Litter control!

When you have cats, one of the unfortunate realities is that you deal with cat litter.   When you have four cats, it can become a seriously pressing issue.  Honestly, it is a challenge to keep the litter confined to the litterbox area.  I saw this post from "Practically Functional" a few days ago and thought it was pure genius.  Seriously.  The next morning, I headed to my own Home Depot and bought this anti-fatigue mat and cut it down to size (simply using a box knife, I cut one row off...originally 3 x 3, I cut it down to 2 x 3) and put it into place. 

Anti-fatigue mat solves cat litter dilemma!

When the cats hit the mat, any litter that might be on their paws falls into the holes of the mat rather than coming with them into the laundry room and beyond.  (Oh, what?  You don't see the litter box?   That would be because the litterbox is in the bathtub with a row of the mat under it...yes, we have actually given up the use of a bathtub in our house to keep our litterbox out of the way.)

Best solution ever!

Anyway, this was a genius solution and I am so glad that Jessi at Practically Functional shared her simple solution so I could copy it!

Day 98 - Dealing with cat litter is definitely productive!

Cat Boxes

You might remember that we expanded our family this spring.  We got three kittens in a two week period.  To say it has been a ton of chaotic fun would be an understatement.  Seriously...these little fuzzballs have been so delightful to have around, I already can't imagine life at home without them.

Unfortunately, with cats comes litter boxes and more cat food.  Bringing three kittens into our home had us going from one cat who was mostly an outdoor cat and never deigned to use a litter box to four cats, three of whom used litter boxes exclusively.  Throw in two dogs who think the stuff that goes into litter boxes is candy and that kitten food was a readily available snack.  This was making me crazy and not a "fun chaotic crazy".  With winter fast approaching, I knew I needed to come up with a solution because the dogs will be in the house 24/7 when the snow flies!

Have you see these?   These are cat boxes disguised and furniture and I love them.  They're just so much nicer than the standard blue plastic (why are they always blue?).

This one is $169 at csnstores (marked down from $279).  I can't spend $169 on a cat box...no way!

Look at this one!  It is from BigFatKittyCat and is $215 ($49 shipping).  It has compartments...which would be nice.

I can't afford any of these solutions!  (Who can?!)  So, with some missteps and some trepidation, I informed Superman that I needed to learn to use all of his super-cool garage toys:  table saw, miter saw, router, nail gun, and anything else that I noticed out there.  Superman is super-cool himself, so he spent a day teaching me how to use all of his neat toys (he shares nicely, too).    A new drill and some used saw horses, some wood putty and some sandpaper, a few coats of primer, some spray paint, a few hinges, and some plastic and silicon for flooring and I did it!  Two new cat boxes made with my own hands!  I'm so proud of myself, I can't tell you.

I made one with compartments for upstairs, but I'm thinking that I'll give it to the Divine Mrs. M (she has three cats and a dog as well as two big kids and baby!).  We don't really want to have it upstairs (we had planned to put it by the bedrooms) and if she can use it, I'd love for her to have it.

She's measuring to see if it will work in her laundry room.  I hope it does...if it could help her contain her chaos even a little bit, I'd love to help with that.

Here is the one I'm keeping for our downstairs bathroom.  (Right now there is a bowl of cat food on it  (which means the door to the bathroom has to be restricted from opening all the way to keep the dogs out, but in a few more months, the two youngest kittens will be eating from the bowl on the washer and the dog issues will be done.  I'll be able to work on this bathroom - can you see the new flooring we got in January?)

See?  The litter box is far enough back in the box that the dogs can get to it.  The plastic flooring sealed with silicon will make clean-up easy.

I think both boxes cost us about $40 in supplies compared with $500+ for the two I found online.   Oh, and we just measured our spaces, figured out what features we wanted and drew up plans for our cat boxes.  They turned out exactly as we'd planned. Can you believe it?  I'm just so excited and proud of myself.  Now I'm checking to see what Ana at Knock-Off Wood  has for me next!