I need creative solutions for my cats' litter box

January 11, 2021 6:44 AM

I am at my wit's end trying to find a good litter box solution for my 2 cats. My current problem is primarily scatter - no matter what I try, I end up with litter all over my house and I'm over it. Help!

I have 2 large (not overweight, just huge) male cats that are 7 years old. Love them to death and they are healthy and happy. I, however, am not happy about how much litter ends up all over my house and the amount of litter box maintenance I currently have to do. The current set up is a PetSafe automatic litter box, but with a permanent tray (versus the disposable kind) and Dr. Elsey's low scatter litter. The entire box sits in a dog crate tray and there are litter mats everywhere of various kinds. This is not working for a few reasons:

1) Litter is still getting everywhere. I have a 100+ year old house with wood floors and it just rolls everywhere, not to mention gets down into the crevices in the floor and is a huge pain to clean up.
2) I still have to scoop every single day, otherwise the "reservoir" that is supposed to last a month fills up in 2 days. My cats produce a lot of waste, it seems. Plus the box is scooping clumped urine as well as solids because one of my cats refuses to use crystal litter (which the box is designed for).

I have tried every single cat litter mat on the planet, and none are helping. My guys aren't digging and throwing the litter out, but they do leap out of the box with a lot of force and that is causing the scatter, I think.

Other things I've tried that didn't work:
- Hooded litter boxes (one cat won't use covered boxes)
- Multiple boxes (no matter how many I put out, they will both pick one box and use it exclusively)
- Top entry litter boxes (again, my one picky cat protested)
- All kinds of litter, including World's Best (made my house smell like a barn and brought sugar ants), various Tidy Cats (the cats favorite but scatters like crazy), different crystals (one cat won't use crystals), Clump & Seal Slide, Fresh Step, and a few kinds of Dr. Elsey's.

Is there a magical solution out there that I am missing? I am willing to invest money and time into this venture. My only limitations are that I cannot put the box in a room with plumbing (so can't try the box that flushes it down the sewer). I'd prefer to avoid options with disposable trays that cause excess waste. What should I try next?

posted by tryniti to Pets & Animals (21 answers total)

Response by poster: Almost forgot - obligatory kitty tax.
posted by tryniti at 6:47 AM on January 11, 2021 [8 favorites]

Have you tried pine pellets (can be had at most farm supply stores for super cheap also at Petsmart for not as super cheap) with a sifting litter box. You sift once a day and add a scoop/handful of pellets to replenish.
posted by Sassyfras at 7:08 AM on January 11, 2021 [7 favorites]

Step 1: Get one or two larger and higher-sided but not fully enclosed litter boxes. If you can't easily find any, get a large-ish plastic tub and cut one low side (then put some sort of padding over the cut edge, of course!). Higher sides means less litter gets kicked out of the box onto the floor, where it can stick to cat paws and get tracked around the house. But having one side that is closer in height to what the one picky cat is used to will make it more useful for that cat.

Make sure that the box is large enough for your cats to be comfortable in, however - this is key! Eg. most litter boxes are a bit small for my Maine Coon cat, even though he is a runt as the breed goes. I got the largest enclosed litter box I could find when my cat was younger. Once he reached adult size, he could still technically fit inside of it and turn around and everything, but it was clearly uncomfortably enclosed and claustrophobic feeling for him, so I had to take the top half off. Just using the bottom half has been good enough for him, but I think he'd prefer a slightly larger box in an ideal world. Your boys may be similar, especially the picky one, and it sounds like you only tried fully enclosed boxes in the category of boxes that try to prevent litter spread by physically blocking the litter with walls? Googling the litter box you mention having, that is about 2/3 the size of my cat's litter box in terms of floor space, and 1/3 the side height; except for the lower entry side, where your box is only 1/2 height of the box I have for my cat. He still manages to get some litter over the higher sides, so if I were making one, I'd get something slightly bigger and with even taller sides.

(Yes, you'll likely have to scoop the boxes daily the old fashioned way, by hand.)

Step 2: Put a big (eg. 3'x5') entry mat (you know those very low pile but usually slightly textured with ridges, usually plain black ones?) in front of the litter box. These seem to be as good as any other litter trapping mats I've tried, and cheaper. But if you already have litter mats, having a high-sided box with one lower entry side means that you can worry less about the non-entry sides and use your current mats to cover a larger litter-tracking area in front of the entrance side.

Step 3: Sweep or vacuum the mat and litter box area daily. Even if you just sweep the stray litter into a little pile off to the side, then at least the cats will only track litter that is directly stuck to their paws after using the litter box, rather than picking up and tracking new litter around the house after every time they walk near the litter box. Or get a Roomba. But a larger and higher-sided litter box should help a lot, and is the more important step here.
posted by eviemath at 7:29 AM on January 11, 2021

We also have an enormous cat who does the same thing, so our solution is to keep the litter box inside the bathtub. It's not a perfect solution -- I have to deal with it every time I take a shower, for one thing -- but it really cuts down on the littler problem because most of it gets left inside the tub.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:53 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Similar to the bathtub segregation, we keep boxes in a closet with the door propped open only enough for the cat to pass through and a forced passage across litter collecting mat within the closet to get to the boxes. Then there's also a litter collecting mat just outside the closet. (The things we keep in this closet are kept in sealed containers - the dust that settles in there is intense...which also makes me gld to keep boxes enclosed...). There is for sure litter all over in the closet, but it stays in there and is a quick vacuum once a week.

Also that's crazy to use one box for two cats. We have three boxes for two (and another two for our third cat who lives in another part of the house). They do all tend to favor one or another box and it changes from month to month but the smell and management is so much better with multiple boxes. Also ours will tend to poo in one box and pee in another, which is probably irrelevant to your scatter issue but #mycatsareweirdhowaboutyours? Good luck!
posted by Tandem Affinity at 8:03 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Have you tried putting the box instead a much larger, lower sided box? For example, a high sided box placed into something like a low-height under bed storage container (this is just the first amazon link I found, but dont actually use that one as its wheels wont work!). If you put a good litter-grabber map in the large container is might help get the loose bits off the paws.
posted by cgg at 8:07 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Seconding pine pellets, often sold as pine bedding at farm/tractor supply stores. Remove the poo as needed; urine will dissolve the pellets into sawdust. I dump the entire box once a week and there is no noticeable odor at all.
posted by mezzanayne at 8:08 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think you'll probably have to experiment with one or more storage bin solutions so you get the highest possible sides and can customize an entry hole that a) is acceptable to them b) BUT is hard to exit at high velocity, and then you need some kind of matting around it that is bigger than a big cat's jump.

You may also need to turn the entry hole to face the wall or an obstruction that prevents a big exit launch, 10-12" from the opening. I have done this accidentally in the past with an end table, the type with a bottom shelf, where the cats *had* to walk across the bottom shelf to get in the shitter that was hiding behind the table. Once I figured out I was accidentally smart, I put a coir doormat on the bottom shelf and that did a good job of rubbing the litter out of my half-Maine cat's very furry feet. You'd get the same effect facing a wall with the doormat in between; it's very difficult to jump over it sideways and they're pretty much forced to take at least a couple steps on the mat.

If you need a second larger field of rug to try to knock more litter off their feet, a jute rug is also good but you really want one you can touch in person and make sure it's as rough as humanly possible, or find a website with really good photos of the texture.

If they do have really werewolfy paws like my cat did, you can trim that fur with a beard trimmer, but you know your cats and whether that would be a lethal adventure - I suspect you have to start as kittens for that to work.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:40 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

As a non-cat haver, this may be a dumb question, but would a better quality of food result in fewer poops?
posted by kate4914 at 9:19 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

My chonk of a kitty fortunately is OK with a hooded box. I put down one of the litter mats in front of it and the game changer for me? I put down a shallow box, or the lid of one of those boxes of copy paper, right in front of his litter box. He steps right into it, catching the majority of loose litter immediately. The mat underneath it is back up #2. By the time he takes 3 or 4 steps out of the kitty litter, into the box, then onto the mat, most of it is contained.

BONUS: Dump whatever litter the shallow box catches right back into the kitty litter box. Same with the mat.

Another trick? Keep their paw pads trimmed so that the hair between their toe pads doesn't attract any more kitty litter.

Finally, I keep a little hand vac right by his kitty litter. After each morning scoop, I do a quick vac around the box.
posted by HeyAllie at 9:31 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

They are gorgeous.

Food definitely has an effect on quantity and aroma of poops. Try varying that. Maybe try cat probiotics (I have heard of it helping people poops, not sure about cats, but worth a try).

If it were me, I'd consider how the cats were leaping out of the litter box, and build a wooden area/enclosure that both gives them an obvious place to jump to, and includes partial 'walls' around that space up to capture the scatter. I'd consider including some kind of vinyl or tile bottom/sides so that it would be easy to sweep out (unless I could incorporate a Roomba into the system, in which case I'd make sure the Roomba had easy access).

I might also raise the level of the litter box (and the jumping spot, the walls, the cleanable floor) so that I wouldn't have to bend down every single time I had to clean out the litter box.

Finally, for a simple floor solution: I have found that a large area of actual, regular carpet does a pretty good job of holding onto litter -- much better than the 'mats' that are sold, which are sparse enough that it's easy to track litter out. I recommend shag or berber, or maybe an extra-large fluffy/shaggy bathmat; NOT a commercial rug the fibres on those lay down and will again let the litter be tracked easily. You want you solution to be large/heavy enough to vacuum or small/light enough (or made up of small/light sections) to put in a washing machine.
posted by amtho at 9:56 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

We used clumping litter with our last cats and had the same problem with litter getting everywhere and rendering the tile-floor room unusable because of all the tiny unvacuumable particles on the floor that stick to your feet and then get tracked all over the house. Total nightmare. And putting the box on carpet had similar problems. We haven’t had a box in that room for about six months and I think there’s still particles ground into the fibers even though we vacuum weekly.

We switched to cheap feed store pine pellets with our new cat and it’s AMAZING. Never going back. Only a few pellets migrate to the floor each day and they’re easy to see and easy to pick up by hand.

A word of warning about keeping the clumping-litter litterbox in the bathtub: we did that with our old cats for a while. Remember that clumping litter is designed to form solids around liquids. Also, as you know, it inevitably gets everywhere. Result: blocked drain and very expensive plumbing bill.
posted by liet at 11:42 AM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Have you tried the World’s Best Cat Litter (that’s literally the brand name)?

It’s amazing. It properly clumps and doesn’t stick to the cat’s feet at all. As long as you scoop it regularly and keep it topped up, there’s next to zero scatter. If you let it get thin in the box it can get saturated and break down into a fine dust, but regular topups fix that. Combine with a mat outside the entrance and you’re golden.

It’s expensive but we use way less than other litters, so it evens out.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:01 PM on January 11, 2021

Pine pellets break down into sawdust bits, which have been impossible to get out of my bath mat via vacuum or laundering. They are also much louder when my cat kicks them around (she can wake me up) and aren’t great at odor control or clumping. Said cat also refuses to bury her poop in pine pellets. They work out to about the same price as corn/wheat litter because I use three times as much of the pine stuff.

The only tracking control that’s worked for me is the box in the tub plus a bath mat - the nubbly microfiber ones are easy to shake off into the tub, then I sweep the tub with a hand broom as needed or use a drain strainer.
posted by momus_window at 12:35 PM on January 11, 2021

I have a friend that used the Tidy Cat Breeze. It had these weird, hard pellets that were too heavy to kick out. The poop just sits on top since the litter is too heavy to bury it, but it didn't scatter.
Recycled wood or paper pellets are pretty good for non scattering but not fool proof. They don't get wedged in your cat's paws but an aggressive digger can kick them out.
posted by fiercekitten at 12:50 PM on January 11, 2021

It may be a fluke, but a bamboo bath mat like this one was somehow good at getting my kitties pads open enough to release the trapped litter. Perhaps you can put it over top of something like a litter mat that will trap the residue.

If it doesn't work, at least it's not expensive.
posted by mightshould at 12:53 PM on January 11, 2021

We (cat stewards) are all on a constant search for the best solution to this problem. It's maddening and pet supply marketers must love seeing our desperation.

Clay litter tends to be dusty. Pine pellets are not bad, but they made my cat pretty sick (this is a thing for some cats). World's Best is my go-to, but it's pricey and I have not found it to be particularly low-tracking at all. And so on with every litter. Never mind that every now and again you'll get a dud bag o' dust.

Mats? My cats jump OVER mats, resulting in litter explosions. They laugh at the mats.

Boxes? They are almost never big enough to fit cats over 10 pounds comfortably. Why? We don't know. I get storage bins at Target and repurpose them.

The best solution in reality is investing in a powerful cordless vacuum (instead of contraptions and litter experiments), keeping it near the box, and resigning yourself to a quick five minute vacuum three times a day. It's the best thing I've found.
posted by quarterframer at 1:09 PM on January 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

"I am willing to invest money and time into this venture."


An outdoors but fully enclosed litterbox is really the way to go.

Start with something like this:
* large dog house with hinged roof
* A pet door with a telescoping frame and Installation Kit which lets you put a cat door through your wall if needed.
* Alternative : cat door addition for a sliding door
* a concrete mixing tub for the actual litter box (cheap, and bigger than most regular litterboxes, good for multi-cat households)

The final key ingredient: modify the doghouse by adding one or two pieces of wood, so the cats have to enter and exit by walking around a short maze. You carpet this walkway with cheap shag carpeting strips. These will get gross and you can shake them out every few days and throw them away every few months.

Why I like this solution:
* it's outdoors, so zero odors
* the cats walking across 4-6 feet of shag carpeting will remove 99% of the litter
* by putting the cat door through a wall (if needed) you have more flexible choice of location - so that 1% of litter that does make it in the house can be somewhere non offensive.
posted by soylent00FF00 at 3:05 PM on January 11, 2021

I have two monster mews and black carpet. Believe me when I say I understand about finding litter everywhere.

We got the Breeze system. It's been in place for 6 months now and I can say I haven't found a single pellet upstairs on the carpet, or on the stairs, or anywhere else I'd find sandboxes of litter before.

I keep their boxes on tile, which I installed one of those shower barriers around and it does a great job of catching 99% of the flung out pellets.

Weird thing I've noticed-- we got two Breeze systems- they urinate in one box and do their other business in the other box. Other than that we had no issue at all switching them over.
posted by haplesschild at 3:11 PM on January 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

I also have two large boy cats and 100+ year old wood floors. My solution was to buy a Roomba; it really cuts down on the amount of tracked litter that I'm dealing with on a daily basis.
posted by girlalex at 5:12 PM on January 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

I bought a dozen of these bar mat tiles, they are just outside the litterboxes over an impermeable surface (in one case the linoleum, in another a vinyl mat). They do a great job of keeping litter from the rest of our house, and you can configure them however you want. Previous litter mat "solutions" ended with our cats peeing on the litter mat, putting holes in them, or both (yuck)- and not doing a whole lot to keep litter from our floors. We use Dr. Elsey's Cat Attract which is tiny little granules.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:07 AM on January 12, 2021 [2 favorites]