When we moved into our new house a few years ago we decided to keep the litter boxes in the basement. The basement was unfinished and we rarely used it so it was a good spot for the litter boxes.

Unfortunately, since then, we’ve had some serious litter box problems to deal with. There were regular accidents out of the box, for unknown reasons, and entire messes to deal with. With an unfinished basement we didn’t handle the problem as well as we should have so it got terribly out of control. At times it felt like the entire basement was the litter box.

Before the situation got completely out of hand we took action. We found lot’s of helpful info online. We used koncoction.com’s HowTo search engine to search through a bunch of HowTo sites at once and found plenty of good info.

From what we learned we managed to clean up the basement with detergents, ammonia, white vinegar and other cleaners. Once that was done, we sealed and painted the floor to block any left over smells and kept a regular daily cleaning schedule for the litter boxes.

All was well until we decided to renovate the basement. This meant moving the litter boxes to the bottom of the basement stairs while the basement was being done.

Unfortunately, our litter box problems returned. The cats started going outside of the boxes again. We put down plastic and newspaper around the boxes to protect the carpet but the carpet eventually became ruined with cat urine.

With the daily traffic in and out of the basement, the cats lost all of their privacy and became quite confused about all the commotion. We felt so bad for them.

With the carpet ruined with cat urine, we decided to rip it out, clean the floor thoroughly and put down new flooring and new carpeting on the stairs. In the end it actually worked out better than our original plan.

Once the basement was done we moved the litter boxes back. The accidents still continued. We needed to find a way to make the cats feel comfortable using the litter boxes in the newly renovated basement.

Our first plan was to chang the litter boxes from small covered boxes to large open trays and placed them on a big plastic sheet to protect the floor. The plastic sheet was made from 2 plastic runners we bought from our local hardware store. It was a temporary solution until we could think of something more attractive and suitable for the cats.

The litter trays worked for a while but they didn’t eliminate all the accidents and were more work to keep clean. After weeks of constant watching we discovered that Jade was and peeing on the floor.

We took Jade to the vets for tests to rule out any health issues. Dax also went since he was a possible suspect too. The vets gave Dax a clean bill of health, but Jade had kidney stones and a bladder infection.

After she was back home Jade slowly stopped peeing out of the litter box as she started feeling better from the medicine she was getting. To protect our basement floor we thought of a variety of ideas such as putting silicone down to protect the floor (bad idea), buying more litter trays and building our own litter box furniture (an unsuccessful idea).

During all of this time were still looking for something better than our litter trays. Our criteria was something with a nice appearance, good protection for the floor in case of accidents and most importantly, something the cats liked. We had looked at a number of different options when something new caught our attention.

It fell right into our laps just as we were planning to try out some cat furniture that was a bit on the big side and a lot more expensive for us. It was called the Litterhouse. It seemed to fit really well with most of the things we were looking for in a cat litter box. It really got our attention and we were very excited about trying one out.

Our New Litterhouse

We got one a few days later. The cats took to it right away. After a few months we were having great success with the Litterhouse. We decided to get two more for the other cats and eliminated the litter trays. We kept the plastic mat and placed the Litterhouses on it. The only thing we want to do is find a nicer mat for them.

It was wonderful to finally have found something for the cats. The litterhouses actually got many compliments from our friends and family. We think they look wonderful and believe it or not Jade doesn’t have her litter box problem anymore.

If you’d like to know more about the litterhouse before you get one for your cats please read our Review on the Litterhouse.

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