Today’s Quickie is brought to you by the letter C. C is for Cat.
C is also for Crap. Cat and Crap are the reason for this post.
One of the ineffable joys of tending indoor cats is the constant stream of waste they seem to produce from such a small amount of source material. In order to minimize conflict between our fiercely independent and incompatible felines, we have created separate his and hers cat toilet spaces.
In our last house, this was not difficult to manage, due to the size of the house and how the rooms were arranged. In our current place, this has proven increasingly problematic, so we recently decided to consolidate our cat waste receptacles into a single area.
But, we blanched at the idea of having them out in the open, so we considered a number of possibilities before ultimately deciding on repurposed steamer trunks.
Having already completed one half of this project several months ago (the green trunk in the picture at the top and bottom of the page), this post covers the latest addition, which started innocently enough as this simple steamer trunk.
Using a mixing bowl from the set in the kitchen as a guide, I traced out the kitty entrance on the side of the box that would face out from the wall. Because our cats tend to be messy with the litter when they exit the litter box, we opted for entrances on the ends, to give them the most amount of space available for shaking their paws clean before exiting the bathroom.
With my cordless drill, I made a pilot hole large enough to accommodate the jigsaw blade. This was the point when I discovered why this trunk was so much heavier than our other trunk: it is constructed of wood approximately twice as thick as the other trunk. At least we can be confident that this cat toilet is built to last.
Employing my trusty jigsaw, I did my best to cut out the circle I had just drawn. As you can see from the picture, my ability to cut round lines is no more impressive than my ability to cut straight lines. I followed up the jigsaw with a rounded rasp to clean up the edges and tone down that awful spot at 1:00.
Once the hole was cut and cleaned up, I added a small hook on the inside to hold the scoop, slid the trunk in place and installed the cat toilet hardware (read: litter box and rubber mat). This trunk is even large enough to store a spare bag of litter, which is a bonus since we seem to have so many bags lying around the apartment.
It took a little rearranging of the room to make this work, but we now have conflict-free waste-elimination facilities that are conveniently located for maintenance and hidden from casual observation. The cats quickly adjusted to the new location and all is well in the household.
