Six cats, one bully tabby, litter box chaos solved

A dominant cat guarding the litter box is one of the most common reasons multi-cat households end up with accidents everywhere — and with six cats, one territorial tabby can effectively lock everyone else out. Quick context before I ask you a couple of questions: most litter boxes are already too small, needing to be at least 1.5 times a cat's body length to be comfortable, and covered boxes make the guarding problem even worse because there's only one exit to block. How big are your cats roughly, are any of them particularly large or elderly, and whereabouts in the house are your current boxes — are they all in one area or spread around?

Three boxes for six cats is the core problem — the rule of thumb is one box per cat plus one spare, so you're looking at seven ideally. But clustering them all in one spot is almost as bad as having too few, because the tabby only needs to guard one corridor to control all three. The puddles in the bedrooms tell you those cats are desperate and have no safe alternative. Can you think of two or three other spots in the house — upstairs, a spare room, even a corner of the living room — where you could physically separate boxes so the tabby can't patrol them all at once?

That's exactly the right instinct — open-top, reasonably sized, and not an eyesore. For a six-cat home where guarding is the issue, I'd go with the Savic Senator Open Cat Litter Tray. It's 56cm long, which comfortably fits average domestic shorthairs, it's open so there's no single entry point for a bully to block, and the high back and sides contain scatter without creating a trap. It comes in neutral colours, stacks flat if you're storing spares, and it's well made enough to take daily use from multiple cats without warping or cracking. Get four or five of them, split them across at least three locations in the house, and the tabby physically cannot guard them all — problem solved within a week in most cases.

I'd phase them out. Covered boxes are already low on most cats' preference list, and in a guarding situation they're actively harmful — one cat sitting outside the entrance means any cat inside is cornered with no escape route, which makes the box feel like a threat. Swap them for open trays across separate locations and you'll likely see the avoidance behaviour drop off quickly. The tabby may still try to hang around one box, but with open trays dotted around the house the others will find their way to the unguarded ones without any stress.