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The best litter box accessory is five minutes, twice a day, in which you scoop it out. This is by far the best means of keeping the litter box clean and pleasant for you and your cat. Scooping poop needn't take very long, and personally, I think it's worth the little effort to make sure that your cat doesn't crap in places you REALLY don't want it to. Like the bathtub. Or on your white sofa. At the very least, you should scoop it on a daily basis.

The next best litter box accessory is clumping cat litter. Remember, cats poop and pee, and when you clean the litter box, you need to get rid of both. If the litter doesn't clump, all you're removing is the poop, and leaving the pee behind. At this point, you have a few options: chuck the used litter at the end of the day, or pray that your cat can tolerate the pee smell a little longer. Cats are meticulous, some more so than others-it goes without saying that the latter involves a bigger risk of the cat deciding its box is too stinky. Imagine how you'd feel if you had to use a peed-in toilet every time you went to the bathroom.

Clumping cat litter should not be perfumed, because cats like to lick themselves after using the litter box, and when they do, they are, essentially, eating litter dust. A little clay is not going to kill the cat, but the perfumes that scent the litter may be toxic for the cat. Take a whiff of how strong the litter smells, and then ask yourself if you'd like to eat the dust. It is my personal preference to use wheat- and corn-based litters, since they are not perfumed and can be flushed, but for the sake of economy, and because my cats don't give a damn, I use the cheapest clumping litter I can find, which works just as well (except I can't flush it).

Cat litter should also not have crystals or pearls. Your cat may use it until the day he decides that enough is enough, his paws hurt too much, and start using your bathtub. He may never do that; he might just do that. You never know, but is it really worth the sparkly, glitzy litter to walk in on a cat turd in the middle of your bathtub?

Another best litter box accessory isn't really an accessory so much as it is a litter box: get the biggest one you can afford. By biggest, we do not mean deepest, or with a high "roof". We mean area-square footage. My Shadow is a small cat, 10 lbs, but she requires a lot of room to scratch around and dig out the perfect pee-hole. TibblyWibbly is a smaller cat (6 lbs), and she keeps herself confined to the edges

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