Covered and Side-Entry Disposable Litter Boxes

A covered disposable litter box is a cardboard tray with a hood over it and a doorway cut into the front, so your cat walks in at floor level with a roof overhead. Side entry means that doorway sits on the front or side instead of being a hole punched in the lid, and for older cats, heavy cats, and kittens, that difference matters far more than the cover does.

Most disposable trays sold today are open, with nothing on top. Covered ones exist. You just have to know which formats are real, and whether your cat wants a roof is a separate question from whether you do.

Do cats actually prefer a covered litter box?

Most of them have no opinion. A 2013 study in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery gave 28 cats a covered box and an open box side by side, then weighed the waste from each every day for a week. No significant difference. Four cats clearly preferred the covered box, four clearly preferred the open one, and the other twenty used both about equally.

Size may be doing more work than the hood. In a later field study, cats offered both styles with equal floor area leaned very slightly toward covered. Give the covered box 17% more floor space and that lean became statistically clear.

So where did the advice to avoid hoods come from? Probably the boxes themselves. Commercial covered boxes are usually small, because a lid sells better on a shelf than 24 inches of floor does. The research boxes were roomy modified storage tubs, which is not what you find at PetSmart. One caveat from the same data: cats over about 13 pounds trended toward the open box.

Put both out for a week and watch which one fills up faster. Your cat will settle it in less time than you'd spend reading reviews.

Side entry or top entry: which one should you get?

Top entry boxes have a hole in the lid. Your cat jumps up onto the roof and drops down into the litter. They track less litter than anything else on the market, since paws scrape across the lid on the way out, and a dog can't get into one.

Every trip is a climb, though. Accessibility guidance for older cats puts the ideal entry height under about four inches, and a top entry box is the opposite of that. If your cat is past ten, under six months, over fifteen pounds, or has any diagnosed joint problem, buy side entry and skip the debate.

Feline arthritis is common, underdiagnosed, and almost invisible. Cats don't limp the way dogs do. A cat who starts peeing on the bath mat beside a box she used without complaint for six years is usually telling you the climb has started to hurt. Swapping the box costs less than treating a behavior problem, and works faster.

What covered disposable litter boxes are actually available?

Three formats, and they're not equivalent.

The first is a tray that ships with its own nesting hood. PetSafe's disposable travel box works this way, with a privacy hood and a raised entrance, sold prefilled with crystal litter. Good for a hotel room. Not built to be your everyday box.

The second is the subscription tray, which is mostly a tall open box with no lid at all. Kitty Poo Club falls here. You're buying height and a monthly delivery, not a cover.

The third is a set of identical trays where a second one flips upside down over the first and locks into place, giving you an open tray or a fully covered box out of the same pack. That's the only format that lets you change your mind after the box arrives.

People also improvise, cutting a doorway in a shipping box and setting it over an open tray. It works for about a week, until the cardboard picks up moisture from the litter and starts to sag.

Does a covered litter box trap the smell?

Yes, and mostly for your cat. The hood holds odor inside the box, which is why the room smells better to you and why the ammonia concentrates exactly where your cat has to put her face. A cover raises the price of skipping a day.

Daily scooping is the whole arrangement, and that is easier to write than to do. One customer put it flatly: "I hate scooping cat litter, so it just doesn't get done." A hood does nothing for that problem. A disposable box gets closer, because the whole thing leaves on a schedule instead of waiting for you to feel like cleaning it.

How long a cardboard tray holds up before that swap varies a lot by brand, coating, and how many cats are using it. Clumping litter extends it in any box, since the moisture gets trapped near the surface instead of settling at the base. Three inches is the working minimum, and here's how much cat litter to put in the litter box if you want the full breakdown.

How big does a covered litter box need to be?

The 2021 AAHA and AAFP feline life stage guidelines call for a box at least one and a half times the length of your cat, nose to base of tail, then add that most manufactured boxes aren't large enough. A 16-inch cat wants around 24 inches of box. Go measure what's on the shelf and you'll see how rarely anyone hits that.

A hood adds zero floor space. It only takes away headroom. Put a lid on a cramped tray and you get a cramped tray your cat now has to duck into, which is how you end up with paws on the rim and urine running down the outside wall.

For reference: Kitty Poo Club's standard box is 19 by 15 by 10 inches and the XL is 22 by 18 by 10. Most cardboard trays on Amazon come in smaller still, around 17 by 13, which is fine for a kitten or a weekend away and tight for a grown cat. Buy floor space first, then check that your cat can turn a full circle inside without brushing the roof.

Which cats do better with the cover on?

Cats who spray the wall or don't fully squat are the clearest case. One owner described adopting an older cat who overshot every open top box they tried, until the urine was seeping into everything, and said tall back and side walls finally caught it. Enthusiastic diggers are the other easy call, along with nervous cats living near a washing machine or a busy front door, and anyone with a dog who takes an unhealthy interest in the litter.

Leave the cover off for a cat who's already avoiding the box, for large breeds, and for seniors working hard just to get in. In multi-cat homes a hood blocks your cat's view of the room, so a cat who gets ambushed on the way out may quietly stop going in and never make it obvious why. Keep at least one open box in the house. The standard guidance is one box per cat plus one, and nothing says they all have to match.

What does a covered disposable litter box cost?

Subscriptions are where this gets expensive. A customer with four cats wrote that she thought she'd died and gone to heaven when she found disposable box subscriptions, right up until she started adding up the cost. Kitty Poo Club's twin pack lists around $24.99 and the extra-large box around $17.99 on its own, so you're paying roughly $12 to $18 per box. Multiply that by four cats and twelve months before you decide it's the convenient option.

Cats Desire sells the same box in bulk instead: $69.99 for 10, $84.99 for 15, and $109.99 for 20, free shipping on all three. That works out to $7.00, $5.67, and $5.50 a box. Every box in the pack is identical, which is what makes the cover work. Use one as a high sided disposable litter box at 19 by 17 by 8.5 inches, or flip a second one over the top, connect the tabs, and you have a covered box at 19 by 17 by 17 with the doorway at the front where your cat walks straight in. No climbing, and no separate hood taking up shelf space.

They're corrugated cardboard with a double-coated leak-resistant barrier, built with our patented design and made in the USA. One box runs two to four weeks per cat with about three inches of clumping litter. They ship flat, so a year's supply stores on a closet shelf, and assembly takes about a minute. The setup instructions cover both the open and covered configurations. If you're still deciding on the format itself, this comparison of reusable versus disposable litter boxes lays out the tradeoffs.

Set an open box next to a covered one for a week, let your cat pick, then order the pack size that fits how often you'll be swapping. Both configurations come out of the same pack on the Cats Desire disposable litter boxes page.