Cats and Crazy, The Chicken and the Egg Dilemma

So do crazy people get cats or do cats make people crazy? We may never know.

Our vet said that each cat household should have N+1 cat litter boxes, where N = the number of cats you own. This means that I had to do some litter box research, which is great!  Because I'm a nerd and I loooove research!  

The first thing I considered was appearance. Let's face it, looking at a box of sh!t is an eyesore.  Luckily there are plenty of options that try and cleverly (and not-so-cleverly) hide the cat's WC.

This has GOT to be a gag gift, amirite?

I've never seen a cat look more embarrassed / KattySaks via Amazon

I needed to find a box solution with better camouflage.  Enter Good Pet Stuff:

Kind of fug / Good Pet Stuff via Amazon

I vetoed that idea simply because the pressure of keeping a cat AND a plant alive was too great.

Finally I thought I found something that I liked:

Designer Catbox Litter Box / Via Amazon

Is it furniture?  Is it litter box? A lil' of both!  The shape of the piece above wasn't exactly to my liking, but I read reviews that you could customize it a bit.  It also provides an elegant solution to the problem of "tracking", or cat litter getting all over the floor:

Via Amazon

I wasn't sure I was sold on the idea of a faux piece of furniture, so next I looked at litter boxes that minimized tracking. I found a box that was basically a bucket with a hole in the top. Practical, sure, but ugly as sin. And then I stumbled upon this:

Hello, I'm $160 / via modkat

It's a bucket with a hole on the top! A fancy bucket with a hole on the top!

via modkat

The top of box can swivel 90 degrees so that excess litter can fall back into the box. It also comes with a litter scooper that has a handy brush on the side.

 I didn't anticipate how hard it would be to strike a careful balance between my sanity and finding something that will please my cat.

So which one did I choose??