Moderna Hercules Cats in Love Open Litter Box

Cats have firm opinions about litter trays and express them only by not using one. The covered-versus-open argument is largely settled in the cat's favour: a lot of them will not commit to a box they cannot see out of, and a tray that gets refused is worse than no tray at all.

This is the open kind, with a raised back and a rim that clips on around the top edge. The rim does two jobs. It traps a liner bag between itself and the tray so the bag cannot slide down when the cat digs, and it lifts the wall high enough that litter kicked backwards on the way out stays inside. The plastic is BPA-free, and the pattern is applied by in-mould labelling rather than printed on afterwards, which is why Moderna can call it scratch- and UV-proof — the design is in the plastic rather than on it. The whole thing, rim included, washes with warm soapy water.

• Open-topped tray with a raised back
• Removable rim clips over a liner bag to hold it in place
• BPA-free plastic
• In-mould label design, described as scratch- and UV-proof
• Washes with warm soapy water, rim included

Not one measurement has been supplied for this tray. Moderna give us the material, the design and the cleaning instruction and no length, no width and no wall height — which on a litter tray is the number that decides everything. A big cat in a small tray is the most common reason a tray gets abandoned, and the shipping weight we hold for this one is far too light to be credible, so we will not guess from that either. Measure the tray your cat already uses and treat this as a standard single tray rather than a large one until the carton tells you otherwise.

Who it's for: one cat, one tray, in a household where the tray is somewhere visible and a plain grey box would grate — and specifically for a cat that refuses a hooded tray.