My cat is a litter tracker: what boxes & litter can help us contain his mess?

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paw pow
By: yoppyCC BY 2.0
One of our cats is a MAJOR litter tracker. Not just a tracker — he makes an Olympic sport out of digging in the litter box. Like, I’m talking 20 minute marathon sessions of kicking.

We are currently using a Petmate hooded litter box with high sides and a door flap, and Simply Pine pellet litter. In the past we’ve used Yesterday’s News, and just about every kind of clay litter imaginable, and so far this seems to track the least… but the least is still A LOT.

What can we do to keep the litter inside the box? Our second cat is huge and old and has a very hard time jumping/climbing, so a top-entry litter box (the obvious fix) isn’t an option.

What kind of boxes/litter to do you all use to contain the mess? -Jenna

Cat-ladies, now is your chance to get out your kitty-nerding: who can recommend litter box solutions that contain the mess, but still allow a huge old cat to use it?

Comments on My cat is a litter tracker: what boxes & litter can help us contain his mess?

  1. We got what I can only describe as a “kitty igloo”. We bought it mainly to keep our dog from hunting for treasure when we weren’t home, but it actually worked pretty well keeping the litter from getting tracked all over the house. We also used a natural pine litter. Not sure how much the litter had to do with that, but just thought I’d note that.

  2. We have a litter box where the cat enters from the top, not the side. She is not able to kick any litter out. It’s fantastic 🙂 but I don’t recall the company that makes it 🙁

  3. My cat has a top opening litterbox. I’ve stopped keeping the lid on because he has this super annoying habit of stepping in his poo and tracking it everywhere. Plus he loves to jump straight out and onto my bed (which then tracks litter all over my sheets) I’m going to try picking up a larger storage bin from target and seeing if that works.

  4. I recently switched to a box with very tall sides (not a litterbox by design, actually an old wooden crate from ikea) so that all of my kitty’s pawing and kicking will stay contained. Also, I think she likes this better because it’s a much larger box, so there’s more room for her to turn around and get comfy. The opening is the top, so she has quite a jump to get in, but she’s young, so that’s not an issue. The entire box is also on top of a carpet square that I bought just for that purpose. And I use a very light litter that’s made of pellets of recycled newspaper (http://freshnewslitter.com/) so that she doesn’t have to dig so hard to bury her little kitty poops.

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