Is it OK to scoop litter every other day?

Q: How long can you go without scooping litter?

In general, you should completely change your cats litter every one to four weeks. If multiple cats are using your litter box, weekly changes may be necessary. In the case of a litter box that is located in a low-traffic area of the home and rarely used, monthly litter changes may be acceptable.

Índice Show

Adopting a Good Litter Box Cleaning Routine
Litter Box Cleaning Variable 1: Type of Litter
Litter Box Maintenance Variable 2: Number of Cats
Two Types of Litter Box Cleaning: the Scoop and the Change
How to Scoop a Litter Box
How often should you scoop out cat litter?
How long can you go without scooping litter?

Who knew there was so much to kitty litter? Dr. Justine Lee provides some valuable litter box advice. For more from Dr. Lee, find her on Facebook!

Last week, we talked about adding the appropriate number of litter boxes to your house. Well, just because you added n+1 litter boxes doesn’t mean you can clean less frequently! We neurotic types clean litter boxes daily. If that’s too much for you, litter boxes should be scooped out at least every other day. Of course, this depends on how many cats you have. The more cats you have, the more frequently the boxes should be scooped out. While it’s a dirty job, it really should be done for the best interest of your cat(s).

If you notice your cat scratching outside the litter box instead of inside (“What’s a cat gotta do to get you to clean the litter box? Helllllo!”), it’s his way of telling you that the litter box is disgusting and he doesn’t want to get his feet filthy while he’s “attempting” to cover up his poop inside. If you just cleaned the litter box and he’s still doing it, it’s likely from a bad memory of getting soaked or dirty while in the box, so unless you want a pet that poops in random places, get in there and scoop.

Some cats will “hold it” and urinate as infrequently as possible to avoid stepping into a dirty, filthy, full litter box. Instead of urinating two to three times a day, your cat will tighten up and only go once a day. This makes his urine get more concentrated and could make crystals and urine debris plug up and cause him to get a life-threatening feline urethral obstruction (FUO). With FUO, cats may have stones, crystals, or mucous plugs in their urethra that prevent them from being able to urinate. Not only is this painful, but it can also lead to temporary kidney failure, electrolyte abnormalities, vomiting, lethargy, cardiac arrhythmias, and death. So to help prevent problems like this or even diseases like feline lower urinary tract disease or sterile cystitis (e.g., feline urinary tract disease or FLUTD), scoop!

The other added benefit of scooping frequently is that it helps you detect medical problems earlier. If your cat isn’t urinating, you’ll notice when there’s no urine in the litter box for two days. If your cat becomes a diabetic, he may be making larger and larger clumps and your whole litter box will be one huge clump after its weekly cleaning. But you’ll never be able to tell this if you’re not scooping enough. If your cat is acting constipated or having diarrhea, you won’t find out until days later, and by then it’ll be a bigger (and more expensive) medical treatment! As tedious as it is, please do your wife a favor and flush, and your cat a favor and scoop.

So, how do you scoop? I realize that sounds like a stupid question, but I’m often shocked how people are erroneously “scooping.” Some clients tell me they dump out the whole litter box (and all that clumping litter) every week. Yikes – no need folks! You and your cat’s carbon footprints are contributing to the overfilled landfills and making Al Gore very angry. Not only is this expensive, but it’s really wasteful. If you really want to know, I only completely empty and bleach out the litter box a few times year or so.

My tip? Use clumping litter if you’re not sure what your cat prefers, since studies have shown that cats prefer this type of litter the best. (More on “Clay, clumping, and crystal kitty litter: Which should I choose?” next week!). Next, keep an empty container (e.g., a 5 pound bucket that used to contain kitty litter), line it with a plastic bag, and use a scoop to scoop out the urine clumps and feces every day. Dump the clumps directly into the empty container, and voila: you just have to dump the plastic bag once a week. It makes it oh so easy to scoop, contains the smell in the empty bucket, and saves a few plastic bags while making it more convenient to scoop. As the kitty litter box becomes emptier, just add in clean clumping kitty litter. No need to dump out precious, expensive, eco-unfriendly full boxes when cleaning – just scoop out the dirty and add in clean.

I’ll elaborate on this more in next week’s blog on “Clay, clumping, or crystals.”

Hate cleaning your box? Have any tips this dirty job?

If you have any questions or concerns, you should always visit or call your veterinarian – they are your best resource to ensure the health and well-being of your pets.

1.

Adopting a Good Litter Box Cleaning Routine

As a cat mom or dad, you’re spared the chilly mornings and rainy or snowy nights when pupper parents are out walking their dog and hoping she’ll “do her business” so they can get back inside where it’s warm and dry. But since kitty’s toilet is inside, you do have the job of cleaning the litter box.

While you won’t have to pick up poo in a plastic bag after every deposit like a dog owner, you will have to adopt a maintenance routine of scooping out clumps of urine and feces and giving the litter box a thorough change and cleaning regularly. How you clean and maintain a litter box depends on your situation.

Litter Box Cleaning Variable 1: Type of Litter

The type of litter you choose makes a difference in how often you’ll need to clean the cat box. Clumping litter absorbs cat urine and forms hard clumps that can be scooped from the box, leaving the unsoiled litter behind. If you use non-clumping litter, urine will be absorbed by the clay or other ingredients such as corn or wood, with some falling to the bottom of the cat box under the litter.

Clumping litters need changing less frequently because you can use a litter scoop to remove the coated clumps of cat pee and poop. Non-clumping litters cannot be scooped, so to clean them you must change out all of the litter each time.

A litter that contains odor-controlling ingredients will keep down the smell and extend how often you will need to scoop the box or change out all of the litter.

Litter Box Maintenance Variable 2: Number of Cats

It stands to reason that the more cats you have, the more urine and feces will accumulate in the litter boxes and the more often you’ll have to clean them. While this is true for the most part, some litters are designed for multiple-cat households and have strong odor-controlling ingredients to help prolong the time between cleaning.

If you have more than one cat, you’ll want to have more than one litter box, too, so this helps distribute the urine and feces between the boxes. In this case, you won’t have to clean the individual boxes any more often, you’ll just have two or more boxes to maintain.

Two Types of Litter Box Cleaning: the Scoop and the Change

If you’re a clumping cat litter user (and about 60% of kitty parents are), there are two ways to clean the litter box: the scoop and the change. Scooping out clumps of urine and feces is something done regularly, every other day at minimum, but often daily or even twice daily if you have a cat in a small apartment and want to keep litter box smell under control. Cats don’t like dirty litter boxes any more than you do, and kitty may start going outside the box if you don’t keep it clean.

The other type of cleaning is when you dump all litter, scrub out the box, and start over fresh with new litter. If you have a non-clumping cat litter, this is the only way to clean the cat box: remove the old litter plus urine and feces, and add fresh litter. If you use clumping cat litter, scooping the poop and pee regularly prolongs the need for a dump-and-change, though this more thorough cleaning should still be done at least monthly.

How to Scoop a Litter Box

Do you remember playing with a pail, sieve, and shovel at the beach or in the sandbox when you were a kid? Scooping out the litter box is much the same as sieving out items from the sand, but in this case the buried “treasure” is clumps of urine and feces. The real treasure, though, is a clean litter box in about the same amount of time it takes to brush your teeth (if you’re doing it properly!).

Giving the litter box a scoop is easy and takes only a few minutes. Here’s the basic process for how:

Using a slotted litter scoop, dig down into the litter and fill the scoop.
Keeping the scoop over the litter box, shake the scoop gently side to side. The litter will fall through the slots back into the box and the clumps of urine and feces will remain in the scoop.
Dump the clumps into a plastic bag and head into the box for another scoop. Continue this process of scoop, sieve, and dump until your scoop only finds litter and no more clumps.
Seal the bag of litter and dispose outside.
Clean the edge of your litter box scoop with soap and water and let dry.

How often should you scoop out cat litter?

How Often Should You Change the Cat Litter? If you use a clumping litter, it's best to scoop the box daily and change it out completely at least monthly. If you have more than one cat, it may be best to change the cat litter more often, every 2-3 weeks.

How long can you go without scooping litter?

In general, you should completely change your cat's litter every one to four weeks. If multiple cats are using your litter box, weekly changes may be necessary. In the case of a litter box that is located in a low-traffic area of the home and rarely used, monthly litter changes may be acceptable.