Where to put a litter tray: practical options for your home

Check the location before buying the tray

Measure the cat as well as the room. Our litter tray sizing guide explains what to check inside the box.

Cats Protection recommends a quiet position away from washing machines, busy routes and cat flaps, with feeding, drinking and sleeping areas kept separate. Privacy means a place where the cat can toilet undisturbed; it does not automatically mean putting a lid on the box.

Here is how we would turn that advice into a check of an actual room:

• Run through an ordinary day. Open doors and drawers. Think about laundry, visitors and the route to the kettle.
• Check access when the room is in use. A bathroom that is available except whenever anyone needs the bathroom has a scheduling problem.
• Allow for using the tray. The footprint on a listing is only part of the space it occupies. Include the approach, exit and room to open or lift any lid.
• Try the cleaning movement. Can you reach inside, lift the tray and carry waste out without moving half the furniture?

Do this with a tape measure before committing to a purchase. A tray can fit a gap perfectly and still be awkward to live with.

Which room makes sense?

These are practical checks, not a ranking of rooms. The name on the floor plan tells you less than what happens there.

Our preference would be to solve the everyday access problem before the visual one. You will still know the tray is there, even if it matches the sideboard.

Where to put a litter tray in a small flat

Start by marking the places already occupied by food, water, a bed and regular walking routes. Then compare the remaining spaces using the checklist above. You are looking for a workable arrangement, not an imaginary extra room.

The two sketches below show the same hypothetical room with one tray moved. They illustrate a door-access check only; they are not complete cat-home layouts or a drawing of our bathroom.

A mat also takes up floor space. If you are dealing with scattered grains, our litter-tracking guide helps identify the source, while the mat guide compares sizes and construction. Choose around the route your cat uses rather than making the route awkward to accommodate the purchase.

Make room for more than one tray

PDSA recommends at least two trays for one cat. Cats Protection gives the general rule of one per cat plus an extra, spread across different locations rather than lined up together.

Include that in the plan before buying a single enormous box for the only available gap. In a home with more than one floor, check the options on each floor too. The useful question is where another accessible toilet could go, not whether a second box can be squeezed against the first.

What if you need to move an existing tray?

Separate a furniture rearrangement from a cat suddenly avoiding the toilet. If the current setup works, our practical preference is to offer an additional tray at the proposed location first and observe whether it is used, rather than making the familiar option disappear at once. There is no fixed number of days promised here.

If your cat starts toileting elsewhere or their toileting behaviour changes suddenly, speak to your vet rather than assuming the location is the whole explanation. Both Cats Protection and PDSA advise checking for medical causes. Never punish a cat for an accident.

Where Goldfish's tray lives

We have an oddly shaped bathroom, which has turned out to be useful for something. It lets us put Goldfish's large covered tray out of the way and give her privacy. We have used it for about two years, and she takes the top entrance, like she is in a spy movie.

That is an example of a box working with a particular space. It is not a reason to buy the same box before measuring yours. Our Feandrea covered litterbox review covers what it has been like to own, including its size and cleaning. The top-entry versus front-entry guide explains the access trade-offs.

Start with the space and the cat. The shopping can take its turn.