Solving the litter box issue

Having lived in decently sized houses the last six or so years, I’ve gotten used to having space to put litter boxes in discrete spots. In our Overland Park home, we put Chloe’s litter box in the second floor laundry room. In our Hyde Park home, we put all three litter boxes in the basement—the door to the basement had a pet door already installed, which made the basement the perfect location.

We knew when we moved to Boston that we would need to consolidate down to two litter boxes even though cat wisdom says you should have a litter box for each cat. Well, I don’t think that’s possible in Boston, not if you want to have furniture in your apartment too! So we have just two boxes now, and it’s working out OK. Given the weird floor plan of this rental apartment, the only place we could find for the remaining litter boxes was the kitchen pantry. I’m sure you are sitting there thinking EW, and I agree. It’s not ideal—I have a sensitive nose so the smell gets to me plus at least one of the cats is a big litter flinger. Even with litter mats designed to get the litter off their little paws, you’d better wear shoes in this apartment, or else you'll have “sand” sticking to the bottoms of your feet . . .

I’ve been looking around for functional and decorative solutions to the litter box issue. I want to have them hidden but still easy to get to for scooping, and I want them to be somewhat contained. Originally we’d hoped that the front hallway of 3 Claremont Park would be large enough to support a bench—and we would put the litter boxes under the bench and then make a skirt for the bench. But the hall isn’t wide enough, and I think the traffic flow would really be compromised.

Yesterday while scouting online, I found this solution. It’s sturdy enough to be a bench and pretty enough to go in the living room. But did you see the price?? Those run $499 each, plus shipping. Now I love my kitties, otherwise I wouldn’t have named my blog after them. But I don’t love them enough to pay over $1,000 to cover their poop boxes.

So I think I will take one of the extra Ikea tables we have from when Kent was here alone and needed some furniture, and make it into a faux bench/litter box concealer to put somewhere in the living room. You can see it here as a normal table, with Eddie in the foreground. The lower shelf comes off and is the same dimensions as the front side of the table. I’ll find some cool fabric and make a cushion and then a skirt to go around the whole thing. And I guarantee it won’t cost me $1,000 either.