Written on February 17, 2010 – 1:00 am | by maxine |

I hope you did your homework and have a reasonable idea of what a water based toileting station is!  If not, you can always get up to speed by reading:  — Water Based Toileting Stations .

I can’t honestly say which one is the very best water based toileting station.  They are all used, just some more than others and each of us has a favourite and all have been modified to meet our water-based toileting feature.  So, these evaluations are not necessarily in order of popularity.  They all work but some rate a 5 PAW rating.

Before giving you my rating for our successful water based toileting systems, I really need to let you know that just like Thomas Edison who did not invent a working light bulb with his first attempt, we had some failures and even our “successes” took a lot of tweaking to get them to a success status.

FAILURES:
1.  We did have one that was a round, five gallon bucket that was cut down to be about 12 inches up from the floor. It had a tray on top of the opening and the tray had little holes drilled randomly through it.  Then a toilet seat was glued with hot glue to the tray, and the tray/seat combination was fitted over the bucket.  Buzz and I particularly liked this unit but Mrs. Noah found it difficult to keep clean and free of odor.  There was a problem with the bucket leaking and she never could determine where the problem was.  After months of valiant dogged (or this that “catted”) persistence, it was thrown out in November 2009.

2.  Litter Kwitter – a very interesting concept of getting your kitty to use the toilet that people use.  Dismal failure!  We all freaked out at the very concept of using the people toilet.  Mrs. Noah tried just about everything to get us to use it but forget it.  She did wonder if we didn’t feel secure sitting so high up on a toilet seat although hey, Buzz climbs to the ceiling on bookshelves so that wasn’t the problem.  Eventually she put the Litter Kwitter toilet seat part over a bucket on the floor and used the full solid LK tray with some kitty litter in it.  Some of us would use it but as soon as the solid LK tray was removed, we wouldn’t use it with the first ring inserted, which had a small hole in it, even though she had put some litter into the ring.   That hole was TOO SCAREY!  For over a year Mrs. Noah tried but, forget it!  However, not wanting to be wasteful, some of us are trying to help her out by using her modified approach using the Litter Kwitter.  It is explained in my report below.   I would not say to not purchase it because it just might work fine for you. It just didn’t work for us until Mrs. Noah modified it.

3  Standard sized, uncovered litter trays – Mrs. Noah put a screened grid into the bottom of open litter trays and even a little bit of litter on the grid, but no one would use it.  Probably because of the small size of the tray.  We prefer privacy and a cover provides that.  She tried putting a cardboard box over the top with a door cut into it but hey, where’s the class in that?

SUCCESSES:

Be sure to read last week’s post to learn what a screened grid is that Mrs. Noah has in each of our water-based units.

1.  The Laundry Tub – 5 Paw rating from everyone – We use a standard full sized vinyl laundry tub with the legs removed.  It sits up on four bricks so that it is raised enough to put a small pot under the drain hole.  One side has been cut down to make an entrance for us and there is now a screened grid in the bottom.  This keeps our paws from getting wet.  It is really big and roomy and in a very private place in a utility closet.  It is easy to clean and usually Mrs. Noah just empties and cleans the little pot and sometimes has to rinse the screened grid in the real laundry tub in the basement.  It is a little awkward when  Mrs Noah has to carry it upstairs to the bathtub or out to the driveway to give it a thorough scrubbing, which isn’t very often.  This unit is the one of choice for most of us for making our solid deposits which Mrs. Noah removes with a standard litter scoop.  Some of us also use it for liquid deposits too.

2.  The Richell Cat Potty:  – 5 Paws from Gracie and Chester  – This is our smallest unit and it looks like a small rectangular basin with a plastic “seat” over it.  The seat has a bunch of small holes and a larger one in the middle.  Mrs. Noah puts one gallon of water into the basin.  It can tip easily (big mess!) so ours is positioned between the wall and the base of the people toilet.  Even though this unit has no cover, and yup, there is a hole in this unit and that concept wasn’t accepted with the Litter Kwitter system, Chester and Gracie use this unit all the time, usually for liquid deposits but often for solids directly into the water!  Which leaves one to wonder why they wouldn’t use the Litter Kwitter or the uncovered boxes! Mrs. Noah finds this unit to be extremely quick and easy to empty and clean.  Click Here for detailed information about the Richell Cat Potty.

3.  Two Jumbo Sized Covered Marchioro Kitty Litter boxes – 5 Paws for liquid and solid deposits.  The Marchioro is my (Smokey) favourite.  Mrs. Noah did not install the optional door on the front because some of us would feel trapped in there.  You just never know when someone might be waiting to ambush you when you come out!!  There is enough room to turn around in there and Mrs. Noah finds it easy to scoop the solids out.  She has the screened grid raised up on a frame she made out of the same plastic grid.  That way she can put up to three gallons of water into the basin and we are high and dry on the screen.  Because the screened grid platform was made to be a little smaller than the basin, often we aim our solid deposits to go directly into the water below.  Because there is so much water in each of these two units, Mrs. Noah can leave them for two or three days without emptying them if there are no solids in the water and she can just scoop the solids off the screen.  These are particularly handy when our human family is away for a few days so they come back to no unwelcome odours.  Because the Marchioro boxes are so large and she generally puts two gallons of water in them, they are heavy for carrying into the bathroom for emptying but it is doable and they are easy to keep clean.  They also look attractive.

4.  Under-the-bed storage box system – 4 paws for liquid and solid.  I am not sure who uses this system, although originally it was made for Chester.  It uses two large plastic sweater boxes nested inside of each other.  There is a little plastic storage container with water in it for collecting liquid deposits and a screened grid for keeping paws dry.  It gets used every day.  Although it is not covered, it is kept in the knee-hole (where the chair usually goes) part  of a desk that is used for storage and the desk gives the feeling of a covering.   Because the collection container is so small and holds only about two cups of water, it needs to be emptied for sure every two days at the least and every day in the summer.  It is easy to clean.

5.  Small Sized Covered Kitty Litter box: 3 paws.  Again, there is a screened grid in the bottom, raised up from the bottom in couple of inches.  It holds one gallon of water.  The problem is, it is small and confining so only once in a while does anyone use this one.  Princess used it for a while when she was living in the office but now that she has moved downstairs with the rest of us, she uses the big covered stations.

6.  The Litter Kwitter with a Modification! 4 paws.  None of us will use the system as it was designed to be used.  Mrs. Noah kept trying different approaches to get us interested for over a year but nope, not for us!  I think only Buzz and maybe Princess use this system now that Mrs. Noah modified it.  She affixed the Litter Kwitter seat to a plastic crate from which she cut one side out, leaving only three sides. Instead of placing the usual Litter Kwitter rings into the seat, she cut a piece of  plastic grid to fit into the space and covered the piece with vinyl screening.  It is strong enough to hold the weight of a cat.   In the crate and under the screen covered grid, she has a five gallon bucket cut down to a smaller size and it catches liquid deposits in the two gallons of water she puts into the bucket.  It is probably a 5 paws for cleaning because Mrs. Noah just has to slide the bucket out of the crate, empty the bucket and scoop the solids off the screen, but I only gave it a 4 paw rating because it was such a long haul to figure out how to get anyone to use it!

By now you have probably figured it out that the more water in the catch basin, the more diluted our strong smelling liquid deposits (urine) become, thus eliminating the distinctive and strong smell which is offensive to most nostrils – even ours! That strong smell actually comes from the concentration of urine as it dries.  When put into water, it doesn’t get the opportunity to condense and become stronger.  In the summer heat there can be a slight musky type of odor if the buckets are not emptied daily.  However, it still never gets that disgusting, burn your lungs intensity.  A few squirts of Odor Xit or Odor Magic also are particularly helpful in the summer heat.

So, there you have it.  It has taken a lot of modifications and tweaking over the past two plus years but we finally have workable units in place for water based toileting solutions that are easy to use and clean and leave us with no expensive and messy kitty litter to contend with.

Until next time,
Smokey, the official Ark Feline Toileting Station Inspector