Diane Mastrull: Here, kitty! No, not there!

It would be simplifying things too much to say that Rebecca Rescate's entrepreneurial destiny was set when she married Christian Rescate in 2004, taking a surname that included the word cat. But, no, her business future was established when, in saying "I do," she also accepted the love of her life's feline companion, Samantha.

For when the three moved into their oh-so-cramped, 500-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side, one thing became crystal clear to the new bride. She was not going to put up with the odor from "a dirty, disgusting litter box" and hauling 20-pound purchases of cat litter to their fifth-floor walk-up.

With advice from family, friends, and a cat toilet-training group on Yahoo, Samantha was using the potty in a matter of weeks. And Rebecca Rescate - a native of Buckingham, high school swimming star at Central Bucks East High School, and 2002 graduate of Northeastern University, where she majored in graphic design and minored in business - was determined to use $20,000 in wedding gift money to market her "disappearing-litter-box technique."

She was sure that other litter-box-averse cat fanciers would be interested in training their kitties to do their business where humans do.

Samantha Rescate's CitiKitty Cat Toilet Training Kit sells for $29.99 and includes a five-progressive-step ring filled with litter that fits under the lid of a toilet (along with organic catnip to entice cats to jump aboard.) No automatic flusher is included.

CitiKitty is on track to hit $1 million in sales this year. That's up from $350,000 in 2010.

Rescate, 32 and now living in Yardley, credits a great deal of that revenue jump to her 12-minute appearance this past May on ABC-TV's popular Shark Tank, where inventors and other business-inclined compete for investors, who might turn the contestants' ideas into moneymaking successes.

"The true power behind that show is the sheer time you are on national prime-time television," Rescate said. "For CitiKitty, it was priceless."

Since the company's launch in 2005, its website, www.citikitty.com, had been enjoying healthy traffic as the blogosphere spread word of Rescate's "solution to the litter box." The kit is manufactured in New Jersey and shipped from a warehouse in Fairless Hills.

Within hours of her pitch on Shark Tank, which initially aired May 13 as the second-season finale and was replayed July 22, the CitiKitty website had 20,000 hits and the training kit had rocketed to No. 1 among home-and-garden products on Amazon.com, Rescate said. Mentions on Twitter and Facebook were considerable. The wedding money had long been recouped.

She did not have a cat performing on demand. That's tough for anybody - let alone on television. Instead, Rescate explained the training, which starts with a plastic ring filled with litter that is set over the toilet bowl. The next week's ring has a little less litter and a small opening. Over subsequent weeks, the opening gets larger so the cat-in-training is exposed to more toilet bowl water, less litter. By the fifth week, there is no ring or litter. The cat is relieving itself directly into the bowl.

Not every "shark" investor was sold on the idea. When real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran didn't gush over Rescate's training venture - "I'm not sure I'd share my toilet with my cat. I just wonder if they're accurate [in aim]." - Rescate had a quick retort, as she walked over to a litter box on the set:

"Let's not forget: This is a box of poop. Your cat is going to the bathroom in there, and then they are walking in your house . . . on your sofa, your kitchen counter."

Rescate left the show with a deal to sell a 20 percent equity stake in CitiKitty to infomercial czar Kevin Harrington, who has helped get the product on shelves in 500 Walgreens - the kit's largest retail presence so far.

Among Rescate's regrets, she said, is not developing a retail presence sooner. Having three kids from 2006 to 2009 was a sizable demand on her time and energy, she explained. Getting professional help on package design earlier on would have benefited sales, too, Rescate has concluded. The packaging has evolved from a bag with a cardboard header to a box measuring 16 by 15.5 inches.

The look of the box has changed a few times, including the replacement of the picture of a cartoon cat with an image of the real thing. Rescate had first gone the cartoon route, she explained, because she worried that "a cat on the toilet may be too much information for people." In response to a number of people suggesting that the pictured cat appeared to be frowning, Rescate has photo-shopped the mouth into more of a smile.

With 38 million U.S. households estimated to include cats, Rescate says annual sales of at least $2 million is a realistic expectation.

Not doubting that is Ron Hill, a professor of marketing and business law who has studied the pet-supplies industry and owners' relationships with pets. An emerging trend, evidenced by an increasing number of hotels that welcome pets, is ascribing human attributes to them, Hill said.

"An ability to toilet train a cat would be perfect," he said. "To get your pet to do it reinforces the belief that our pets are like us."

Asserting that cleaning a litter box is "a nasty job," Hill said he was confident that CitiKitty kits will be "very popular." His advice for Rescate is to expand her market - to dogs.

"I'd get the dogs up on the seat," said Hill, who has a golden retriever. "You have a giant market."

Actually, Rescate is going in another direction - food. Low-calorie, high-protein dry Tuna Treats. Unlike toilet devices, food is a consumable product - meaning great potential for repeat sales. Repeat business for the toilet-training kits is less than 1 percent, requiring Rescate to devote much effort into developing new customers, she said.

"Consumable is really where it's at in terms of long-term viability," she said. "I think Tuna Treats could trump CitiKitty. But CitiKitty is kind of what opens the door for me for other things."

As for Samantha, the 19-year-old tuxedo cat who was the inspiration for it all?

"At this point, she deserves her own oil painting . . . with a gilded gold frame," Rescate said.

Rebecca Rescate talks about CitiKitty, her product to make kitty litter a thing of the past, at

www.philly.com/businessEndText