I replaced it immediately with the largest plastic bin I could find at the tiny hardware store down the street, but there wasn't much of a selection and the one I ended up with had this annoying groove around the inside bottom edge.
I dealt with it for another few months but finally got tired of digging litter-concrete out of said groove, and for the past 2 weeks have been poking around in search of a bin with a completely flat bottom -- as well as sides at least 12" high. Brodie and Shadow are big, tall guys and Brodie in particular is a bit of an elevator-butt pee-er, and we've had a few instances of, er, overspray lately. Thankfully I'd thought to install plastic floor-protector stuff under the box so none of the wee actually hit the hardwoods, but still. Ew. Apparently this is not to be a household with ANY low-sided litter boxes.
But (as usual) I digress. None of the "big box" hardware stores nearby had anything that quite fit the bill, but today I totally scored. There's a Container Store a few blocks away from where I live, and while in general the prices there are WAY out of my budget, the clearance section can be a veritable goldmine of cheap. Thus, today's bounty (see below)!
Of course there's a cat (Brodie) in it -- I can't bring anything home that's jump-inable without someone jumping into it within the first few minutes of its arrival. You know how that goes. I think this box will do the job perfectly -- Brodie is a substantial 14ish pounds, and he looks practically lost in it!
And now, a closeup of the pricetag:
Seriously! I got a normally-$21.99 item for $2.27! Just because it was missing the lid, which would have been useless to me anyway. Wootness!
So yeah. I've since gone at the new box with a hacksaw to make a little cutaway on the side (the youngsters would probably jump over the edge but Nikki prefers to step in more daintily) and placed it in the Box #3 location. Really glad I found it. And just FYI, the Container Store is one of the few places I've been able to consistently find flat-bottomed storage containers...Ikea is another but that's a bit of a trek to get to so we don't go there very often.
I...
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't I ever think of using something other than an official "litter box" as a litter box? I feel kind of ridiculous now, but something like that would have solved so many messy problems.
Lisa Harney: Probably you didn't think of it because the books/websites in which I read about the idea (of using storage containers as litterboxes) didn't exist when you had a cat. I certainly can't take credit for the idea...I came across it in multiple sources during my pre-kitten-adoption reading frenzy back in 2009.
ReplyDeleteBut it's worked out so well here (especially as my boys have gotten to be such magnificently massive couch-panthers) that I would definitely consider myself a permanent convert at this point. Pet-store litterboxes are (IMO) a rip-off unless you have extremely small cats. Brodie and Shadow are too long and tall to even fit halfway into the litter boxes I see labeled "large". And I seriously dislike "hooded" litter boxes on principle. They set up "ambush" potential in a multi-cat household and they're a lot harder to clean (and with my cognitive inertia issues I know having to remove a lid to scoop would make daily maintenance that much more difficult).
and with my cognitive inertia issues I know having to remove a lid to scoop would make daily maintenance that much more difficult
ReplyDeleteFrom experience, yes that is exactly the problem. I will never use a hooded litter box again - and the one I did use wasn't actually mine, but due to having two cats in the household, I was expected to maintain it.
Anyway, I'm glad you posted about this. It's an excellent and practical idea. Better than everything else I've tried, at least.
Referring to your earlier post, my grandmother did purchase one of those self-cleaning litterboxes, and it was one of the worst things ever. It would easily jam up so had to be cleared up somewhat frequently and the noise tended to scare the cats.