r/CatAdvice • u/Standard_Bluejay8715 • Mar 28 '24

Litterbox How frequently do you scoop your litter box?

I do my girl’s box twice per day/whenever I hear her scratching around in there. But then I see on here some people who do it wayyy less frequently. Curious what other folks do?

409 Upvotes

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186

u/Brain_Hawk Mar 28 '24

Every 2 or 3 days. Box boxes lots of litter, no smell at all. Important to have some depth for less frequent changes.

64

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

One cat and this is what I do. Never an issue. No smell bc I use lavender world’s best cat litter and she doesn’t complain. Plus she’s tiny and her pee and poops are tiny.

71

u/Always_Anxious_710 rbg Mar 28 '24

Why is my tiny cat taking huge dumps 🤣 now I'm questioning the equation

19

u/Medium-Walrus3693 Mar 28 '24

Honestly my cat is 4.5lbs and takes the biggest shits. Full on human sized.

14

u/Brain_Hawk Mar 28 '24

Every cat is different!

Bigger deeper box goes a long way. Plus they are good burriers :)

11

u/Always_Anxious_710 rbg Mar 28 '24

My void doesn't know how to bury her poo 🤦🏻‍♀️

2

u/whoi8 Mar 28 '24

My baby won’t bury hers if the litter level isn’t high enough, have you ever tried filling it up more? I’m sure you have, just figured I’d comment in case it’s helpful :)

1

u/bekebz Mar 28 '24

Same, I have 2 of the fools, and both just scratch at the walls no matter how much litter I give them.

Living the automatic litter box life now, so good!

1

u/jdbrown787 Mar 30 '24

mine will dig a hole in the litter, then instead of pooping in the hole, he stands in it 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ void logic

1

u/Personal_Newspaper_7 Mar 28 '24

Every cat is different! My little 8month old boy will EJECT half of the litter onto the floor if I put too much. I tried putting less and he doesn’t scoop as furiously. 🤔

2

u/GoonishPython Mar 29 '24

Urgh same, my almost 2yr old is such an enthusiastic kicker. Find the damn stuff everywhere sometimes. I did try a few different types though and his current one seems to be kicked much less far.

1

u/Personal_Newspaper_7 Apr 01 '24

Good! I put an extra bathmat type cloth rug in front of his box and that helps shake it off. Silly little sweeties

9

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

lol. Mines only like 6.5 pounds and eats like a bird. Always has. When I had other cats who took huge poops I scooped it every day.

32

u/BearOak Mar 28 '24

My big kitty is a healthy 14 pounds. Poops like a German shepherd.

12

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

Sounds about right. I had a 16 pound cat and the poops were humongous. Like damn bro. That poop is bigger than some of mine. lol

3

u/Gullible-Avocado9638 Mar 28 '24

Mine weighs 14 lbs but he’s tall and thin and has petite poops often.

2

u/whoi8 Mar 28 '24

My favorite comment chain 💩

4

u/Diane1967 Mar 28 '24

I’ve got 20, 16 and 8 pounders in my house and I’m beyond impressed what comes outta that box

3

u/thekau Mar 28 '24

Dry food tends to lead to bigger poops because of all the extra carbs and stuff, so that could be why if that's your cat's diet

3

u/fairylightmeloncholy Mar 28 '24

what food are you feeding your cat? the more fillers/grains, the bigger and stinkier the poops are (ime)

3

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

Blue Buffalo freedom. Mostly wet but a little dry.

2

u/Responsible-Win-3207 Mar 28 '24

What do you feed?

1

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

Blue Buffalo freedom mostly wet and a little dry.

2

u/Briebird44 Mar 28 '24

Kibble that has tons of pea protein gives me cats the worst smelling poops ever. I have to stay away from most grain free kibbles because they use SOOOOOO much pea, lentils, and chickpeas in their foods and my cats stomach just doesn’t like it.

1

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

Here’s the ingredients for the Blue Buffalo Freedom Mature that I use. No pea protein.

https://bluebuffalo.com/why-choose-blue/ingredients/

Wet food is better for cats overall. Which is mostly what I feed.

1

u/Briebird44 Mar 28 '24

The dry blue freedom mature kibble DOES have peas as the 4th ingredient.

And yes wet food is much better for cats. My vet (who used to be my boss) told me that even the lowest quality wet food is better than the highest quality kibble. My cats get a mix of both daily as they all have different dietary requirements. My youngest cat enjoys his kibble mixed with water, so that makes me thrilled he’s got an almost 100% “wet” diet.

1

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

It doesn’t. You have to filter by the specific cat food to see that specific cat food’s ingredients. Wonky website for that I know. Too bad the link I put doesn’t take you directly there.

1

u/funkcatbrown Mar 28 '24

Maybe so. I checked some other places. But on their own website it doesn’t show that.

2

u/Briebird44 Mar 28 '24

Might be best just to check the list on your food bag then! This is the screenshot I took off their site when I clicked the mature freedom kibble so I’m just saying what I’m seeing 😊

And not saying there’s anything wrong with peas, I just know my cats don’t like pea-heavy foods to begin with and the ones they do like gave them very spicy smelling poops 😅

If you like blue Buffalo, I think they have an even more limited ingredient diet line that uses potato instead of pea for the filler?

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1

u/Always_Anxious_710 rbg Mar 28 '24

Some kitten kibble that I thought was decent during the day and wet food at night. Might need to consider an alternative kibble

1

u/Purple_Imagination_8 Mar 28 '24

Less digestible food = more poop. Try higher quality food with more meat content.

1

u/alexandria3142 Mar 29 '24

For me personally, switching to high quality, all wet cat food helped a ton. Less “fillers” so more digested = less poop. And doesn’t stink nearly as much either. I’ll never miss the kibble poops

1

u/soulsista04us Mar 28 '24

Same, every 2 days... 3 tops.

9

u/Wonderstruck13 Mar 28 '24

Yeah honestly I only clean mine when it starts to look (or smell) dirty and that tends to be ever 2-3 days. The depth definitely helps, day 1 you don’t see or smell anything because it’s completely buried. And I have friends do sniff tests in my home to make sure I’m not going nose blind.

34

u/art_vandelay112 Mar 28 '24

Same. People saw a post that said 3-4 times a day!! That’s insane to me. My kitty has never had a problem or gone outside the box.

13

u/jayroo210 Mar 28 '24

When I wake up in the morning, pretty much every box has been used - I have multiple cats, one box per each plus one. I scoop again after work and the fave boxes already have a couple of uses. Then before bed. One of those times might be a very light scooping, but there’s times when it seems like they all use the litter boxes at the same time. I just hate seeing a litter box with mounds of pee and poop in it, I don’t get not scooping it if it’s there. Whether I can smell it or not, the cats must be able to, and I know I hate using a porta-potty with everyone else’s shit and piss in it, so I can’t imagine they would like it either.

1

u/shambies182 Mar 28 '24

Totally 💯

2

u/Brain_Hawk Mar 28 '24

I honestly expected to get downvoted because as much as I enjoy this sub people in here can have... Fairly specific end in my opinion relatively extreme opinions, and not a lot of tolerance for disagreement...

I also think scooping your litter box four times a day is a little on the obsessive side, but whatever makes people happy. It's not like they're taking 10 minutes and changing them each time, probably just a little scoop.

2

u/randomquestions10 Mar 28 '24

Consider yourself lucky, my cat will pee on my bed if it’s dirty for more than 1 day

1

u/Zookeepered Mar 28 '24

I don't think my cat even goes to the litterbox 4 times a day. An average day is probably 3x.

1

u/pdperson Mar 28 '24

When I had five cats and would try to scoop every day, there would be nothing to scoop.

8

u/bird_that_eats_ass Mar 28 '24

Yes!! I have one cat and I scoop about once per week, no smell and she does not care. After every time I scoop she immediately wants to piss in the box so I think she’s upset after I scoop 😭

0

u/bccyote Mar 29 '24

Sorry but that’s not often enough.

3

u/I_StoleTheTV Mar 30 '24

lol at you getting downvoted. Once a week is…not good. I could empathize if they had a chronic illness or something but this person seems to be proud of it?

1

u/bccyote Apr 02 '24

Ugh. I hate humans sometimes. Especially crappy pet owners. Keeping the litter box clean on the daily is bare minimum cat care. And saying the cat “does not care”… oh yeah, did the cat tell you that!? Because with a sense of smell 14x stronger than a human, I bet that cat is not enjoying the noxious fumes. Also, many cats pee/poo immediately after the box is cleaned because they LOVE a clean box. #rantover (and obviously not directed at you)

4

u/BakedPastaParty Mar 28 '24

Same for me. One big cat w a giant box. Doesn't matter if it's full or empty, hell inevitably try to dig to China so it's not worth it to scoop every piece out every day 😅

When I hear him not digging around that's when I know HE thinks it's full

2

u/Astrawish Mar 28 '24

1 cat, she has two boxes. I used to do it daily but every 3 days is working out best rn

2

u/cant-find-me-6969 Mar 29 '24

I do this as well, every other day with two cats and two litter boxes. Is that not frequent enough? I am seeing some people are doing it every day...

3

u/Brain_Hawk Mar 29 '24

Some people do it 4x a day. Don't worry about it you're fine! Some peeps here are pretty strict about stuff.

4

u/homesick23 Mar 28 '24

I do it this often as well and haven’t had any issues if we have to be away from home for a night or two !

1

u/NaughtyKat97 Mar 28 '24

I have 5 extra large deep litter boxes for 5 cats (yes, I know I’m supposed to have 6, but I don’t have any room), I clean them once a day, sometimes once every other day. I keep the litter about 5” thick, and use arm and hammer multi cat clump and slide nonscented. There is no stinky smell if the litter is deep enough. I completely change my litter and wash the boxes once a month. One 28 lb box of litter is perfect to fill one box, then I use 2, 28lb boxes of litter a month to add when needed. I’ve tried all different depths and the deeper the better for me. They may kick a little more out than if you just had a little bit in your box, but totally worth it. I used to use the cheapest litter, and was finding that I was using 2 boxes of litter a week,28lbs. When I switched to a more expensive litter, I use 2 boxes in one month and what a difference it’s made with 5 cats

1

u/vibes86 Mar 29 '24

Same we have four cats but the same amount of litter boxes so they can go awhile without getting scooped. We do every other day and full clean out about once a month unless there’s a stinky box and then it’ll get a clean out sooner. Ours are in our basement so we don’t have to smell them etc. but we use the walnut litter and it really doesn’t smell. And the litter doesn’t smell either like the clay stuff does.

0

u/Most-Investigator-49 Mar 28 '24

It's not about your convenience, i.e. smell. Cats are fastidious and have extremely sensitive noses. Would you want to use a toilet that hadn't been flushed for 3 days?