The litter box was the first thing my grandson saw when he came in from the garage. He was eight and he said it out loud. Grandma, why does your laundry room smell like a pet store? I laughed and handed him a cookie. Then I went back and stood in that room alone and looked at what he was looking at. A plastic pan on a mat in the corner, in plain view of the door.
I have two cats. Pepper is nine, a gray tabby, and Moose is four, orange, sixteen pounds, and the reason nothing flimsy lasts in this house. The laundry room sits off the passage from the garage, so it is the first room guests walk through. It was also the only room with a spare corner, and for two years I told myself that was fine.
It was not fine. I tried the usual fixes first. A covered box with a dome lid made the corner look like a space capsule. A mat caught about half the tracking. Scooping twice a day helped the smell and did nothing for the look of the thing. Then I came across the Feandrea litter box enclosure, which is not a litter box at all but an end table with the pan living inside it, and I realized I had been shopping for the wrong object.
What I finally understood is that you cannot make a litter box look like furniture by putting a lid on it. You have to give it a piece of furniture to live inside. That is a different purchase, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to make it.
I bought the Feandrea end table about a year ago. It measures 31.5 by 20.9 by 19.7 inches and weighs 35 pounds, and it is built from particleboard and MDF, the same material as the bookshelf in my front room. The compartment inside measures 19.8 by 19.8 by 18.3 inches. It has a barn door front and a rustic finish, and from three feet away it reads as furniture. That is the whole point of it.
A litter box on a mat is a litter box on a mat. A litter box inside an end table is furniture, and the difference is not cosmetic.
The laundry room corner your guests stop asking about
Feandrea builds an end table with the litter pan living inside it, so the first room off the garage stops looking like a pet store. Check the current price and the inside measurements before you order.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →It came flat in one box and I put it together myself in about twenty minutes with a screwdriver. The parts were labeled and the instructions were step by step, and I did not have to call anybody. I am sixty-six and I have assembled a good deal of furniture in my life, some of it badly. This was not one of the hard ones.
It stands where the plastic pan used to sit. The top holds up to 66 pounds, so a lamp and a basket of litter and a scoop sit on it without any bowing. That sounds like a small thing. It is not. The lamp means the room is lit, the basket means I am not hunting for a scoop, and both of those mean I actually keep up with the box instead of avoiding the room.
Pepper took to it the first week. She likes a covered spot and she likes being left alone, and the enclosure gives her both. Moose, all sixteen pounds of him, goes in and out without a complaint, and neither cat has ever refused it. I will say the honest thing here. A covered box in an enclosed space still needs scooping daily. The enclosure holds smell better than an open pan, but it is not a substitute for the scoop. Nothing is.
The scatter on the laundry floor dropped noticeably. Not completely. There is still grit on the mat in front of it, and there always will be with two cats. But I am no longer sweeping the whole room every morning, and the floor by the garage door no longer crunches underfoot. It carries a two year warranty, which I did not expect on flat pack furniture.
Two things I would tell you straight. First, it is heavy enough that I would not want to move it often. Thirty-five pounds empty, more with a full pan inside, and mine slides rather than lifts. Second, it is not a small piece. Measure the corner before you order. Mine fits with a couple of inches to spare on each side and I would not want it any tighter than that.
What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table
If you are buying this to fix a smell problem, understand what you are buying. You are buying a piece of furniture that hides the box and makes the room presentable again. The smell is on you and the scoop. What the Feandrea does is take away the reason you were avoiding the room in the first place, and in my experience that is what actually fixes the smell, because a box you do not mind walking past is a box that gets cleaned.
If you are buying it for the look, check the inside measurements against the pan you already own before you order. 19.8 by 19.8 by 18.3 is the number that matters and it is the number most people never look at. A standard pan drops in with room to spare. If you have gone out and bought one of those deep high-sided pans, measure it first, because that is where people get caught.
And if you have a cat who is cautious about enclosed spaces, give it a week before you decide anything. Pepper walked in like she had been waiting for it. Moose circled twice and then went in. Your cat may take longer, and that is not the table's fault. Put a familiar blanket nearby and leave the room.
The grandkids were over on Sunday. Nobody said a word about the laundry room. That is the highest compliment a piece of furniture gets in this house.
One less thing in your house that looks like a litter box
Same footprint as a side table, one litter pan inside, and a flat top that holds a lamp. Two year warranty. Measure your corner and your pan, then check today's price.
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