If you recently turned your cat into an outdoor one, you’ve probably had a question, whether an outdoor cat needs a litter box.
To answer short, there are benefits for an outdoor cat having a litter box in the house. And definitely, if you are transitioning a cat to the life indoors, he will still need a litter box indoors.
It’s hard to get an outdoor cat to use a litter box
However, if you are dealing with a long term outdoor cat, the possibility it will have some kind of use for you is quite limited. Outdoor cats rarely use the litter box indoors. Unless you invest some serious time in training and retraining frequently.
Heck, even a recently transitioned cat, who still meows his head off at the front door to be let indoors and allowed to visit a litter box, will soon discover the benefits of eliminating under a clear sky and will start using the litter box less and less frequently. We’ve experienced that.
However, we already mentioned there are benefits, so, keeping a box is not that bad, and, we will give you one reason for this.
But if you do get your cat using the litter box, it may save his life
Yes, that’s right, only one. We’re not gonna talk about silly, and obvious reasons, like “most outdoor cats spend significant time indoors“, “the weather may be cold and cat may not want to go out”, “you may stay for too long away while the cat is trapped indoors” and similar… they’re obvious.
Today we want to mention a more serious reason, which truly matters, and may even save your cat’s life.
- Having an indoor litter box for an outdoor cat provides an ability to monitor your cat’s health.
You actually get to see what’s in the box. How it looks like, how often it occurs and similar. Of course, the sad news is – your cat has to use the box, so, really, those benefits are way more appreciable if you have an indoor cat. But, yet, if your cat still uses the box occasionally, you still may have a part of it.
So, what do we see in a litter box? We get to see the color of the wastes, whether there is no blood in your cat’s urine or feces, isn’t your cat experiencing diarrhea, constipation, isn’t he doing too often or frequent, or is he doing it at all (which, for outdoor cats, might be he’s doing it somewhere else).
All of those occurrences can have several reasons, and, a vet visit is recommended in most of the cases. You would not be able to find out about them if your outdoor cat would not have litter box indoors.
This article is a part of a series about litter box issues.