Calling all cat owners or potential cat owners! Are you trying to decide which type of litter box to purchase for your cat or cats? Tired of your current litter box? I have researched (and used) many different types of litter boxes, and here are a few of them. Read and decide which one you think is right for you and your cats. This will be a two-part article.
Traditional No-Frills Litter Box
Everyone has seen this type of litter box. They are the ones stacked on the high shelf at Wal-Mart so that you have to ask the associate in pet supplies to help you get it. They are usually rectangular and come in different colors. Some of them have frames that you can clip onto the top to help avoid a litter mess on the floor when your cat digs and buries. These boxes are inexpensive, generally about $3-4 for a small and $5-6 for a large. With one of these litter boxes, you will need to have a scooper in order to clean the box. Don’t worry — the scoopers are usually located near the boxes.
Sifting Litter Box
Sifting litter boxes come with two pans, a sifter, and usually a frame. Assembling the sifting litter box is simple: place one pan inside the other, place the sifter in the top pan, fill, and lock frame in place. Cleaning the box requires removing the frame (not difficult) and then removing the bottom pan before you do anything else. Then, you lift the sifter out of the top pan, shaking it to make sure you get out all of the “clean litter.” Then you dump the contents of the sifter into the garbage and place it into the pan that was once on the bottom. Dump the “clean” litter into the pan with the sifter (that pan now goes underneath) add litter if you need to, and replace the frame. The sifter is supposed to be much more convenient, but I just switched to a traditional box from a sifter. The problem I had was that every time I would shake the sifter, I got litter all over the bathroom floor. Then, there would be cat poop stuck in the grill of the sifter. Well, who wants to clean that?! So I was cleaning the box, but it wasn’t really that clean. It turned out to be more of a pain in the butt for me than simply scooping.
So there you have two of the less complicated types of cat litter boxes. Check back soon for the second part when I will discuss self-cleaning and automatic litter boxes.