You may or may not remember Annie and Cujo from the night Moose, Lally, and I slept over at my friends’ house. Annie and Cujo are a pair of rescued cats that belong to some very good friends of mine.
Those friends decided it was time to reclaim their spare room. Since they moved into their new home, one room has been a catch-all for boxes, stuff they didn’t know what to do with, and the litter boxes.
Months passed. Eventually, they wanted their spare room back! My friend Jen is quite the home improvement diva — she designed and put up her own backsplash in the kitchen and organized a massive painting party to redo her living room, kitchen, hallway, and office. She came up with a plan to relocate the litter boxes.
A pair of doors separates the main house from the garage (with the laundry room in between the two). Jen cut a space into each door, then installed a cat door (or cat flap — whatever you like to call it). The litter boxes were moved from the spare room into the garage.
They were worried that Annie and Cujo wouldn’t figure out the new arrangement, so a lure was set up: the food bowls were also relocated into the garage, too. At dinner time, a big production was made of bringing the food out into the garage and setting it down to help the kitties make the association with the new location.
For the first week or so, they kept the door flaps taped open so the cats had a clear path from the house into the garage for food and potty. After that, they let the flaps down. Lo and behold — Annie and Cujo now push their way through the clear plastic flaps to visit the garage for food and bathroom time.