Do litter mats work?

[Bernadine]

I'm so tired of walking in cat litter.  Sam is the WORST.  We tried a lid, he just shovels it out the door.  Should I try a bigger container?  Like, a rubbermaid container? 

[pedanticwench]

No, because my cat's an asshole and jumps over the mat anyway.

[wowhead]

They don't work for us. Both of our cats just jump over the mat. It's annoying as hell but we haven't found a good solution yet.

[kellykapowski]

Not really. A bigger bin won't really work much either, in my experience. They get litter stuck in their paws and that's what they track out of the box.

[cutecloud]

It helps in the sense that our cat used to take a flying leap out of the cat box and so the mat would catch most of that spray of litter. But if the cat gets litter stuck in its paws or something it won't help with that.

[TrickyBob]

I take sticky dog pee pads and line an area with them and put the cat box in the middle. That way they can't move them (my cats have a habit of shoveling them into the box if they aren't stuck down) and if they happen to hang their ass over the edge, it lands on the pee pad anyway.


The dog never used them so I had to find a way to use up the packs I had bought when we got her.

[sergey]

We've tried a few and none seem to work all that well. I did notice a big difference when we switched to this box though. I still use a mat and have some litter on the floor but not as much and not far from the box

[caddywompus]

We have mats, and they do help to contain a lot of the litter, but we still end up with some on the floor. Also- we have 1 cat who LOVES to dig in the litter, and she flings a bunch of it out of the box every time she goes in there!
FWIW- we keep our litter boxes in the bathtub of the spare bathroom, so this also helps contain some of the litter.

[wildfloweragain]

We have the same exact type of box that we had with our last cat. The big box with a flap opening (and a lid.) The only difference is we never put the flap in this box. We do have a litter mat, but we have from the beginning. This cat (1 yr old) doesn't do smelly poos or get litter anywhere. Our old cat did both. Maybe because he was old, maybe because he wasn't as neat of a cat. My neat cat is a girl.