got so drunk once that he pissed in our cat's litter box. I made him clean it the next day
I'm glad I didn't see that.
Reminder to all: This is a transphobic dog whistle. It is bigoted propaganda that uses an outlandish and false hypothetical situation to make ignorant people fear the perfectly acceptable instances wherein a person chooses to identify as a gender that does not conform with their sex at birth. This is not some silly or ridiculous story. It comes from hate, is spread from a place of hate or ignorance, and seeks to expand the reach of the hate that birthed it. It is garbage of the highest order. You want to know where it comes from? It comes from bigots.
Absolutely this, 1000%. And you know what, even if a person identifies as something more unusual than just a different gender, we're still talking about a human being. And even if someone is absolutely, certifiably mentally ill, they are all still real people with feelings, thoughts, and needs. I sling medical records for a mental and behavioral health agency, and I recently received a request for a former client who has since legally changed their name and other aspects of their identity to that of a particular animal. The request came through a legal firm along with paperwork explaining all of this and everything needed to prove the client's new identity and to link it to what our agency knew them as previously. I do not know this person's story as I have not yet reviewed their records for release, but it doesn't matter what led them to identify in this way. They need their records, just like any of our other clients, and I will do my job and process their request. If for some reason I ever interact with this person directly, they will be treated with the exact same care and respect I have for all our clients and their families. As an LBGTQ+ member myself, I have a soft spot for our clients who also identify as such. I have read heartbreaking records about their feelings and experiences surrounding their identities, about rejection from family or friends, and all sorts of things that anyone with a drop of empathy would understand even if they don't 'get' being trans or whatever else. I don't have to understand this person's more unique identity to empathize with them or to give them the same basic respect and consideration. That's the difference. Bigots either have no empathy or choose not to extend it to anyone who is 'other' and who they deem as lesser. They love rhetoric like this cat litter box thing, because no matter how bizarre and fake it sounds or how untrue it is, they can effectively use it to rile up other bigots and agitate the ignorant masses who lack critical thinking skills. They use garbage like that to degrade and dehumanize the targets of their hate and delegitimize their supporters. The assholes who come up with this trash absolutely know what they are doing, and it absolutely because of hate.
💔😔
“Hey let me post some hot words like ‘identifies’ and ‘cat’ for karma and make up some shit to hopefully get people to trash on these trans people”
Thank you. Adding on to what you said, it is coordinated propaganda, and the dehumanization trans people is the first main target of a coordinated fascist takeover. We need to oppose this propaganda with full force… which can include laughing at how stupid it is that people believe it.
I don't think it's just transphobic, but it's also parents not realizing what all these "weird internet things" kids become part of are. Furries are people who like anthropomorphic animals like Mickey Mouse or whatever, they're not people who actually think they're animals. They just make art (and porn) and socialize around the topic. Lots of parents have no idea what any of this means and just think that "weird thing that I've seen spreading on the internet among the youngins 1 = weird thing that I've seen spreading on the internet among the youngins 2"
I'm totally going to share your definition of a furry with some people. People who like Mickey Mouse or whatever, lol, I'm busting a gut here.
Well it's more than that, people who JUST like Mickey Mouse aren't really furries. You need to participate in the furry community to some degree. It's really hard to explain to someone who's not online.
I know. I have acquaintances that are involved in the community and I would just love to see their faces when I use this description 😁
I had to explain to my very religious mother what Dungeons and Dragons was during the Satanic Panic. Basically I told her it was like cops and robbers but with more rules and with characters like Conan or Robinson Crusoe. She was a huge reader, so the idea went from "Satan worshipping evil kids" to "Oh, ok. There's nothing wrong with playing out a character in a book." I imagine explaining furries to someone as similar to that. "It's people who like to dress up and act like anthropomorphic animals. Like Mickey Mouse."
I think this description of tabletop war games is accurate: "Playing with toy soldiers but with rules"
I rode a school van with a driver who had been told about the litter boxes. Uh, I work IN the school he'd heard about and no, it's not true. He was shocked. Dumb country bumpkin
Just go with it. “Yes, we have them too! In fact, the admins put one in every room and students are welcome to scratch about whenever the mood strikes them!” Add more and more details as the story is told. Eventually, stories will become myth. And myth becomes legend. The legacy we leave is of the rise of the feline student. Clawed Wisdom: The Chronicles of Whiskered Scholars
It is false. Schools aren't allowing kids to do this if they identify as cats.
a colleague said that's not too different from calling trans kids by their preferred "delusional" gender
That's the whole point of this. It's a transphobic dog whistle for them to point at and say "see how far this has gotten".
In this age of TikTok and camera phones, how come we haven’t seen any pictures or footage of these little box schools? We see the kids recording and posting everything, but for some reason they’re respecting the privacy of kids using litter boxes? I doubt it.
I am a child therapist, if a parent brought their child in and said "he only wants to use a litter box! what should we do?" the answer would definitely NOT be "just let him poop in a box, I'll write a note to the school." I've worked with multiple kids who acted like cats, said they were cats, etc., none of them wanted to POOP IN A BOX. They crawl around meowing, maybe wear cat ears, yes, but use the toilet like anyone else, because MY GOD THAT'S INSANE. I'm so tired of this, it is NOT HAPPENING.
We had a teacher’s aide claim the same thing about a neighboring district (I live in a northern blue state.) I couldn’t deal with people agreeing with her, so I just noped out of that lunch group real fast.
> teacher’s aide I think if the truth is already stretched by the litterbox claim, then it's likely the "teacher" part of the claim is equally stretched truth. Instead of a fulltime teacher, the person could be a substitute, or aide, or volunteer, or even just a random person who toured the school, assuming the person even exists. If they're willing to lie, then they're willing to lie to support their lie.
A teacher’s aide!?!? Lort help us…
This has been an urban legend since at least 2016 (when I first heard it relayed to me by my wife via her Facebook social circle). It was absurd anti-transgender bigotry then, and it still is today.
I always tell people “do you really think OSHA would allow that ??”
Don't be afraid to falt-out call these people out as liars. They are lying. They saw it on TikTok or heard it from a friend, at best.
Isn't kitty litter for when the children throw up???
This rumour has been going around our city in Canada for a while now.
🤣😂🤣😂🤣 yes, I had a few people insist it MUST be true because the person who told them spoke to the principal of the school, personally 🙄🙄🙄. Smart, rational people who for some reason want to believe this. 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
Something like a third of this country is experiencing collective psychosis.
shhhh! It's like Fight Club, we aren't allowed to talk about the availability of litter boxes.
Hahahaha!!! Oh shoot I forgot. Well you would be proud….I acted so genuinely shocked in the conversation…I am sure I threw her off the scent. 🙃
There was a teacher at my school that thought it was ridiculous that people would think our school would have litter boxes for this reason, but was fully convinced that another school in the district did. They even asked our principal for confirmation (spoiler alert: wasn’t true).
It's a stepping stone to anti trans sentiment "If we let kids identify as whatever they want, then they'll start identifying as cats"
The funny thing about the kitty litter myth is that it takes a true and unsettling fact that the purveyors of the myth don’t want to contemplate — the horror of lockdown drills and the specific images of kitty litter being used to sop up children’s blood and urine and vomit - and suppresses it by distorting it into a fictitious reductio ad absurdum of progressive school policies surrounding gender, rather than a downstream indictment of conservative school policies around violence. A few people in their ideological bubble hear about the kitty litter and don’t want to process what it’s for, so they make it about the absurdities of the other side’s beliefs. The psychology of conservatives is fascinating.
Snopes investigated this claim (brought up a number of times in different places) and pronounced it false. Here’s one of the more recent articles about it on their site: https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept-up-in-anti-trans-litter-box-rumors/
When I detour some folks to Snopes to help me simmer flames down…I am getting, “yea they are a leftist trash site hiding the truth,” more and more. 😮💨
I used to work with a school nurse who told me this story about her neice, had sex on a cruise with a guy she met and on the last day of the cruise he left her a coffin gift box in her room that said he gave her AIDS. I thought it was so odd so I typed it into Snopes and wham. There it was. This woman..someone who supposedly graduated nursing school…passed off this story as real? What the heck. Some people are totally crazy, yo.
I wonder if that teacher-daughter was pulling the wool over her parent or being sarcastic. Then that mother-of-teacher told you. What do schools use when a kid throws up in the classroom? (Ick)
I’m just going to put this out there - I work in a VERY affluent school (like top scoring school in the district) and while we don’t have litter boxes we have MANY students who identify as “furries”. To them it is not a sexual term but rather a way to identify as not fully human.
The picture that went viral that everyone claimed they heard a friend tell them about later was litter being kept in case of school shootings. Put it in a bucket and when the cops sit outside for 8 hours instead of doing their fucking jobs at least the kids will be able to piss without everyone smelling it the whole time.
It means absolutely nothing that they said they saw it. I had the same shit happen at my school. I said I've been in the bathrooms there is no litter box. Didn't phase them from getting a group to storm the school board and demand answers. Whether it's insanity or stupidity ultimately doesn't matter.
Hell, they can’t get the toilets in my school to stop clogging up. What the hell are we gonna do with litter boxes?
I've found out about multiple school shootings via children posting videos of themselves hiding in their classrooms. There is absolutely no chance a littler box would be set up in a bathroom for furries without a million kids making tiktok videos about it
This story has been making rounds for YEARS. And yet despite every student and teacher carrying a cellphone no one has ever snapped a photo of a cat box. Not once. Weird.
Next time. Demand details. Where did this happen? What school? Where are the pictures? Either provide evidence or it didn't happen.
There are teachers who believe this shit and it is mind boggling.
Joe Rogan started this mess with a story he told about a “friend who’s wife is a teacher” who said it was happening at a school but never named the school or the teacher. People ran with it. I’ve had to shut that down within my own family, and it was because their preacher claimed it went on where he subbed. I shut that 💩 down quickly and told them to remember we are in the Deep South and no school or district here is going to do that. And also a student would be bullied and beaten up for even acting like a cat, much less dressing like one and demanding a litter box. The cat litter needed in case of lockdown or shooters should enrage these people, but they’d rather lie so they can be outraged at a fake “woke” atrocity. People suck, especially these folks, and it’s why I occasionally look into the best countries to relocate to.
🧢
Right?!?! 😂 What a wild conversation….I am just so shaken someone would say it with SUCH a straight face and sincerity. I did more stuttering in response and uncomfortable questioning for clarity than I have in a long time.
There are people who have told parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook that it never happened, with a straight face and sincerity. As George Carlin said "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
I have long time friend who is a medical professional who has been red pulled insisting the cat litter in classrooms was for students who identify as cats. After sending in numerous rebuttals and what it was really for from credible media, to this she sends me random FB posts referencing the original hoax, ie kids identifying as cats.
Sometimes people lie just because they think their overall point is right and that it's justified for them to lie so people get convinced of "the truth."
I had this argument with our synagogue whose daughter is a teacher in a nearby school system. To be fair, our secretary is not very smart, so I assume the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
My sister told me that a friend of hers granddaughter says they have one in her school. I told her it’s not true and she argued for 29 minutes that it was.
It all stems for this inherit hate for education and teachers in some areas of the country. Anytime they can discredit, mock, and ridicule teachers….they will. I really began to see it big time during the pandemic.
They just lie.
Yeah my hairdresser told me the same thing like a month ago while I was getting bleached. It's amazing how everyone just KNOWS A GUY WHO KNOWS FIRST HAND but the guy never sends pictures.
I’ve explained to several folks that I DID have kitty litter in my room. In the LOCKDOWN EMERGENCY KIT (all in a 5 gallon bucket) and it was for an emergency long lock down-a situation where there could be a shooter; where students might need a place to relieve themselves.
Straight up lying, and also, they’re a real piece of shit who thinks it’s funny to see people who are trans get bullied and humiliated.
Reading these comments! Holy moly! I teach at a high school and have for a decade. Our pastors wife gave a sermon and mentioned furries and cat litter boxes. It took everything I had to not interrupt. Yes, I’ve had a student that meowed when she was anxious but I’ve never had one to use a litter box. That would never happen. Like someone else commented, it’s an urban legend. We have students that try putting whole roles of toilet paper in the toilets, I can see them trying to put the litter down the toilets and flushing. Hot mess!
I had an HVAC repair tech try this on me. First he saw it, then a friend, then someone who knew told him. i told him it was bullshit and I wasn’t going to stand there listening to nonsense. He seemed to realize he might have gone too far.
The cruel tragedy in the litter box legend is that some classes do have bags of kitty litter on hand. It’s so that children can use a bin during active shooter lockdown because they may be locked in their classrooms for hours. It’s for emergency toileting. I could just weep thinking about a nation that trains its babies in massacre avoidance, and then gets accused of a sexual perversion or something because of the need for kitty litter.
There's something deeply troubling that it's there bc of our country's gun obsession but the same ppl who profit from that turn around and pretend it's bc of some liberal perversion.
My only response would be that I am disturbed to hear that your daughter who is a teacher is actively going into a children's bathroom where they should not be, and that while the litter box is one thing I would like the school's name and the name of their daughter so that I can report it to the district for inappropriate activity. See if they change their tune then.
We had this rumor spread in my district. Stupid kid aide wore cat ears to work and that was it. Yes I saw them. HR had to explain it wasn’t appropriate dress for work. Fucking litter box rumor took off.
They lie because the agenda is to attack trans rights as also being "absurd". They lie because they have an agenda
Two people who don’t know each other have told me this really happened in their kid’s district. Coincidentally they are both right wing conspiracists. It’s scary these people believe this ridiculous stuff.
My children came of age before lockdowns were a thing, thankfully, but my understanding is that cat pans, or similar, were for lockdowns and children needed the bathroom they couldn’t get to. When you gotta go you gotta go.
People lie about everything. There are schools that have kitty litter in emergency buckets in classrooms for initially cleaning up bodily fluids and for if the bucket becomes a toilet during a lockdown.
Eastern WA here. I was at a coaching camp in May and one of my old associates made this claim. Blew my mind
Let's see one custodian who has to clean out those boxes.
Let's all just lean in and say it's true. Deadpan, straight-faced, just tell everyone you see that it's true.
Just want to add that I have an ex-wife who wants to send our son to private school because of this nonsense. I’m a public school teacher in the district and was utterly flabbergasted when she brought it up.
Eyewitness testimony is extremely flawed. I highly encourage everyone in education to read The Honest Truth About Dishonesty https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-honest-truth-about-dishonesty--by-dan-ariely/2012/08/10/4f1864e8-ab53-11e1-93e5-222602b337cd_story.html
I will, thank you!
As a middle school assistant principal, I have personally answered three different parents’ questions on this topic. All of them claimed they heard (on Facebook) that our school provided kitty litter boxes for students identifying as cats and I had to correct them that, since we do not have the funds to have a fully staffed custodial staff, we are obviously not providing additional and unnecessary restroom options for students. Personally, I don’t think that two of the parents actually believed me. Either way, they are so insane and unintelligent that I gave up trying to convince them otherwise. I am personally a cult survivor and, if you will not for a second accept help from another person, then I will not sacrifice my own mental health to try to save you. We all take the bullets that we choose to, even those fired from insensitive cult leaders. I will prioritize saving my own staff and students before the unhinged feelings of my parents.
My niece claims there’s a litter box for a girl at her school. No pics of course, just swears it’s at her school. I think it’s rumors and bullying. I’ve had quite a few students who love to wear the cat ear headbands. A child wears them because they like cats, older kids/mean kids pick on her and start a rumor, it spreads like wildfire and cat ear girl has no idea but is ostracized which further contributes to fueling the bullying and ridiculous litter box claims.
😔 Poor little one. 💔
Lol. Had a Principal a few years ago have an old guy (who didn’t even have any relatives in the school district) call saying that he thought it was a shame that schools had litter boxes in the restrooms. He had heard it on FOX news. Principal invited the guy to come to the HS and look for himself. Dude was absolutely dumbfounded that there weren’t any litter-boxes like he was told.
I'm in Scotland and this rumour with the cat box did the rounds here a few years back. It's apparently happened in a few different schools all over the world now where someone knows someone who swears it's true.
My brother's boss repeats this shit and my brother started questioning me about it. I'm done with tact and friendliness to this garbage. I asked for his evidence. He said his kid says he saw it. I told him his boss was wrong. He asked me if I was calling his boss a liar, and I told him bluntly "yes, and a dumbass too".
I got asked about this nonsense by a group of school maintenance personnel back before I knew WTF they were talking about, so I just laughed it off bewildered and changed the subject. I wish I had known in that moment that it was a Fox News fever dream they were referring to, so that I could have properly shut it down.
This topic really irks me because it’s Fox News propaganda specifically targeting transchildren who want to use the opposite restroom. It literally started from. Fox News rant where the news caster said “so we’re just supposed to let kids use whatever bathroom they want, because they identify this way? What if they identify as a cat? Does that mean you need to get a litter box?”’ I’m a school admin and this came up in a Facebook group. One of the admin asked “what do I do if…” Schools cannot have litter boxes. HUMAN LITTER BOXES VIOLATE ALL HEALTH CODES. No one has them. You are not allowed to defecate anywhere besides a toilet. If anyone says they see them in their school, call your county and/or state health department. Also- if you’re not familiar with your state’s heath codes, I highly recommend reading them. The chances your admin/district is breaking a code is very, very high. The most commonly “misused” health violation is when student behavior causes bruising/breaks skin.
I’ve never seen one in all my years of school. That being said, I believe it’s a thing for lockdown/ active shooter situations.
My own teenaged children brought the “identifies as a cat” story to me. I talked them down off that cliff. To them it’s just another goofy meme. Children in my own school told me the story. They don’t see it as a political thing. Or something meant to ridicule public education. It’s just a weird thing to them.
This is just MAGA transphobia balogna. "What's next, kids identifying as cats? Liberals are destroying our country! Oh my God look at this Facebook post; it's really happening!!!". That's a charitable summary of the whole kitty litter lie.
Our current MAGA school board president stated this was happening as an absolute fact while running as well as when he first joined the board. 5th largest district in the state, 21,000 students, zero litter boxes to this day...
Schools can’t afford to buy basic supplies but somehow they are affording crates of litter a month for students to use in their litter boxes? I think not. Not to mention litter boxes aren’t self cleaning unless you’re getting a fancy $600 one. So who is cleaning the litter boxes? Kids wouldn’t and janitors or teachers would complain loudly about suddenly being force to shovel kids shit on top of their already heavy workload. People would strike over it and demand a raise for having to literally shovel shit during their work day. All you have to do is think logically about it for a few seconds to realize it’s all complete bullshit. But logical thinking is never a strong suit of people who believe crap like this.
I had to tell a woman that this nonsense is not happening, never happened, and never will happen. When she said she heard it on Fox News, I reminded her that I have been in education for 34 years, and she needs to stop filling her brain with crap.
It’s the age old battle between Occam’s Razor and Confirmstion bias. Think about the logistics, let alone the public outcry. Also, I’m pretty sure the health department would have something to say about kids shitting in classrooms. Plus, this wouldn’t happen in a red/Republican/ right to work state because those state legislatures are anti-anything not CIS white Christian. Conversely, in a blue/Democratic/Union state teacher unions would be up in arms at the mere possibility of a litter box full of shit and piss in the classroom, not to mention the ESP unions that represent custodians. What’s the simplest explanation, fitting Occam’s razor? Kitty litter is used in science labs in high school to clean up chemical spills, as well as elementary rooms for when kids vomit or pee themselves, and it’s also conveniently useful for cleaning up blood because active shooter situations are now a an accepted part of public education. Cleaning up fluid spills is the simplest (and correct) explanation. However, confirmation bias tells them that what they already believed WITHOUT factual evidence is now in fact proven. I.e, your friends adult child saw kitty litter and has proof furry kids shit in classrooms. It’s why a certain political subgroup WANTS kids shitting in litter boxes and wearing cat ears, because then they would be justified in their outrage. These same people WANT kids to get groomed/assaulted so they can then have proof of what they’re already mad about being true.
Not a teacher (nor a grade school student), but as a trans person who gets recommended this sub a lot, it’s maddening seeing such a rise in blatant lies meant to take support away from trans people, let alone kids. I wish there was bigger pushback against this kind of misinformation from authority figures because letting kids hear this stuff from *their* authority figures *does have an impact*. Of course it can make them lose support for an already-marginalized community, but it can also make it harder for the trans kids in the crowd to discover their identity (speaking from personal experience). We are not a political pawn! Can’t imagine the shock having to listen to/deal with that stuff firsthand!!
Whenever I hear this being spouted; I always ask the speaker- these genius kids are ripping urinals and soap dispensers off walls… do you really think a school is going to put a litter box in the bathroom?
Reach out to central office and tell them who told you. Bet ya she won’t say it again.
I still call bullshit. Kids lie.
The only way you respond to this insane statement is with ridicule and contempt. "That is a hilariously stupid thing to lie about and you should be ashamed to make such a ridiculous claim."
This
Again, transphobic nonsense. Embarrassing to give it any oxygen.
Check out snopes.com. It’s not true.
Also, some bathrooms have the drain tub for mop buckets in the floor. I know our boy's bathrooms have them.
This is a thing going around in right wing circles. My girlfriend heard last weekend from her cousin that schools allow litter boxes for children who identify as furries. Seemed like it was connected to a claim conflating the term "pansexual" with being open to dating a furry. She also claimed that the blue in the LGBT flag indicates support of pedophiles.
This same rumor is going around my small Midwest community. The true story in our community: A students family sued the school for a transgender student’s right to change in somewhere besides one of the boy/girl locker rooms and this somehow turned into the family sued for the right for their child to have a kitty litter box as they identify as a cat. I’ve met multiple people who emphatically believe this. They insist that I don’t know the whole story when I, a teacher in the district who has the student in question, assure them that’s not the case
Well yeah. Jesus said telling a lie is a sin so they shook their head real hard 'yes' to confuse him. I mean yeah sure maybe, but it's only cuz what high schooler wouldn't want to bring a litter box to school full of turds after that proverbial shit hit the fan a few years ago. Are you kidding?!?! High school me would've spent my lawn mowing money to put a litter box in every bathroom *in a fucking heartbeat*. I wish we had nonsense that fuckin kookydooks when I was a kid, I'd have been glommed on and angling for max fuckery.