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. 

The litter box hack

So we did this in Boston and it worked well. We changed a piece of furniture so that it could hold litter boxes which helped contain the mess from our litter flingers. After we flooded the first time, we had a different solution which was perfect (purrfect?).

In the apartment we rented when we first moved back to Kansas, we just put the litter boxes in a closet. It happened to be in the same room as our office and things got a bit dusty from the flingers and from scooping. So we decided to do another litter box hack and here's what we came up with.

First, we bought a Simon sideboard from Pier 1. We had already checked the interior dimensions and knew our litter boxes would fit in there, if a bit snugly.

Next, I bought a roll of black wrapping paper and lined the glass in the doors with the black side of the paper facing out into the room. Hey, no one wants to look at cats pooping, right? Last time, I used scrapbook paper but the glass on the inside of the new sideboard is much bigger than 12" x 12" so I used wrapping paper. If you look carefully at the final picture, you can see that the wrapping paper isn't really matte. But that's OK, it still gets the job done.

In the meantime, Kent took the back off the sideboard and removed the center back post. It's there for stability, but the litter boxes aren't that heavy and only one cat ever goes in there at a time even though theoretically we could have two using them at once.

Finally, you'll notice there's a bit of orange peeping out from under the sideboard. That's the temporary rug to help the flingers' litter not get tracked throughout the house. I will find one that's less visible; a job for another day.

Scooping is a matter of opening a door, pulling out the litter box, scooping and then putting it back again. A small whisk broom takes care of interior flung litter and a regular broom gets under the sideboard.

With the doors closed

One door is open

Cool boxes, not cool damage

First a little video that shows off our new litter box storage solution.



And second, a couple of pictures of the water damage from our nor'easter I mentioned.

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.