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I want to buy my kitty a new litter box, and I found three different ones, one has no cover, and two have the covers.
The one has no cover is easiest for kitty (we have this kind before), but it's summer days, I am afraid of the odour of it.
For the other two, my kitty will have to have a bad time to adapt to use it.
Which one should I choose? Any help?
I do not like covered litter boxes, they hold in odors and dust that the cat is forced to breathe in whenever he has to use it.
Uncovered litter boxes do not smell if you keep them clean. Scoop the pee and poop out at least twice a day and dump and scrub at least every two weeks (I dump and scrub weekly)
Definitely should not think of a litter box as holding in odor. Any odor that you can smell is likely to be overwhelming for the cat as their sense of smell is far more powerful than ours. With the right cat litter, the litter box should not smell.
That doesn't mean a covered box can't have a place. I've used a covered box perhaps for misguided reasons in the past before I knew better but now because the cat tends to aim high. It appears she may be doing this less often now or not at all, but I'm afraid to change it and have her pee over the side.
I currently use a litter box very much like the middle picture. But, as you might notice, this box has NO ventilation! It is critical for the box to vent out the odors for the cat to have a reasonable time in there; if the box is overwhelmed with odor you will likely end up with litter box avoidance problems. So I use one like the middle design and cut a big hole in the top of the cover. Heh. They're cheap and this works for me. I have two of them and rotate them out so I can give them a thorough cleaning in between. And since they're cheap it doesn't feel too bad to replace them periodically (every year or two) because they do kind of wear out so to speak.
Clean litter boxes have no bad odors. Odors come from boxes people don't scoop twice a day. We now use large totes from WalMart and the cats love them. Less litter tracking too!
I used one similar to this, it looked like a very large potted plant so I could have it in the front room of my office. My clients never even realized until I told them! I turned the opening to a corner so they had a little privacy. Technically, yes it is a 'covered' box, but I found they often used it with their head sticking out the doorway. So they didn't have a problem.
I want to buy my kitty a new litter box, and I found three different ones, one has no cover, and two have the covers.
The one has no cover is easiest for kitty (we have this kind before), but it's summer days, I am afraid of the odour of it.
For the other two, my kitty will have to have a bad time to adapt to use it.
Which one should I choose? Any help?
We used to use covered litter boxes and liked them very much. The only reason we changed is because we got a dog who liked to get into the cat litter. We ended up getting another Meowspace so that we can keep the cats litter inside so that the dog could not get the cat litter anymore. I think what ever litter box you decide fits your cats the best will work, and the worst that could happen, you can change. I went to a cat show one time, and noticed that the people who owned the cats have these teeny-weeny litter boxes inside the enclosures where they kept the cats when they weren't being shown. The cats didn't seem to care that it was so small. They just needed a place that they could go poop or pee and they were happy.
If I didn't have covered litter boxes, I'd have litter
everywhere and the dog would be bobbing for tootsie rolls.
I use Tidy Cat in the yellow buckets. Clumps great.
Cat litter boxes without a top are the best because the ammonia from their urine can build up in an enclosed litter box and harm a cat.
I've been using what's called a litter pad (Breathe Free). It goes directly under the cheap clay kitty litter... and all that harmful ammonia and other odors get soaked up in the pad. Seriously.. I didn't have to clean the box for weeks and there was no smell.
I have covered litter boxes and they work fine as long as I scoop them every day, which I do. (Plus, I have a big house with at least 1 litter box in most rooms, so my kitties -- I have 7 -- have lots of choices ... 1 in each of 3 bedrooms, 2 in 2 additional bedrooms, 2 in the TV room, 2 on the screened porch, 1 in the basement.)
When I get home from work I enter the TV room, which has 2 litter boxes, and if they smelled, i would definitely smell it as soon as I walked in from the fresh air outside.
Most of my litter boxes are the rollaway ones. I love them because they are SO easy to clean out so there is absolutely no excuse for not doing it a LOT. In fact, to say that I "scoop" is a bit of a misnomer, because really, I roll and empty.
They're a bit pricy, but for me, the convenience is worth it.
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