Litter Box Setup for a Multi Cat Household

When you only have one or two cats, litter box setup is pretty forgiving. Once you’re living with a house full of cats, though, small mistakes in placement or cleaning can turn into real problems. You may end up with a cat avoiding the box altogether, or one deciding your bath mat is the better option.

Nobody tells you that having a lot of cats means you’ll spend a surprising amount of time thinking about litter boxes. After years of trial and error, here’s what has worked in our house to keep everyone (mostly) happy.

How Many Litter Boxes Do You Actually Need?

The general guideline you’ll see everywhere is one litter box per cat, plus one extra. Once you have several cats, that gets unrealistic pretty quickly. With seven cats, we’d technically need eight litter boxes.

Instead of focusing on an exact number, I pay more attention to whether every cat has easy access to a clean box. You don’t want one dirty box—or one cat blocking the way—to leave another cat feeling like they have nowhere to go.

Before we switched to automatic litter boxes (and when we had 5 cats, not 7), we had four traditional boxes: two in the front room (one covered and one uncovered), one open box in the garage, and another in the back office. We scooped them two or three times a day, every single day. It was a lot of work.

Getting our first automatic litter box completely changed things. I started with one so the cats could get used to it, then gradually added more. They are quite expensive, and it took me some serious budgeting to switch up the house. Today, all but one of our litter boxes is automatic.

The brand I chose is fairly large, so we actually removed cabinets and added an electrical outlet to create the setup we wanted. It took some planning, but it has absolutely been worth it.

Where to Place the Boxes

Where you put the boxes is just as important as how many you have. I keep ours in different parts of the house instead of lining them up side by side.

Cats lower in the household hierarchy will often avoid a litter box if a more confident cat spends a lot of time nearby. Having boxes in separate rooms—or on different floors if your home allows it—gives everyone another option instead of forcing them to share one location.

Quiet, low-traffic areas usually work best. I avoid placing litter boxes next to loud appliances, busy entryways, or right beside food and water. Most cats appreciate a little privacy when they use the bathroom.

Covered, Uncovered, or Open?

For traditional litter boxes, I’ve always had better luck with uncovered boxes. Automatic litter boxes are a little different because many of them are enclosed by design.

Right now I have three covered automatic boxes, one uncovered traditional stainless steel litter box in the garage, and I recently ordered an open-style automatic litter box from another company that I’m looking forward to trying.

The biggest thing is figuring out what your cats are comfortable using. Once a cat starts going outside the litter box, it can sometimes be difficult to get them back into the habit, so preventing accidents in the first place is much easier than trying to fix them later.

Our automatic boxes all have steps, and when we had kittens, we used these large cascading pet ramp (steps) to make it easier for them to climb inside.

If your cat has already started having accidents, I also have an article on removing cat urine odors that may help.

Scooping and Cleaning on a Real Schedule

Even with the automatic boxes doing most of the work, the regular litter box in our garage still gets scooped every day.

Once a week—usually on trash night—we completely empty every litter box and give it a thorough cleaning. I take each automatic box apart, vacuum underneath and inside to remove stray litter, wipe down the electronic areas that can’t be rinsed, then wash the removable parts outside with a hose and a diluted bleach solution before adding fresh litter.

Cleaning three automatic litter boxes takes a while, but I want them to stay as clean as possible. A tip also is I use these really big bags for the waste area that allow me to close off the bag very easily. They are not the same brand, but they fit great if you do have the LR brand.

Watch for Guarding Behavior

Sometimes the problem isn’t the litter box at all—it’s another cat (it’s always Queso!).

A more confident cat may sit near the entrance, block another cat from getting to the box, or wait until another cat walks over before cutting them off.

If one cat consistently avoids a particular litter box, or you’re finding accidents nearby instead of inside the box, I’d consider guarding before assuming it’s a medical problem.

In our house, adding another litter box in a different area has usually been a much easier solution than trying to convince a territorial cat to change their behavior.

Not Every Cat Will Use a Litter Box

This is something I don’t think gets talked about enough.

Despite keeping clean litter boxes, trying different litters, and giving everyone multiple locations to choose from, we’ve gone through periods where one cat simply refused to use a litter box. After ruling out medical issues with our veterinarian, we learned that some cats are just incredibly particular.

We once had a cat that wouldn’t step into a litter box at all. Instead, we gave her washable pee pads next to the litter box, and that’s what she preferred. We changed them about three times a day. Was it a lot of extra work? Absolutely. But she was part of our family, and that’s what she needed.

I know not every household can manage something like that, but it was the right solution for us.

• If you find yourself in this situation, while expensive, extra-large dog pee pads work great (we mostly bought these at places like TJ Maxx for best value) and keep pee from leaking out.
• You can also get a shallow, large Tupperware storage container like this and lay in pee pads or towels.

If you’re adding a new cat to your family, I also share how litter box setup fits into that process in my How I Introduce a New Cat to a Multi Cat Household article.

You can also meet all the cats and shop our household-cat favorite finds here.