Servicing the litterbox.

Karen wrote:

"Christina Websell" wrote:

I need some advice. Is this normal? Can a tiny cat pee up nearly the
whole box in less than 48 hours?
If so, how do you who have a lot of cats cope with litterbox duties? It
must be your life's work :-)

Well that is part of CRF as I know it.

That's what I was going to say. Isn't frequent and voluminous peeing
one of the symptoms of CRF? I guess that's to be expected.

Joyce

On 2006-09-05, Christina Websell penned:

"Monique Y. Mudama" wrote in message
...

Sounds excessive to me. Unless your definition of "peed up" is
different than mine, which may very well be.

My definition of "peed up" is when most of the litter looks darker
in colour and when I investigate with the scoop a lot is clumped and
stuck to the bottom of the box and the clean litter is only on top.

I would definitely consider "most" of the litter being darker
(obviously having been wet) in a day or two to be an awful lot of pee.
That's from my own cat, but also having cared for other cats while
their owners were out of town.

It's entirely up to you how often you clean Oscar's litterbox. None
of my business, oh, excuse the unintentional pun.. Maybe I might
get more relaxed about a dirty litterbox at the side of my toilet
but I doubt it. I get visitors, who sometimes ask to use my toilet.
No problem with a cat lover, but some are not. Big problem with
non-cat lovers who notice something big deposited in the last five
minutes. Kitty does not bury.

Yes, that is a problem, Oscar doesn't either, and for the first few
minutes the smell is intense. Used to be, her litterbox was in the
basement and it wasn't a problem. Now the basement door is shut (we
may eventually change that policy after extensive catproofing of the
crawlspace), Oscar's litterbox is in DH's bathroom* upstairs. It does
encourage us to clean it more often, and the throne makes a handy
perch, much easier than cleaning up without a seat nearby. We turn on
the bathroom fan when she's just gone, which helps somewhat. When we
have guests over, there's a downstairs bathroom, and that's where
guests stay overnight, too, so really no one but us will ever see the
litter box.

It occurs to me we have a lot of bathrooms.

*) DH and I often are getting ready at the same time in the morning, so
he eventually moved all his toiletries into the guest bathroom
upstairs. It doesn't even occur to him to use the master bath for the
most part; even if he gets up in the middle of the night, he uses the
hallway bath! Kind of funny.


--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca

On 2006-09-05, Debbie Wilson penned:

A 10 kg bag of Yesterday's News will last me about 2 weeks (4 cats,
2 trays) under these circumstances, and it costs about £11 at my
local shop.

Oscar refused to believe me when I told her that stuff was litter --
she chose to pee on my shirt instead!

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca

"Christina Websell" wrote in message
...
Blimey. When I got KFC a box to use - having never had one before - I
naively thought that with one tiny 4lb cat using it, I might get away with
scooping a 16x11 inch box every 2-3 days.
Not so.
Every evening after work finds me on my hands and knees shovelling and
sieving clumps through my cat litter scoop and wrapping the results in
newspaper to go into the garbage.
I quickly abandoned the very expensive clumping litter of a fine grade.
We got through a bag costing nearly 10 dollars in less than 10 days. Plus
it stuck like glue to the bottom of the box and tracked everywhere.

I bought a 12kg bag of coarser clumping litter for the same price to try
on Monday. Completely cleaned the box out and filled it right up Monday
night with absolute pristine litter.
Tonight found me on my knees again sieving out huge quantities of pee
clumps, almost half the litter was peed up. Plus a couple of the other,
which was definitely from Kitty, white from the bones of the collared
dove.

I need some advice. Is this normal? Can a tiny cat pee up nearly the
whole box in less than 48 hours?
If so, how do you who have a lot of cats cope with litterbox duties? It
must be your life's work :-)

Tweed



When we are home both Jake and Molly have access to outside. Including a
mammoth litter box (vacant lot with freshly turned dirt) across the street.
I have to remember to check the litter box, as they don't use it often and
they do cover. I use a good clumping litter and scoop a few times a week.
I change it all out every two to four weeks depending.

When we leave them home, I leave two full clean litterboxes, several large
bowls of dry food, and several sources of water. If we are gone three
nights it looks like they have spent the time we were away having a contest
to see who could eat drink and eliminate to most while we were gone.

Jo

On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 14:30:19 -0600, "Monique Y. Mudama"
wrote:

It occurs to me we have a lot of bathrooms.

Well, I have a large bedroom, a living room, a small computer room, a
kitchen, a recently added mud room, and two baths (the one off the
bedroom has a shower, but no tub). All this for one person. I don't
think the hot water system could handle two showers at the same time
though. The hall bathroom has a set of linen shelves, the lowest of
which is high enough to put a litter pan under, but since I built the
mud room, I have a pan there only when I have a cat confined to the
bathroom, as in preparation for a trip to the vet.

--
T.E.D. ) Remove "gearbox.maem" to get real address - that one is dead

"Christina Websell" wrote

Blimey. When I got KFC a box to use - having never had one before - I
naively thought that with one tiny 4lb cat using it, I might get away with
scooping a 16x11 inch box every 2-3 days.
Not so.
Every evening after work finds me on my hands and knees shovelling and
sieving clumps through my cat litter scoop and wrapping the results in
newspaper to go into the garbage.
I quickly abandoned the very expensive clumping litter of a fine grade.
We got through a bag costing nearly 10 dollars in less than 10 days. Plus
it stuck like glue to the bottom of the box and tracked everywhere.

I bought a 12kg bag of coarser clumping litter for the same price to try
on Monday. Completely cleaned the box out and filled it right up Monday
night with absolute pristine litter.
Tonight found me on my knees again sieving out huge quantities of pee
clumps, almost half the litter was peed up. Plus a couple of the other,
which was definitely from Kitty, white from the bones of the collared
dove.

I need some advice. Is this normal? Can a tiny cat pee up nearly the
whole box in less than 48 hours?
If so, how do you who have a lot of cats cope with litterbox duties? It
must be your life's work :-)

Sorry, but... ROFL!!! I can not only picture it.... I *do* it, daily....
sigh....

A clowder of 7 keeps a slave quite busy, not just cleaning boxes (imagine
doing what you're doing with one box, twice each day times five!....) but
also hunting for ways to tighten the belt to accommodate the cost of the
litter.

I recommend using woodstove pellets. It's the cheapest thing I found so far.
It's like Feline Pine only cheaper. A large sack of FP (or the equivalent of
stove pellets) lasts at least a month even with 7 cats peeing in it daily.

"Pat" wrote

A large sack of FP (or the equivalent of stove pellets) lasts at least a
month even with 7 cats peeing in it daily.

A few things I neglected to mention (and now having read the other replies):

(1) pine pellets don't stick to the plastic;

(2) you don't scoop out the peed-up spots in pellets, you just lift out the
poopies and leave the pee;

(3) if KFC doesn't like pellets you can mix clay + corncob litter 50/50 and
it will make the clumps less sticky;

(4) you can often get really cheap and not too coarse or fine clay litter
sold in auto parts stores, for sopping up oil spills off concrete.

I only use pellets in two of the 5 oversized boxes here, because some of the
owners like having the other kind available. I rarely find any poop in the
pellets. They like to use it to pee. And it never stinks until it's ready to
toss anyway.

HTH

On Tue 05 Sep 2006 04:30:19p, Monique Y. Mudama wrote in
rec.pets.cats.anecdotes
):

*) DH and I often are getting ready at the same time in the
morning, so he eventually moved all his toiletries into the
guest bathroom upstairs. It doesn't even occur to him to use
the master bath for the most part; even if he gets up in the
middle of the night, he uses the hallway bath! Kind of funny.

I bought my house from my brother and his wife, and they have 3
daughters. This house has only two bathrooms, so I have no idea how
they did it for 15 years!

My brother's bathroom was the downstairs one. I am not at all
surprised that just 6 months after buying the house, my first
spring here, I noticed termite swarmers in "his" bathroom*. I can't
imagine that they just found their way in after I bought the house,
and I can't imagine how he never noticed little bugs with wings in
his tub. *boggle*

*He's not very observant. LOL

--
Cheryl

On 2006-09-05, Christina Websell wrote:

If so, how do you who have a lot of cats cope with litterbox duties? It
must be your life's work :-)

I use the cheapest stuff I can find: unscented clay litter at
less than two bucks a bag. I also use litter box liners. I
sccop the box most days and change the litter weekly. There is
only one cat. She goes outside when she wants if I'm there to
open the door for her. This cat won't cover her stools either.
The litter box is in the utility room.

Bud

On 2006-09-06, Ted Davis penned:
On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 14:30:19 -0600, "Monique Y. Mudama"
wrote:

It occurs to me we have a lot of bathrooms.

Well, I have a large bedroom, a living room, a small computer room,
a kitchen, a recently added mud room, and two baths (the one off the
bedroom has a shower, but no tub). All this for one person. I
don't think the hot water system could handle two showers at the
same time though. The hall bathroom has a set of linen shelves, the
lowest of which is high enough to put a litter pan under, but since
I built the mud room, I have a pan there only when I have a cat
confined to the bathroom, as in preparation for a trip to the vet.

But you have lots of cats to occupy all that space!

Our space allows us to be lazy about picking things up and deciding
among things we want to have, which I think in many ways may not be
entirely to the good.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca