Thar she blows, the Booda domed catbox. I've owned cats nearly all my life and I will never use another uncovered litter box because a) they are messy, b) they are stinky, and c) you show me a cat who doesn't kick litter out like a donkey and I'll show you about 20 who do. So I've always had covered catboxes.
But I've never had a cat as ginormous as Finnegan.
Finnegan is 18 pounds and the size of about two ham hocks from the grocery store. Maybe two and a half. (Suddenly he's eyeing me warily from across the room - can he sense I'm sizing him up in my mind?) He is BIG. Not fat either (okay maybe a smidge), but just a large boned cat. I've never had to worry about fitting a polar bear into a covered catbox, until now.
This blasphemy of a catbox is the biggest covered one we could find, so we brought it home. I felt so bad for poor Finn, who would have to origami his ass up into our older covered box that he rapidly outgrew. Mind you, he's got a semi-bum leg that he can't really pick all the way up on his own to climb into a hole on your regular cat box. So the stairs on this were truly the bomb. Less tracking?! HEE HAW!! Our box is in the guest bathroom but always, litter would track into the hallway, and if there's one thing I can't STAND it's walking on cat litter on the carpet. Afgajrguaedgash. (See, that's how bad I can't stand it.)
What makes this box great is:
- Finn can fit into it without having to become a fuzzy Houdini.
- It looks sort of like a kitty spaceship.
- And I admit, it has cut down on the tracking.
I dare you to try and clean this thing. And by clean, I mean empty the litter and WASH it. You will be more worn out than if you did an entire 90 day shred in one day, and may need an ER trip. Let me tell you why!
IT'S A BIG FRIGGIN' DOME. Do you know how hard it is to get a good grip on something that unwieldy? Oh, by the way, since Finn is the Staypuf Marshmallow Cat, this means he frequently pees on the inside walls of the box. Which means you (read: me) will unwittingly dabble your fingers in a smidgen of cat pee whilst you struggle to flip the cover of this box upside down so you can heave it into your bathtub that it doesn't really fit in so you can scrub the everloving hell out of it.
If there's one thing I hate more than kitty litter on the carpet, it's the texture of cat pee. Not like water at all, folks. A little more slippery. UGH. Can't stand it. No no no no no. I need to invest in some of those elbow high plastic gloves housewives in the 50's used to do their dishes.
ANYWAY.
The top of this hellacious dome of horror doesn't quite fit into our bathtub, so when I'm scrubbing it it tips back and forth a lot like a demented baby swing, which leads to the swearing - how the bleep can I scrub this bleepity bleep thing when it can't bleepin' stay still for one bleeping second. But that's not the worst part. The inside of this box where the litter is held looks like a giant kidney bean. Have you ever tried to scoop litter out of a box with round edges?? NOT gonna work! I literally have to use a beach shovel.
Note the rounded edges.
Anyways, once you stop digging for dubloons and get all of the litter out of this bizarrely shaped atrocity, good luck getting THIS sucker into the bathtub. You will make a mess. You will need some towels. It's absolutely awkwardly shaped to clean and I have no doubt that the committee that invented this is watching people who buy these things, recording our antics and sailor language as we try to clean these in a civil manner, laughing and playing the video back at company Christmas parties. You will do a lot of leaning and grunting and trying not to flatten your boobs (if you have them) on the edge of the bathtub so you can scrub every side of this thing. It should be some type of prison punishment.
So I really do hate my litterbox. We're on the lookout for a bigger human-friendlier one, but until then I'm stuck dealing with the piece of crap dome from hell. Finn's just lucky he is the bomb and we love him so much!!!
