One of life's toughest questions is how to deal with cat litter boxes. Here's the scenario: You have an indoor cat. Maybe you're off the deep end and you have multiple indoor cats. Cleanliness is important to you. One of the reasons you like cats is because they have this satisfying habit of cleaning. Ask any cat for a list of their priorities, and cleaning and preening would be at the top, somewhere between napping and practicing a haughty stare.  

First, where do you place the cat litter boxes? Location, location, location. If you're lucky enough to have an attached garage or a service porch, you put them (or it) out there. The trick to finding the perfect location is to keep it out of sight but not out of mind. It won't completely go away. Like Mom told you: There are no self-cleaning toilets. You still have to pay attention to them. You still have to scoop the poo. 

Unless, of course, you purchase an automatic litter box. These 20^th century inventions are truly luxurious. Most of them come with a timing device. You set the device at regular intervals, say three times a day, for the automatic raking to take place. Your kitty will feel like the privileged royalty she already knows she is. It's like having a personal street sweeper. Or a self-cleaning toilet bowl for that matter.  

Purchasing a cat litter box used to be a simple affair. They all looked pretty much the same, rectangular and office-white, either with a top or without. Now there are dozens of shapes and colors to choose from. You can find purple ones, green ones, or terra cotta color to match the tile on your kitchen floor. You can probably find them in the shape of an igloo or a tee-pee or even the Taj Majal.  

After you've chosen a location for your cat litter boxes and whether or not to spring for a self-cleaning litter box, you are faced with one of the truly perplexing modern problems: Which kitty litter should you choose? Your choices are staggering, as any trip down the litter aisle at the pet store will tell you. You get a choice of clumping, non-clumping, perfumed, and non-perfumed. It doesn't stop there. You also need to decide between colors of cat litter. Should you choose the blue? White? Sparkly? Then there are the differing textures, all designed to lure your feline into the box to do her thing. Does your kitty prefer flushable sand litter or would she rather dig into that new-fangled white plastic chips material with the blue flecks?  

Finally, you need to decide whether to buy bags or liners. If your cat is a digging critter, the liner could end up on top of the cat litter. Watch out for that, it's not a very pleasant sight. If your kitty has graduated with top honors from pet obedience training, however, he may only dig to sufficiently bury his deposits.  

There's no question about it, cat litter boxes can be tricky real estate. Fortunately, cats are incredibly smart (at least yours is), and once they know where it is, they'll always return to the cat litter boxes whenever they're ready to go.