The Latest Why Cat Kitty Hacks: Litter Box Edition

If there’s an upside to uprooting your life and relocating across the country, it’s the chance to start fresh. And few things in life benefit from a refresher quite like cat litter. While I was reasonably happy with my previous cat litter box setup, it was far from a permanent solution.

Also, new digs gave me the opportunity to revamp and upgrade my current cat jungle gym situation. I love designing cat-friendly spaces in my house, and with the blank canvas of a brand new apartment, the wheels in my head were turning, and plotting, and scheming away.

In this series, I’m documenting a few of my favorite new cat cohabitation hacks, broken down into—

• The Litter Box Edition
• The Vertical Space Edition
• The Moving Edition (I’m totally tacking the big Relocation Post on at the end, because PTSD. I have it.)

The first order of business…

Was of course, where they’d do their business. We brought along our old Catit litter boxes, since they’re sturdily-made and I’m quite happy with them. After a deep cleaning, they also worked quite well to hold all our cat paraphernalia during our cross-country move.

Speaking of litter boxes, have you seen this new litter box kickstarter campaign?

The Luuup

It’s one of the most well-funded Indiegogo campaigns in recent memory, and they claim to have created the “The Best Cat Litter Box Ever.” Their Indiegogo page, here.

What do you think of the product? While it seems like a great idea in theory, I can’t help but think they’ve oversimplified the deeply complex and technical mechanics of cat-pee-soaked clumps lodged in corners, and perhaps haven’t considered how non clay-based cat litters might fare during the sifting process. (These things are important, as any multi-cat owner will know.) I guess we’ll have to wait until June to see how reviews sound. Initial thoughts?

Anyway, onwards! Here is my current kitty bathroom setup:

A rather convoluted maze, I know. But by far, it’s been the best method I’ve tested for eliminating the scourge of litter scatter in my house. Let’s break it down.

Containing litter kick-up:

On the left, we have the Catit Jumbo hooded pan. A veteran war hero in our house, it does 70% of the heavy lifting when it comes to keeping kicked-up litter inside the box, where it damn well belongs.

The fold-up top is also super handy when scooping day comes around. Our favorite day.

Containing litter scatter:

In the middle section is a PLUGGIS recycling bin ($6.99 at Ikea!). The height was an absolute perfect fit for tucking under the lip of the Catit pan. A stroke of pure luck, since I have no foresight and did absolutely no measuring. :/

It’s lined with a BORRIS door mat, ($1.29 at Ikea!) trimmed down to size.

I had an epiphany: what good are all the cat litter mats in the world when litter—spurred on by the feet of overenthusiastic kitties fresh from a rejuvenating bowel movement—comes spraying out of the box in all directions? I certainly don’t have the space to lay down an infinitely wide litter mat to catch all the collateral. That would be called carpet. My house would be carpeted. And as a severe allergy sufferer, carpeting is a no-no.

So to keep litter scatter contained, why not just block it at its source? This is where the four walls of the PLUGGIS comes in.

See it in action:

I know, I am a nerd. Slow-mo video?? Really?? But look at all those ricocheting crumbs! Multiply that by 2 fur gremlins and 6-odd bathroom trips per day, and that’s a veritable mountain of litter, skittering across my clean floors and eventually tracking onto my couch and into my bed. Yurgh. In case you were wondering, the carpet lining further prevents litter from bouncing out of the bin. Another tangent: Does anyone else’s cat do that door-slapping routine before they exit the litter box? Why, cat??

Containing litter tracking:

Lastly, on the far right, we have my tried-and-true favorite cat litter mat, which isn’t actually a litter mat at all: The foodservice rubber bar mat. It’s heavy duty, wedges the Ikea bin securely in place, and the soft rubber nibs grab any last stray crumbs out from between kitty’s toes.

Of course, none of this would be quite as effective if you couldn’t somehow funnel your cats through this litter-containing maze. To do the job, I’ve enlisted a very high tech piece of cardboard propped up against a box. I’ll probably fence it off correctly one of these days. You know, next…year.

The Cleanup

The whole setup is incredibly easy to clean. Although not as easy as I suspect the “Luuup” box is purporting to be…

Once a day, I scoop out their box with the greatest cat litter scoop of all time:

The Duranimals DuraScoop

<– I shit you not, this thing will change your life. We actually lost ours (green, my favorite color) during the move and ordered another one (pink, my least favorite color), but I’m not even mad because I missed it so much. That week of using a stand-in peasant scoop was nothing short of unfiltered hell.

I shake the PLUGGIS bin out into the trash once a day, shake out the bar mat, and presto.. 97% litter-free floors. That’s at least 20 percentage points up from my previous setup (bar mats alone, no funneling).

..Rejoice!!

Tune in for my next two posts: Our semi-hacked vertical space setup, and the details of our dreaded cross country move!

2 happy Why Cats, sitting in a tree.