Building, Design, Furniture, Project, Trades
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How to incorporate a cat loo into your home – The Hidden Cat Litter Tray

Hidden Cat Litter Tray

I’m sure you all know i’ve got a cat, she features quite a lot in my images. She makes an excellent alternative to a sheepskin and is most of the time, a more than willing styling prop. Her colouring also fits right in with our monochrome home. All in all she’s fabulous.

One thing that never fitted in our home was the cat litter box. We don’t have a cat-flap, so madam needs access to an indoor loo. When we had the loft converted back back at the end of 2016/17, I designed a space for her litter box to sit, accessible to the furry one, but out of sight from the rest of the house. I was looking forward to not seeing it as I went about my daily meanderings around the house. Alas, as our son is a very light sleeper, just like his mum, Chooch’s midnight races up and down the stairs woke Charlie up.

Not actual footage

So we had to move Chooch’s overnight quarters to the confines of the kitchen/diner to contain any cat gymnastics, mews and random shadow chasing. Needless to say, that meant the expertly planned cat litter spot in our loft was left bare and the litter box brought down into the kitchen. A big purple cat toilet within kicking distance of the dining table. I tell tee, I was not happy.

It’s been on my list of things to sort for the past couple of years, but I just couldn’t work out where or how to put it. So I sat down and had a good think about where on earth I was going to add this cat loo. Our house isn’t big, I refer to it as modest and compared to some it’s pretty wee.

Photo credit – Katie Lee for MADE.COM

You can see here that in either alcove we’ve got shelving, an additional seating bench in one side and a play kitchen in the other. Hmmm…. Charlie’s six now and whilst the toy kitchen is brilliant for storing Play-Doh, pens and paper, he does’t play with the kitchen anymore which means there’s a lot of wasted space in that there alcove. It was time to say goodbye to the Duktig kitchen and build in more storage; a cabinet for Charlie’s ever expanding “Craft Box” (read – bits of old rubbish he pulls out of the bin) and a ‘poop cabinet’ for Chooch.

So I contacted my brill joiners at Bare Joinery and said,

“Hey there, wanna come and build me some cabinets, one of which is a cat loo?” 

Highly accurate drawing

Obviously they jumped at the chance because who wouldn’t want to build cat facilities in someone’s kitchen? And in the blink of an eye (flipping months, because they’re so busy, partly because I keep recommending them to everyone) the newly configured alcoves look like this:

Ta-da!

Chooch now has a sleek, white sprayed, birch ply cat facility that sits neatly beneath our existing shelves. And Charlie now has thee whole cabinets dedicated to his very own arts and crafts revival. William Morris would be happy. I’m also happy to not see a big plastic cat litter box in here anymore. Chooch is happy, Charlie is happy, i’m happy, even William Morris is happy. So much happiness!!

I decided to use the same material here for the door fronts as we used for the kitchen update we did last year? Remember this one?

Handleless white birch plywood kitchen

Goodbye White Gloss Kitchen – Kitchen Facelift – June 2018

And before you ask, yes, there’s a cat litter tray inside the cabinet, she doesn’t just relieve herself on a shelf. There’s also her cat food and bag of clean litter on the shelf above. It’s basically Chooch’s “In and Out” station. The third cabinet to the right is for shoes as we tend to accumulate them by the back door. I was getting fed up of them piling up there, so now there’s a shoe cabinet for ‘putting the bin bags out’ shoes. You know the ones.

I know some of you will be like,

“Well I wouldn’t like a cat poop cabinet in my kitchen”

And i’d be like,

Yeah I know. Me neither really, but ya know we have a small house and minus an extension this was the only place we could put it given Chooch’s midnight outbursts of song and dance.

Then i’d probably delete your number from my phone and not tell you about my cat litter cabinet ever again. Given the space situation, i’m super chuffed with how this has turned out. I can’t see us ever not having a cat to be honest, I think they’re wonderful creatures. Obviously, Chooch still hasn’t uttered a word of thanks for her new facilities, but she will…

…. one day.

So then, never thought i’d ever say these words, but, whaddya think of my new cat litter box?

20 Comments

  1. Susan says

    This is great – I hate that we have cat litter trays in our kitchen, event though they’re sort of hidden. My two are so fussy though – they have to have their own tray as they won’t use the same one!

    • Karen Knox says

      Yeah I think that’s quite common with cats, them wanting their own tray. I reckon i’d be the same if I was a cat tbh 🙂

  2. Joe says

    I think that’s bloomin genius. I love the lengths you have gone to for your cat but it also looks great. You are my people. 🐾

    • Karen Knox says

      Ah cheers Joe, really glad you like it. Am super chuffed 🙂

  3. It’s a great idea, everybody seems happy with it, and it’s SUPER unugly, so I say this is a resounding success!

    (This is coming from a woman whose cat has a litter box that is actually an IKEA Samla box. We are both content with this, although now I’m a bit envious of your sleek solution!)

    • Rebekah says

      In love with this concept! Off to tell my husband we need our own cat box cabinet.

      • Karen Knox says

        Yeah yeah!! Everyone needs one for sure! Well, just people with cats I guess….

    • Karen Knox says

      Cheers! A plastic tray is a plastic tray. Nowt wrong with an Ikea box in my opinion!

  4. Elaine says

    So you might think his a bit weird, but I’d like to see inside the cabinet doors!

    Looks great. We have the same issue, and have a cat box in the dining room, sadly hidden in plain view, as although we have three cats, only two go out to loo. The remaining one is so dim I doubt she’d find the box if we ever moved it, let alone hid it behind a door.

    • Karen Knox says

      Ha. I KNEW someone would want to see inside and I purposefully didn’t take one as I thought it would be a bit grim.
      It’s basically a shallow litter tray inside the base of the cabinet. Chooch just steps through the little door straight into the tray. Her previous litter box was an enclosed one, so she’s used to walking into one. I also used some of her dirty litter in her new tray so she knew it was her new loo. No problems so far **crosses fingers**

      • Elaine says

        I honestly can’t imagine why you didn’t want to put a pic of your cat’s litter tray on your design blog…😁

        I did wonder what kind of tray it was. Thanks! We have one with a lid and door, and I was trying to imagine that inside your cupboard. Such a good idea, and it looks very sleek.

    • Anonymous says

      Hi Elaine, I would really encourage you to take the plunge as our neighbours’ cats are ‘tray-free, outdoor-users’ but all that means is that they use our garden paths, flower borders, and fruit beds. Karen has come up with a great design solution, go for it!

    • Karen Knox says

      Haha. I’m afraid it’s both a blessing and a curse. Ask my poor husband! 🙂

  5. Kirsten says

    Genius! Our cat has a cat and goes out for her daily doings, but…she was poorly a while ago and we needed to give her a litter tray for a while. She’s better now and goes out but comes back in to use the litter tray!

  6. Absolutely genius! We initially had ours hidden down in the (finished) cellar so I didn’t have to look at it and then my two decided that sharing was unacceptable (I don’t want to tell you how they told us that, just trust me) so we had to put one into our small kitchen. And THEN they told me an additional one was required upstairs (FFS). So moving to our new home, we had 3 trays (^£$”*%^!!!!!). Well, to be fair, they always say to have one more than how many cats you own and at least they aren’t going anywhere they shouldn’t be so there’s that. Regardless, my plan now is to incorporate 2 of them into what will be our future utility room and this hidden detail is utterly perfect – the best kind of solution. The last one is only small but is in our upstairs bathroom. Maybe once we update that space, I’ll think of a way to hide that one too. The fact is, we have cats, we love them, our home wouldn’t be the same without them and so you do what ya gotta do. Non-cat owners can roll their eyes as much as they like 😉 xx

  7. Angela Schumann says

    Cat litter station or no cat litter station, the two white cabinets make the room so much bigger. Total success – looking at the before and after images. And a happy family. What’s not to like?

  8. Diane says

    I read about a cat rescue centre, where they used stainless steel gastronorm pans for cat litter (pic here https://m.imgur.com/Iq5YxrJ) . I bought a couple for our cats and they’ve been brilliant. Easy to clean, hard-wearing and they don’t absorb cat smells!

  9. Cat says

    How are you dealing with the smell? Did you line the cupboard with anything to protect the walls, is there any kind of vent or extraction…? My cats used to use a box in a cupboard but *everything* we kept in there stunk of wee and it was a waste of space in the end so i’m really curious to see what you did!

    • Karen Knox says

      Hi Cat, we’ve not really had an issues at all with that. I clean out the litter pretty regularly though, at least daily. The only thing is this cupboard is all cat related anyway. Tray, clean litter and her food on the shelf above. So there’s nothing else in here to absorb any odours….

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