Litter Trays

Open trays are simple, easy to clean and give a nervous or larger cat plenty of room to move and turn around, which some cats strongly prefer. Hooded boxes offer more privacy and can help contain litter scatter and smell, but a minority of cats dislike the enclosed feeling, so it is worth watching how your own cat responds if you switch styles.

Size matters more than most owners expect — a tray that looks generously sized for a cat can still be too small once you account for a cat needing to turn around and dig comfortably, so bigger is generally a safer choice than smaller, especially for larger breeds.

The general guidance is one litter tray per cat, plus one extra, since cats do not always want to share and competition over trays can lead to problems going elsewhere in the home. Spacing trays out around the house, rather than lining them all up in one spot, also helps in multi-cat homes.

Different cats can have quite different preferences even within the same household, so it is not unusual to end up with a mix of tray styles that suits each individual cat rather than one style for everyone.

A good scoop with fine enough slots to sift litter from waste, without being so fine it clogs, makes daily cleaning quicker and less messy. Scooping daily, rather than only when a tray looks obviously full, keeps a tray more appealing to a cat and reduces odour building up between full changes.

A full litter change, cleaning the tray itself rather than just topping up litter, is worth doing regularly too — how often depends on the litter type and how many cats are using the tray, but a tray that is never fully cleaned will smell and look worse than the litter alone would suggest.