We have 4 cats and 2 dogs.
We keep our cats indoors which means they poop in litter boxes. The dogs, and the beagle in particular, believe these little poops-in-boxes are a delicacy and will do almost anything to get to them.
Since we have 4 cats, we need more than one litterbox and, ideally, it’s a good idea to have them in different parts of the house – so the cats can have some privacy to do, uh, their business. There are only so many tiled places in our house to put a litterbox and I refuse to put a litterbox on carpeting.
So, cats who need litterboxes and dogs who want to eat out of the litterboxes (but who get sick all over the place if they do).
Can you see the challenge?
My husband made this:
More specifically, I picked out a bookshelf from Canadian Tire and my husband assembled it. He then bought some wood, stained it to match the bookshelves, added hardware, and attached them to cover the bottom shelf areas.
So far, so good.
Then we found a big plastic bin – with high sides – that fit (with a bit of trimming) into one of the lower sections.
We cut out a portion of the side of the bin and a matching hole was cut between the two lower sections. If we open the right-hand door and look in, it looks like this:
Then we cut a hole in the lower, outer portion to give the cats a way to get in and out – but keep the dogs from getting in at all. Thankfully, our dogs are larger than our cats.
Ta-da! A fancy-shmancy place to hide cat litter in plain sight!
Apologies for the dusty pictures – the good news is that everything is easy to wipe down. Once the cats are a bit more accustomed to using it, we’ll add a small holder for the litter scoop and the hand broom/dustpan in the right-hand lower section. For now, we don’t want to startle anyone at an inopportune moment..