we live with four cats, which is excellent. they go to the bathroom quite a bit, which is less awesome, but we knew this about them before we let them move in.

we have these two really large litter boxes, which are dope. they have these places at one end where you can place your scoop that you have for the litter, like a holster. i don’t think it’s meant to be a holster, because it’s really narrow and deep, but it works as a place to stick the scoop and i haven’t ever actually even considered what its intended function is, because all i do with the litter is scoop it and refill it when it’s low. you can only stick the scoop a little bit of the way into the opening (it’s almost like a slot), but it stays in place. i suppose you could put it in handle first, which would take more advantage of the depth, but i’m not trying to grab my cat litter scoop by the scooping end.

right now, there are three scoops taking up 3/4 of the available slots in the two litter boxes. two of them are plastic, and one of them is metal, with a rubber grip. i got the metal one, because the plastic ones, which i always chose because they are cheaper and i don’t need anything fancy to shovel poop, kept breaking. i don’t know how common that is, but it happened like three times. it’s unclear whether the problem was that these cats were making some extra heavy, Nibbler-style waste, or if there’s an issue with my scooping technique, but it bothered me enough that i decided to get a metal scoop and end all the questions.

unfortunately, i just didn’t like the metal one. it’s so heavy, it was hard to even tell whether i was scooping anything or not, and it obliterated the solid clumps of urine it smashed into during scooping, which made scooping really difficult. basically, it caused as many problems as it solved (which was one), and it removed the tactile pleasure of, you know, picking up pee and poop with a little shovel. also, the plastic ones can be really bright colors, which i enjoy greatly.

so i went back to the plastic one, but not until comparing different scoops at different pet stores. i got a reasonably substantial deep blue one to pair with a bright yellow number that was still hanging around. and the metal one stays in the holster, at the ready for when it might be needed. i try not to look at it, though, because it makes me think of how awful it would feel banging against my teeth. which it definitely would, because it would be a struggle just to get it inside my mouth, it’s so big, and there’s no way i could avoid it clanging against at least some of them. *shudder*