As seen by the name, we glamp with cats. One of the reasons we bought our original travel trailer was to bring the cats with us camping instead of having to get people to care for them or only taking short trips. Cats offer the advantage that they are more self sufficient than dogs, so they are less restrictive for camping. You can put out food and water to allow you to go out for extended periods without worry. (If the power is unstable, there is no shade, or it is hot, you still need to be careful because trailers can heat like cars and kill pets.) A disadvantage is that you need a litter pan for the cats. The general rule is one more litter pan than you have cats, but three litter pans is not viable in most campers. One option is less cats, but Kate rejected that immediately. The alternate option is having less litter pans that get cleaned more, but this still leaves the question of where to put the litter pan.

Kate categorically opposed putting the litter pan in the kitchen. I had trouble arguing with her about that; cat butt is not an acceptable seasoning blend for most people. You may need to get creative and think out of the box. In our 2014 Jayco Jay Feather X213 travel trailer, we had a “Pack-N-Play” door opening on the side of the trailer to give access underneath the bunks in the front. This cubby hole allowed us to transport bikes, store a ladder to clean the slide roof, and put the litter pan out of the way. This layout worked well for us for many weekend and one to three week long trips for seven years.

When we looked to upgrade to a larger trailer, we never found a 5th wheel meeting our other criteria that had a similar cubby hole. The primary options for a litter pan are in the kitchen, dining room, living room/den, office, bathroom, bedroom, or closet. Most RVs do not have all of these rooms and several are commonly multi-use rooms (e.g., Kitchen + Dining Room+ Living Room). These locations all have different trade-offs for a litter pan.

• Kitchen: It is probably not sanitary. It will probably end in divorce. It will probably result in an incurable disease.
• Dining Room: Similar issues to the kitchen, and the scent of cat butt will not improve your dining experience. (Otherwise, you would see advertisement for “Ode de Cat Butt” coming to a fine dining establishment near you…)
• Living Room/Den: If the living room or den is separate from the kitchen, this is a no effort location to put the litter pan away from the kitchen. It might detract from movie night or add smell-o-vision to your zombie apocalypse movie. An ottoman with a litter pan in it might hide it away some, but it will need to be secured for travel.
• Office: This is another no effort location for the litter pan. The swish-swish of digging in litter can be annoying when you are trying to work. The smell can also be distracting enough to force deal with the latest delivery. This might be problematic, if you starting gagging while teaching a class or attending a meeting.
• Bathroom: This seems like an ideal low effort location, but most RV bathrooms are small. Sitting on the toilet with your feet propped on a litter pan sounds uncomfortable. Some luxury RV models have large enough bathrooms. Some models have a dresser slide spanning the bedroom and bathroom that leaves some open floor space at the bedroom to bathroom door. We never tried this options, so we do not know if the humidity from using the shower will cause the litter to clump. Putting the litter pan in the shower is an option, if you do not plan to use the shower, can leave the door open, and cover the drain to keep litter out.
• Bedroom: Many RVs have a bed with storage space underneath. A litter pan could be put under the bed, and the bed can be raised to scoop the litter pan. Minimally, an entry hole is required in the side of the compartment under the mattress. In some RVs, the storage under the bed connects into the sub-flooring of the unit. It is not safe to have your cat underneath the flooring of the RV, so you will need to build a compartment under the bed for this case. An enclosed litter pan pushed up against the opening will not sufficiently seal off access under the bed. If your cat likes to hide on moving day, you might need to build a compartment just to avoid the need to crawl into the back corner under the bed to get the cat. Depending on your layout, this can be any where from low to moderate effort to modify your RV.
• Closet: The bottom of the closet is another location that appears convenient, but there are some disadvantages. Lightweight litter sheds a lot of dust, so items in the closet can get covered in litter dust. If you miss a day of scooping, your clothes might also get a pungent smell. Some RVs have a separate closet for the washer/dryer that would be ideal for this. If there is space, the door could just be blocked open for the cats. Some trailers have a single closet without enough room to leave the door open. This requires removing the door or modifying the door to allow access to the litter pan with the door closed. You may also want to enclose the litter pan space for easy cleaning and keeping dust and smells from the rest of the closet. Removing the door is easier, but everything might fall out on travel days. Depending on your layout, this option can range from no effort to significant effort to modify your RV.

A concern with many of the options is accessibility to the cat. If you close the bathroom door when you shower, you might get a nasty surprise walking down the hall. Another issue to be aware of is litter getting scattered around the trailer. Putting a rug down to help scrape litter from their feet should help, but you will need to sweep and vacuum periodically. Some people put their litter pan in a card board to help contain the litter, but a box did not help us as much as the rug.

Since there is only one closet in our RV, we choose to modify the closet door with a hole for pet access. We also opted to enclose and weatherstrip the litter pan area at the bottom of the closet to simplify cleaning and separate dust/odors from the rest of the closet. This solution required building an enclosing box at the bottom of the closet. We opted to shelve the entire closet, so that was largely completed as a bonus from the shelves.

Our cats like to follow us; it can be irritating to constantly open and close doors for them when they scratch to be let into a room. Since the closet pet door was a straight forward task, we opted to add closable pet doors to the office and bedroom. We left the bathroom door with no access, but it is seldom occupied long enough for the cats to be annoying. Providing a means to close the pet door in the bedroom and office allows us to coral the cats when we are packing, cleaning, or the bad child needs a time out. Adding a pet door to the bottom of the closet is also a way to give a pet a separate sleeping area. Our closet is about 2’x2′, which will fit a bed for a medium sized dog.