Big boy needs a big box

Our boy kitties are quite long; a non-cat loving friend pointed this obvious fact out to me a few years ago. She was impressed with their incredibly long tails and then commented on their long spines. I hadn’t really put it together but then I got curious, measured them and then looked up average cat tail lengths online. Sure enough, Wally and Eddie are long kitties.

Over the course of the last seven years, we’ve had a variety of litter boxes to accommodate them. We finally ended up with about the biggest actual litter boxes you could get, with high sides but no tops. As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been experimenting with changing the litter, and between that and poor Eddie’s bum, he was not a happy cat and had recently started pooping in the dining room.

After consulting Google yet again, I suggested we get a plastic storage bin and try that as a litter box in the dining room on top of one of the poop spots. It seems that cats really hate to feel crowded while doing their business, and they don’t much care for being cooped up in small spaces while doing it either. Since Eddie is so very long, even the biggest proper litter box is too short. Fair enough, I dislike latrines and Port-A-Potties for the same reasons. Well, all the cats started using that box—Kent does the scooping and there was pretty much nothing to scoop in the other two boxes.

The kicker was on Sunday when we returned from a quick overnight trip. Eddie got our attention and then kept eye contact with us while he pooped on the dining room rug. Yikes.

So now we have two giant bins in the dining room and all cats are using them. These bins are too big to go in the sideboard we have in the office, which housed the previous litter boxes. But they are plenty large enough for very long cats to do their business without feeling crowded or having their bums hanging over the edge of the box. Unless, of course, it’s deliberate.

We’re also trying yet another litter. So far, so good in terms of no smell and far less dust. And also so far, so good in terms of the cats actually using the boxes.

The only downside is where to put these boxes permanently. I don't really want them in the dining room or the guest room and they are too big for the office.