With great hubris, allow me to toss my thinking cap into the realm of litter box design. I say hubris because only the cat that has the right to hold an opinion on the form, location and orientation of any litter box.

Commercially available litter boxes I believe, and I think our cat friends would agree, are made for the convenience of humans and the profits of the pet store industrial complex. Nobody talked to the cats about them. Most are too small and they’re all ugly. For years we’ve been using a 28-inch by 15-inch plastic storage bin. It worked fine from the cat’s perspective, but stray litter gets kicked around and behind the box, staining the bathroom floor and walls where the litter box resides. Frankly, it’s gross.

So I set about to make a larger box in which to house the same plastic tray. Essentially, I enclosed the plastic tray with an open topped box with a circle cut out so that cats won’t have to jump over the box (they are in their senior years). The tray fits inside an inner shelf to prevent loose litter from falling down into the bottom of the box.

I had grand visions of a neo-classical litter box temple housing the aforementioned tray but this vision got simplified in the interest of ticking off a long requested project on the honey-do list. My table saw and router table made fabrication quick and easy.

In some ways we’re the worst possible test for this litter box concept. We have two cats who have never had an indiscretion outside the litter box in the over 11 years we’ve had them. I’m aware that some cats react with horror and anger at an ever so slight change in litter box placement or aesthetics, as if even an errant moon beam hitting a slightly moved box will cause a fit of piss fueled revenge.

Should this box fail in any way I promise to be a good blogger and post an immediate update. Wish us luck.