I currently have a full-time job with a small independent cleaning company, and I’ve noticed that most of the houses we clean that have cats keep the litterbox(es) in their master bathroom. To me this is rather nasty. The bathroom is used to clean yourself. Why would you want to clean yourself next to cat poop and urine?
We used to keep ours in the laundry room, and I thought this was nasty (I mean, we cleaned our clothes there) so I successfully changed it so we put them down in the basement, making sure we keep the basement door open.
Is the master bathroom (or any bathroom) a common occurance?
Many people keep their boxes in bathrooms because litter is easier to clean up from non-carpeted surfaces. And it is less-trafficked than other parts of the house (in most cases) and cats like their privacy, too.
I am lucky to have a spare bedroom (I call it the cat room) and that is where I keep three of my litterboxes, the fourth is in the basement. I find it easier to remember to scoop if the boxes are in an area I visit often, if you are smelling urine and poop, they aren’t cleaning them as often as the should, or the cats aren’t covering.
Here is my solution to litterboxes on carpet: a litterbox box! That is my darling Hanna exiting.
In the unfinished part of the basement, under the stairs. Spud has some privacy there and it doesn’t bother anyone as it is out of the way.
When we were still dating, Mrs Bernse had his litterbox in her bathroom, but it was out of necessity as there was nowhere else for it. To make matters even worse, her bed was about 6 feet from the bathroom door. Needless to say, Spud using the facilities in the middle of the night when we were in bed was not very welcomed. NASTY.
My cat’s litter box is currently right beside me.
We’ve got a two bedroom apartment, the second bedroom being the computer/storage/litter room. We don’t usually spend much time back here. (The Mr generally keeps to his laptop in the living room, and I generally only compute from work.)
We use those wonderful silicone crystals and have never ever had a problem with smell.
We are going to look at a duplex (we’re moving in June) that has a partially finished basement. If we like it enough, I’m assuming her litterpan will go down there.
I can understand the use of the bathroom though. We potty there, as well as clean ourselves there, so why not?
We live in small one-bedroom apartment so the choices are pretty limited. We keep one box in the living room, tucked away in the corner behind the couch. A second is kept on the screened-in porch, which the kitties have access to most hours of the day.
I guess Max and Sophie are pretty good at covering, or maybe our brand of kitty litter is good at odor-control, because we haven’t really noticed a problem with the one next to the couch. Of course, we use the “covered” kind of litter box, so I’m sure that helps quite a bit.
When the girls first adopted us, we tried keeping the box in the bathroom…'cause you know…pooping, etc. is what a bathroom’s for, right? But the litter would spill out everywhere, and then you’d unwittingly step out of the shower onto the tile floor and suddenly you’ve got wet kitty litter stuck to the bottom of your feet. Yuck. Plus, our bathroom’s pretty small so that didn’t last long.
We keep ours in the “toilet” section of our bathroom. It is a small room with just the toilet and the box. This is in an effort to keep my dogs from “snacking” but it isn’t working.
I think the reason many people choose the master bath is because no one wants to put it in the guest bath. I am hopeful my husband will get around to installing the kitty flap on the basement door, though, and we can keep it down there.
The master bedroom?! Ugh! I’ve threatened my daughter that if she doesn’t get up when her alarm goes off, I’ll place that horrid thing right next to her bed. Mornin’ sweetheart.
We keep ours in the farthest corner of the laundry room.
My cat’s litterbox is a corner of my bedroom. I live in a small two-bedroom apartment, and this is pretty much the only place I could put it. There’s no room in the bathroom, and the other bedroom is where my roommate lives. Plus, my cat can raise one hell of a stink. Putting it in the living room is never going to happen.
When I lived with my parents, the litterbox was kept in the master bedroom. With three cats sharing it, my parents quickly got fed up with the smell. It got booted to the corner of the dining room (for some unknown reason). The instances of one of the cats using it during were rare, but they happened. Now, with only one cat, it’s been moved into the tiny guest bedroom.
We’ve got one in the laundry room, and one in the basement in an unfinished storage area. The one in the laundry room is at the far back corner of the room, wedged next to the dryer. With three cats, I scoop the upstairs one regularly, but I sometimes forget that there is a litterbox in the basement! Fortunately, only one cat really uses that one (she sorta lives down there most of the time anyway.)
Litterboxes aren’t any dirtier than a lot of bathrooms I’ve seen. Mine aren’t in the bathroom though, mainly because I have large cats and need large boxes. Not enough room. I, too, have a small spare room given over to the cats, aka cat room, and keep their boxes, beds, toys, etc. in there. If you use a good litter and clean regularly there’s no smell except the occasional transitory odor immediately post-poop.
Our litterboxes are currently in the guest bathroom. Yes, you read that correctly.
Since we are lucky enough to have 2 bathrooms, we turned one of them into the litterbox room. We don’t have that much company, so whoever does come over is someone we know well enough to parade through our bedroom to get to the bathroom so it’s not a problem.
I have lived in small enough areas that the box(es) have been in such lovely places as the livingroom, kitchen, bedroom. When I’ve lived in a studio apt, that was usually one in the same. :eek:
Our litter box is in the living room corner. It’s out of the way of traffic, but still in plain view. When we got the cat, we had a housemate, so the now-spare bedroom wasnt an option at the time, and we haven’t bothered to move it. She isn’t too concerned about the lack of privacy - it’s actually several feet away from the TV/couch area and even further from the computers, where we usually are.
now that I look at it, that spot kinda makes sense, considering the layout of the apartment. Because of the hallway location and the doorway to the kitchen, there’s a 3 feet deep section of the room (running the length of the wall) that is totally useless for us. Well, there’s the litter box, and a boot mat on the other side, and a bookcase full of school books and notes and other stuff we don’t really need, but there is zero room for furniture or anything else.
And if it was in the spare room, we’d forget to clean it more than we already do (the cat doesnt really have an odour problem!)
My cats have always had their own designated room or closet. Now that I’m in a one bedroom apartment, it’s the broom closet.
I take the door off it’s hinges and hang a curtain in it’s place. Few people seem to notice – it looks like a closed closet door. Cat parts curtain, goes into broom closet, squawks off a stinky, and then returns.
I used covered boxes with charcoal filters. No human sees the box unless they go looking for it (it’s in the broom closet, not a clothes closet).
I put mine in the bathroom, because I live in a very small apartment, and the bathroom is the most secluded place, and, hey, I pee and poop in there – why can’t the cat?
Like bernse, we keep our litterbox in the basement, under the stairs. (I’m with Oreo on litterboxes in the bathroom: it’s the room I’m most likely to be barefoot in. Cat litter between my feet and that smooth floor - ecch! Not to mention the getting-out-of-the-shower problem.)
Here’s an inventory of where I’ve had the litterbox since I first had cats of my own:
Closet in the spare bedroom
closet in my bedroom (when I was renting a room in a house; fortunately this didn’t last long)
3,4) Utility room
Closet in the spare bedroom
Spare closet in back hallway
7,8) Closet in junkroom
Spare bathroom
Laundry room
Basement, under the stairs
Ever since getting cats, I’ve always asked, “Where will the litter box go?” when renting/buying a new place. Thinking about it up front has definitely helped, IMHO.
In the guest bathroom’s bathtub. That way, I can close the shower curtain if guests are over and they’ll never know (unless they’re nosy.) Cleaning up litter spills are super easy. That bathroom’s hardly ever used anyway, but when I do walk into it I don’t get litter on my shoes or track it onto carpet, like I used to.
When my cat was living with my mom, it used to be in the basement. Due to the fact that there were 2 cats, the smell became an issue pretty quick. She says it’s improved now that there’s only one cat left. I like the bathroom because of all the smell safeguards that are already in place. I just turn on the fan and spray some air freshener.
If I had more than 1 cat I’d have to change the location, but it seems to work very well.
I’ve always kept the box in the basement, inside a wading pool. But now that we are temporarily living at my mom’s, and she won’t let the cats in the kitchen (they can be downstairs, but not in her bedroom…she never closes the door…or in the kitchen…which you have to go through to get to the basement) so the cats stay upstairs with us, and the only place for the box is in the bathroom.
The guest bathroom is the Cats’ Bathroom in our house - litterbox and food and water are in there. Big Bag o’ Kibble is in the bathtub because one of the 4 likes to chew holes in the bottom to get to fresh food.
We have another litter box in the dining room (which we never eat in).
