There’s nothing quite like waking up in the morning, walking into the bathroom (or wherever you keep your litter boxes) and stepping on a crumb of kitty litter. It’s like a pebble stabbing at the heel of your foot! Ye-owch!
Even worse is getting out of the shower, stepping on the floor with still-slightly-damp feet, and having bit of litter stick to them. Yuck!
If you have cats (especially multiple cats, like we do) then you know how the litter never stays INSIDE the litter box. Instead, it spreads across your bathroom, your carpet, and your basement steps.
While you’re probably never going to completely stop litter from getting everywhere, there are a few pretty simple changes you can make so the litter tracking in your home is more manageable.
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Use a cat litter tracking mat
The simplest solution is often the best, as the old adage goes. In this case, to stop your cat from tracking litter everywhere, put something down to catch it first.
However, this isn’t as easy as it might seem as first. Some mats may look nice, but are close to useless for catching litter.
Here are two mats that do a great job collecting litter:
kaxionage Cat Litter Mat
This mat is Amazon’s Choice in the Litter box mat” category.
It’s available is grey, black, or brown, and it comes in two different sizes: 15 by 24 inches or 30 by 24 inches.
The mat is made of lightweight, durable, and eco-friendly EVA foam rubber. Its double-layer honeycomb design traps the litter in the mat, then you pick it up (it’s kind of like a bag) and dump the litter back into the box.
Smiling Paws Pets Extra Large Kitty Litter Mat
Smiling Paws Pets Extra Large Kitty Litter Mat
This mat comes in grey (pictured above), brown, or black. It’s a pretty hefty mat, measuring 35 by 23.5 by 0.45 inches and weighing over three and a half pounds! It comes with a “deeper loofah” to make it great at trapping litter.
The mat is non-skid, so you don’t have to keep moving it back to its correct spot every time you go in the bathroom, and it has a proprietary laminated bottom keeps to cat urine off your floors so it won’t cause any damage.
To clean the mat, just shake the excess litter back into your litter box or use a vacuum cleaner for a quick clean. You can also use a pet friendly soap and hose down any time you want a deeper clean.
Switch to a different litter
In the ever expanding universe of cat litters, there are millions of different kinds of cat litter. The latest trend in the litter-verse are wood pellet litters. I haven’t tried them myself — I prefer Crystal Cat Litter — but I certainly like the idea. Since the pellets are larger than the typical clay shards, they won’t get stuck to their paws or on their fur, so tracking would be less of a problem.
Feline Pine Original Cat Litter is a wood pellet litter that’s highly rated. It’s made completely of pine wood and greatly reduces both the tracking and dust that you get with regular clay litters.
Feline Pine Original Cat Litter 40 LB
Reviewers liked the pine smell (although one reviewer pointed out that it smells like an IKEA warehouse for the first day or so) and the fact that it completely absorbs any urine odor. (One reviewer said that they had six cats and their house never had a urine smell, thanks to this litter.)
This Amazon customer calls this litter “the best on the market” and wrote a very thorough review:
Pros:
- The original pellets do not track. Sweeping up the ones that get kicked out of the litter box is a piece of cake. I have tried the scoop-able/clumping Feline Pine and it did in fact track everywhere — my cats came out of the litter box with the shavings just stuck all over them.
- Not clay based. Which means if your cat ingests some of it (either by accident or because they eat everything in sight), it’s not going to swell up in their digestive track and get stuck. Which by proxy means it’s going to save you money on surgery and a trip to the vet, you’re welcome.
- Actually eliminates the odor! I know, no one thought it could be done, but this litter does it. There is no odor from my cats’ urine (obviously poop is a different story…litter can’t fix everything). I’m not sure if there is something in this that neutralizes the odor or if the scent of pine just balances it out? What I do know is I live in a rather small apartment and more than one person has been surprised to know that I had two cats because they couldn’t smell anything.
……
Cons
- It smells like pine. I actually don’t mind the smell, but when I pour it out of the bag and into the litter box, there is a definite odor of pine. If you don’t like the scent of pine, this will bother you.
- When the cat urinates this is absorbed by the pine pellets which causes them to expand and soften. Eventually, when this dries, it is a bit like sawdust. If you don’t clean the sawdust-like used litter out on a somewhat regular basis, it will get tracked around your house.
Consider using a top-entry litter box
I wrote an entire post reviewing the best litter boxes for cat who kick litter, and after doing all the research for the article, we went ahead and bought this top-entry litter box.
The decreased amount of litter on our bathroom floor is very noticeable, and very nice.
However, I’m sorry to say that my cats don’t seem to enjoy using it as much as the “regular” litter boxes that we still have in the basement.
One of our cats is too fat and clumsy to jump up and into a litter box (and we knew that when we bought it), but even our smaller, more agile cat seems to use the other litter boxes more often.
If you want to give a top-entry litter box a try but are hesitant to plunk down a large amount of money, consider trying the PetMate version instead of our Modkat.
Petmate Top Entry Cat Litter Box
Use a litter box with high sides
Another option — especially if you have an older or overweight cat who wouldn’t do so well with a top-entry box — is to switch to a litter box with high sides.
This could simply be a hooded box. But some cats don’t like the small claustrophobic covers that go over the boxes and prefer to do their business in the open air.
When you have to meet in the middle, consider the ModKat Litter Tray with Splash Guard.
This litter box provides the best of both worlds. An open top design makes cats feel comfortable, while the clear plastic shield makes sure that litter isn’t tossed around recklessly.
Modkat Litter Tray, Includes Scoop and Reusable Liner
This litter box not only has a splash guard (which is great for those cats who are side wall pee-ers), but also a walk-off platform that reduces litter tracking.
One Amazon reviewer calls this box a “life-saver”:
I’ve had this litter box for less than 24 hours and if has already saved me time with cleaning …
This doesn’t fit all the way in to where I can close the door, as you can see in the photo. However I can easily buy a larger container to hide it. The stand-and-pee Kitty has met his match.
The litter box was easy to put together. When I put the shield on the gray clips, if you fold it back the opposite way of which it wants to go and start from the rear clip, the piece will be more flush with the litter box.
Place the litter box on a carpet-free floor
If you find your carpets have age old litter ground into the fibers, you know true pain. The gritty feeling on your feet, the strange unnatural odors, it all can add up to make your house seem unwelcome and unpleasant.
I recommend, if you can, move the litter box to a new location, a bathroom or basement, that typically has a carpet-free floor. Whether it’s tile, wood, or concrete it’ll be easier to sweep up and clean than running a vacuum over the same spot a hundred times every other day.
If moving the litter box is a no-go (some cats are particular about their spots), and a litter mat isn’t for you, perhaps a small section of tile or linoleum from your local flooring store can help cover your carpet and make it easier to clean, without transporting the box to a scary new location.
Keep a broom and dustpan (and/or cordless vacuum) nearby — and use it often
If none of the other options above work for you or your cats, the best way to stop litter from going anywhere might just be good cleaning habits.
Consider keeping a broom and dustpan (or a cordless vacuum) nearby and clean up the trouble spots often. I wouldn’t recommend cleaning after every ‘visit’ to the box (that might be irritating to your cat), but maybe once or twice a day, especially after scooping, will keep your house litter free.
Consider toilet training your cat
I love the TV show Shark Tank.
In one of the earlier seasons, Rebecca Rescate — who lived in a 500 square foot apartment in New York with her husband and her cat Samantha — pitched her product CitiKitty, which she created to toilet-train their cat.
The sharks all thought this was hilarious at first, but she ended up getting a deal with Kevin Herrington and the company has made millions since.
The idea of no litter box at all of course sounds amazingly appealing, so I immediately checked it out.
But I noticed right away that over a quarter of the reviewers gave it either a 1-star or 2-star review.
People called it “too good to be true,” said it only worked briefly, or that they ended up with a disgusting mess because their cat started pooping all over the bathroom floor and bathtub.
You can read all the negative 1-star reviews here.
However, I also noticed that there was another similar product called the Litter Kwitter which some reviewers said was better, and which had better reviews overall.
Cat Toilet Training System By Litter Kwitter
At a first glance, the Litter Kwitter looked less flimsy than CitiKitty, and instead of cutting a ring to continually make it smaller, it comes with several sized rings, so you go “backward” in the process any time you need to.
However, there were still enough people who had a pretty bad experience with it to make me hesitant to try it, especially since we have multiple cats.
For example, one reviewer said that using it was so infuriating that it made him want to get rid of his cat, and that “the people who made this are laughing all the way to the bank.”
Maybe it just takes a lot of work and patience for some cats (one woman said she’d been at it for 16 weeks and finally gave up), but I’m just not willing to put in that effort right now.
However, I’ve read many times that you should never flush cat poop down the toilet.
Studies show that toxoplasmosis, a parasite found in cat feces, cannot be destroyed by sewage treatment and has infected marine mammals and otters. Crabs and starfish feed on the toxoplasmosis, and then sea otters feed on the crabs and starfish, which can lead to brain damage and death.
So there you go. It’s not that I’m too lazy to toilet train my cat. I just don’t want to infect the sea otters.
In spite of all that, I know that toilet training your cat is a viable option that many cat owners are very with.
Trim the hair between your cat’s paws
Finally, a quick tip to avoid litter laden floors is to trim the hair between your cat’s toes. Especially in long-haired cats, the hair between pads can pick up and hold litter, only for it to be released all over your floor.
It can be an unpleasant experience for everyone involved, but with enough patience, treats, and possibly a professional groomer, a little haircut can be done painlessly.
Thanks for reading this post. I hope you discovered at least one, if not more, solutions that will help keep all that crunchy cat litter from getting on your feet!