Wow. That's crazy. I pay < $5 for a 40 lb. bag of wood pellets. One of my cats has "butt-over-the-edge" syndrome, too. We have a covered container, but he hangs his butt out the door. :p

Could you put a container-in-a-container? Give him a wall to hang his butt over, but both sides of the wall have litter there?
Or maybe he'd never get to the 2nd level at all and nothing would change.

Cats. hmm.

This is, in fact, what I do. The litter box is in an under-the-bed box from the afore linked Container Store. In front of the litter box door (still in the under-the-bed box) is a mat to help get litter off the feet before it gets tracked through the house. The under-the-bed box helps keep it contained (though it's not perfect).


I'm not going to investigate this. It's bad enough when he craps over the first wall.

Just felt this was appropriate:


Closed:


Inside:

Thats pretty cool. Nice use of that tiny cupboard as well.

Awesome.

Agreed. Cool idea. Especially because you can close it if you have company. Though in that case I would hope that there's a second box somewhere out of sight that the cats can use.

So far I think my fix is working. I put up that plastic shelf liner and it's discouraging them from going over the edge. It's been pretty good since then.

I've been too heavily conditioned, I think -- each time I come back to this thread, I'm expecting the final picture to reveal a car-player, some fat-ass power amps, and a subwoofer.

Maybe at the next owners' meet we should have a competition for best stealth install of a cat?

Peter

That's a beautiful cat shitter.

Is there something that removes or reduces the gag-factor when cleaning these things out? I have to take care of a neighbor's cat every now and then and less infrequently I have to do something about the litter. The last time I just put a giant garbage bag over the whole box and dumped everything in, then just filled it back up with fresh litter. I wasn't going to risk vomiting while scooping up turds and piss-clods one at a time.

It's only very infrequently that I need to do anything about the litter since usually it's only when they're gone for a day or two where I need to do anything with the pair of cats - food and twice daily insulin shots for one of them.

But the time before that last time I thought I was going to die - it had been only 3 days since the last time the litter had been taken care of.

Okay, Bruno, I think I need clarification. First off, when you say "it had been only 3 days since the last time the litter had been taken care of," do you mean that it had been three days since anyone had even scooped the litter? So nobody did anything at all with the litter box in three days? And we're talking about two cats?

I have two cats and two litter boxes. If I didn't clean either of them out for three days, I would have crap and piss all over our floors. Some days I clean one of the boxes out twice.

As for the rest of your post, you are supposed to change the litter out completely every so often. You're supposed to do it every couple weeks, I think, though I do it every 3-4, and I do just what you describe, I just cover it with a trash bag and dump the whole thing in. Then I fill it back up and you're good to go.


So if you're really saying that you let it go for 3 days, I think that's the primary problem with the smell. If the cats cover their mess up, there shouldn't be too horrible a smell when you go to clean it out. There are also enclosed litter boxes with carbon filters that can help. I have a "smellkiller" product I got from Amazon in my hidden box that I think helps a tiny bit.

On a side note, I'm not sure how cleaning out a litter box is any worse than picking up after a dog.

Shit, my wife is going to kill me. We have to get going soon and I still need to shave...



Well, I don't have to pick up dog piss for one. Dog piss also doesn't smell once it's absorbed into the grass. Not to mention that there's no dog on earth with piss that smells as bad as any run of the mill cat. Damn! The dog poop also doesn't usually smell (maybe it's species related, but it's also outside) and I don't pick it up with a shovel in close-quarters. The only time I pick up fresh dog treats is on a walk - but most of their business is done in the backyard. Guess I'm lucky that way - I send them out before going on walks. In the back yard I'll let it sit for a few days which usually gets rid of the odour.

Next spring however, I'm installing a flushable toilet in the back yard which I've already purchased. I'll need to use a scoop or claw to pick up the goods and drop them into the bowl to flush away.

I don't know how often they clean out the cat litter, but I don't own cats and I can't recall if they really said to bother any more often than 3 days. It was all covered, but man, it stank something awful when I sifted it out to pick and pack. I'm just gong to tell them to make sure to have 4 or 5 full boxes of new litter so I can do a daily complete dump if I need to handle that duty again.

What kind of litter do they use?

We use the clumping white sand stuff here.

Yes, let them poop outside. We have a litter tray in the house for emergency use only as the cat prefers to go outside to do her business.

Yeah, I think there's a few issues there Bruno. Like I said, they really should be sifting the box more than every 3 days. That's crazy. Their cats should be commended for putting up with that. I'm amazed they're still covering their business with that much stuff in the box.

Think of it this way, if a dog had to crap outside, but only had a 2' square area to do it in, I'd bet it would still smell pretty bad when you went out to pick it up.

And most people I've seen pick up dog crap on walks and with plastic baggies. I tend to think that handling wet dog crap, even through a bag, is a lot worse than scooping dried crap out of the litter box. I suppose it does depend on how you allow your dog to do its business, but living in an apartment, I wouldn't have a place for a dog to go out in. And if I had a yard, I wouldn't let my cats out. I think I'm only going to have indoor cats, after hearing the statistic that on average, indoor cats live 13-15 years, and outdoor cats live 3-4. My old cat was an outdoor cat until she had a fight which left one of her eyes cut open and she was on the brink of death. That was when she was about 9. Then she was an indoor cat until she died at 22.

And in case you're wondering, here's what my 22 year old cat looked like toward the end.



That's the most friendly cat in the history of the world you're looking at there.

Maybe... I'd have to put my cat, also named Spook, as a close runner-up. He died when he was 17 years old. I miss him. Sadly, this poor quality picture is the best one I have of him.

tanstaafl.

Wow, they look very much alike! I've actually seen many cats that are all black with nothing but a white tuft of hair on their necks. Green eyes too.

Actually, mine was Spooky, but close enough

Well, as long as we're showing cat pictures... This is a cat that we had to give up. We got him from the Best Friends animal rescue organization, brought him home and tried to integrate him with Jean's Siamese cat and my miniature poodle. The Siamese would have none of it. Caesar was the most patient and accommodating cat you could imagine, but the little bitch-kitty Siamese decided that one cat in the house was all there was going to be.

Caesar was about the prettiest cat I've ever been around.

tanstaafl.