The Very Eventful Lives of the Excellent Cats

[TheShellBeach]

Calling all cats and their overworked slaves - join us as we grudgingly accept that every day is National Cat Day as far as our moggies are concerned.

I clean the litter tray twice a week.

Well, if Linney has a poo I remove it, but he usually does that outside.

I scoop every time I'm in the bathroom, or go in specifically to scoop if I've heard someone digging (tiny unit and I'm mostly home, I can usually hear them). I get two or three weeks out of a 4kg bag of litter (tofu litter, doesn't stick like clay) and the tray gets washed when I change it.

Thanks for the responses!

When we had two cats, who both used the litter tray all the time, I washed it every day.
It needed it. I removed the poo immediately of course.

But Linney rarely uses it. He poos in it maybe once a week and wees in it once a day. The rest of the time be goes outside.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau
The BalletCats have corn litter, which clumps, & every time I remove a poo from their trays (they’ve one each, but share - as in, will happily use the larger one at the same time 🤷🏻‍♀️) I check for & remove clumps, topping up the litter as necessary. Trays are checked whenever a human goes into the kitchen.

The trays get cleaned & have completely fresh letter put in them around every 2 weeks: the litter manufacturer says you can go for a month between changes, but I wouldn’t want to use a loo that hadn’t been cleaned for a month & I don’t stand in mine!

I found the type of litter made all the difference. The brand I use isn't available in Britain, but I'm sure there are equivalents - it's tofu (pea fibre, really) with activated charcoal and baking soda. Does a great job of odour control and it's much easier to clean the tray than with clay. My two are solely indoors, so they use it a lot.

Thanks! We’re going to try to get Velvet to be an slightly more outdoor cat. Atm she’s getting her tray cleaned if it smells or we see her using it, and she’s the first cat we’ve had who uses a litter tray so I’m a bit nervous I’m not doing it enough. The advice we had was to clean it once a day!

Preparing to stalk a small spider.

I can tell it's getting colder, I have company on the settee. Toad is supermanning while half snoring half purring, Frankenstein is sleeping on my knees and letting me stroke him, and Ghostie is on a cushion next to me occasionally hitting me with her paw so that I give her attention.

Fred was down here earlier too but I think he's gone back upstairs to glare at Lexter who has taken over Fred's favourite bed. It's white and fluffy so Fred is camouflaged when he lies in it.

The princess who was most annoyed that I only took a photo of the boys.

One more for luck, Fred sulking in the second best cat bed.

I love pictures of them sulking.

No one has gone near that bed for ages. Fred recently rediscovered it, about a week ago, but now Lexter thinks it's purrfect for him. Fred's a bit too wary to try to share!

Response to @CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau
We have one large tray. In spite of being outside cats ours usually come back inside to use the tray. I clean it out each night. (Unless someone has done something particularly unpleasant which merits an instant removal).
We do a very deep fill with clumping litter.

The app has finally let me add just one photo 🙄 Here is Benny sleeping behind me. He always sleeps with one leg dangling down.

Beautiful Bennie, beautiful all the kitties! Excellent cats indeed.

Darling, Benny 😻
Litter tray liners are useful because you don't have to scrub the tray every time. Just lift the litter tray liner and its contents out, tie it up, maybe put in another plastic bag to stop any bits falling out, and bin.
When the litter tray needs cleaning, I put it in the shower with me by my feet. The shower gel and shampoo suds freshen it up, then once I'm out I empty it of water, wipe with toilet paper, new liner and refill. Occasionally I wipe with an anti bac wipe.
Due to having no sense of smell I probably don't change it as often as I should, but if it's not done often enough the cats poo in the shower tray!
This litter tray, by the way, is the kitten sized one in the ensuite which Matt somehow fits his enormous arse in although he has to keep his two front paws on the floor.
The bigger, hooded litter tray in the hall downstairs is generally shunned. As it wasn't used much we thought we'd move it into another room.
Matt showed his displeasure by starting to wee in the place it had originally been, while staring me right it in the eye. The slave humbly moved it back to its rightful place with apologies for any inconvenience caused and it has since been largely ignored again of course. 🤷

I just washed the tray before and was reminded again of how much quicker and easier it is with the tofu litter. I used clumping clay previously and scrubbing it out was a major job. The tofu is so much softer, even urine clumps scrape out easily with a plastic scoop, and a quick scrub with the loo brush and cleaner, rinse and dry is all it takes. Whole thing is done in a couple of minutes. This is the brand I use, if anyone is interested in a British equivalent.

Very cool re the tofu litter @Catsmere! I don’t think Velvet’s going to wee elsewhere as she’s a bit compulsive about covering up her waste in the tray to the extent of spending five minutes in there scraping about and re carpeting the room with litter each time she goes, then zooms away from any lingering smell. When we introduce her to outdoors I’m hoping/expecting she’ll be quite relieved to leave her poop outside, but one can never tell with cats.

All the cats on this thread are sweet! I can’t think what lovely Bennie reminds me of @coastergirl but it might just be a cute melting fluffy friend! They’re so elastic aren’t they!

The corn cat litter is very easy to clean up & great at absorbing smells too. The moglings used to have wood pellet litter & I tried a tofu one but the cats kept trying to eat the clean litter because they think tofu is food; & it was rather sticky/hard to clean as well as expensive. I use Fresh Pet disinfectant to clean the trays & the the floor around them.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau Velvet sounds like Phoebe! She's queen of litter hurling too, the bathroom floor is covered with it after she's been in there. I also find little bits on my bed on occasion. At least this stuff isn't hard, unlike clay. I always say, if cat litter doesn't track it's because the cat isn't really trying! 😼

Can we get some Phoebe pictures? ❤️
I think Velvet is trying, she’s just inept, bless her. I can’t work out whether she’s extremely stupid (will stop playing with a toy when she’s playing at hunting to gaze into the distance and sing a song and tried to pounce on a jingly toy through a fabric throw, also often crashes into wooden doors by accident) or very clever (seems aware of the difference between play and not-play and will not attempt to pounce/kidnap my belt if I’m wearing it, but if it’s not on my waist it’s her favourite toy, she also seems to be a huge fan of television but not think it’s real).
Phoebe is a lovely name, by the way! I’m sure she as beautiful as her moniker.

Velvet sounds like our late Freya aka Fribbie, who was also good at crashing into things - walls, mostly. 😄

Latest photo of Phoebe (she was staring at a mosquito on the ceiling) and one from a couple of months ago:

And since both are blurry, another:

What a lovely cat! The combination of a cute fluff ball and those piercing acute green eyes.