Disposable Litter Boxes at PetSmart: What to Know

PetSmart does sell disposable litter boxes, but the selection is much thinner than you'd expect. Out of roughly 136 products in their litter box category, exactly two are standalone disposable cardboard boxes, and both are made by Kitty Sift. Almost everything else filed under "disposable" is a PetSafe ScoopFree refill tray, which isn't a litter box at all.

What disposable litter boxes does PetSmart actually carry?

Two products, as of this writing.

At $19.99 for a three-pack, the Kitty Sift Disposable Jumbo Litter Box is the one most people find. Each box measures 17.8 by 20.25 inches with 5.5-inch walls, made from 100% post-consumer recycled cardboard, manufactured in Mexico. PetSmart's own listing tells you to replace it every three weeks.

Kitty Sift also sells a Disposable Sifting Litter Box Kit for $17.99, which gets you one box and three sifting liners. Instead of scooping, you lift the top liner and let clean litter fall through. It's a different workflow, and whether you like it depends on how much you trust cardboard to hold its shape while you lift it loaded with litter.

Then there are the ScoopFree trays, and this is where a lot of people get confused. Those pre-filled crystal litter trays are cartridges for PetSafe's automatic boxes, which run between $99 and $400 depending on the model. You can't use a ScoopFree tray on its own. If you came looking for a cardboard litter box you fill with your own litter, the ScoopFree listings aren't it.

How much do disposable litter boxes cost at PetSmart?

The Kitty Sift jumbo works out to $6.66 per box. On the three-week replacement schedule PetSmart prints in the product title, one cat goes through roughly 17 boxes a year. Call it $115 annually.

ScoopFree refills are a different universe. A single tray is $25.99. Three cost $73.49, six cost $139.99, which brings the cheapest per-tray price down to $23.33. PetSafe says one tray lasts up to 30 days for a single cat, so you're looking at $280 or more per year in cartridges, and that's after you've bought the machine.

Check your cart total before you assume shipping is free. PetSmart's free shipping starts at $49 with a Treats Rewards account, and a $19.99 three-pack won't get you there on its own.

Do disposable cardboard litter boxes actually work?

For most households, yes. There's one failure mode that shows up over and over in negative reviews across every brand, and it's almost always the same cause: not enough litter.

Cardboard fails when urine reaches the bottom panel and sits there. With three inches of clumping litter, urine binds near the surface and gets scooped out before it ever soaks down. With an inch, it goes straight through and the box turns to mush inside a week. People blame the box. It's usually the depth. Our guide on how much cat litter to put in the litter box has the numbers if you want them.

Some cats genuinely prefer cardboard, too. One of our customers put it plainly: "He used to pee on cardboard before I got him, so he now only uses disposable litter boxes." If you've rescued a cat with that history, a cardboard box isn't a compromise. It's the thing that works.

And there's a whole category of person these are built for that nobody talks about much. A customer with a disability wrote that sometimes her motivation to clean is so low that dishes pile up in the sink, and eventually her litter box starts to fill and smell. A hundred and thirty-one people marked that review helpful. That number tells you something. Throwing a box away removes the hardest step, which is the scrubbing, and for a lot of people that's the difference between a clean box and a neglected one. We went deeper on the tradeoffs in reusable versus disposable litter boxes.

How big should a disposable litter box be?

The 2021 AAHA-AAFP Feline Life Stage Guidelines say a litter box should be at least 1.5 times the length of your cat, measured nose to the base of the tail. A 16-inch cat needs a 24-inch box. The guidelines themselves acknowledge that most litter boxes sold today don't meet that standard.

Here's the honest part. No disposable litter box on the market reaches 24 inches. The Kitty Sift jumbo tops out at 20.25 inches on its long side, and plenty of disposable cat litter trays are shorter than that. If you have a Maine Coon, you'll be under the veterinary recommendation whichever disposable option you pick. That's a real limitation of the category, and any brand telling you otherwise is measuring something creatively.

Wall height is the spec most people underweight, and it causes the most floor damage. A 5.5-inch wall is fine for a cat that squats cleanly in the middle. It isn't fine for a cat that stands to pee, or an older cat whose aim has gone. A customer described exactly this: "We adopted an older cat who sometimes does not squat when she pees and would over shoot every open top litter box we tried. The urine would seep into everything." For that cat, the gap between 5.5-inch and 8.5-inch sides isn't a preference. It's whether your baseboards survive the year.

How long does one disposable litter box last?

Two to four weeks per cat, depending on litter depth and how diligent you are about daily scooping. Kitty Sift's own guidance shifts depending on where you read it. PetSmart's title says three weeks; the Chewy listing for the same box says four. That spread is your first clue the real answer depends on your household, not the label.

Add a second cat and the lifespan roughly halves. Veterinary guidance is the N+1 rule, one box per cat plus a spare, so two cats means three boxes running at once. That math is why multi-cat homes tend to buy disposables in bulk instead of three at a time.

Scoop daily no matter what the packaging promises. Nearly every "it fell apart in five days" review traces back to solids sitting in the box long enough to saturate the panel underneath.

Can you buy disposable litter boxes in a PetSmart store?

The Kitty Sift boxes are listed for in-store pickup and same-day delivery, so check availability on your own store's product page before driving over. Stock varies by location. Ordering online is the safer bet if you're not in a hurry.

You won't find our boxes at PetSmart. We sell direct and on Amazon, which is worth knowing if you were hoping to compare the two in person.

What if PetSmart's selection doesn't fit your cat?

We make a disposable litter box, so treat this section as a disclosed comparison rather than a neutral one.

Ours measures 19 by 17 inches with 8.5-inch sides, three inches taller than the Kitty Sift jumbo. Two boxes interlock into a covered setup at 19 by 17 by 17, so a disposable litter box with lid doesn't cost you a second product. Corrugated cardboard, double-coated to resist leaks, no plastic anywhere. Made in the USA under US Patent 9,258,977, which matters to some buyers and not to others, though it's the reason we can control the board weight and the coating rather than accepting whatever a contract plant overseas runs that quarter.

On price, be skeptical of anyone comparing pack sizes without doing the division. Ours run $69.99 for 10, $84.99 for 15, and $109.99 for 20, with free shipping on all of them. That's $7.00, $5.67, and $5.50 per box. So the 10-pack costs more per box than Kitty Sift at PetSmart. The 15 and 20-packs cost less. You're paying for taller walls and buying further ahead, and if that buy-in doesn't suit you, the PetSmart option is a reasonable box at a reasonable price.

Bulk math is also why people leave subscription services. A customer with four cats wrote that she thought she'd died and gone to heaven when she found a disposable litter box subscription, "that was until I started adding up the cost." At $23 to $26 a tray, monthly delivery adds up fast. Buying a year of boxes at once is unglamorous and cheaper. You can see the full range on our disposable litter box page, or read our wider roundup of the best disposable litter boxes to see how the field stacks up.

Before you buy anything, get two numbers. Measure your cat nose to tail base and multiply by 1.5, then watch how your cat actually goes and decide whether 5.5 inches of wall is enough or you need closer to nine. Hold any box you're considering against those two numbers. Most disposable purchases that end badly failed one of them.