I got a weird problem involving both of my cats (Siegfrieda, to the left; Kika, to the right).
Kika is rather particular about having her own litterbox(es), and refuses to use a litterbox shared by another cat. Frieda on the other hand is adept to the “if I fits, I sits, I shits” philosophy, and is totally OK sharing litterboxes.
That creates a problem: no matter if properly and regularly cleaned, the only one using litterboxes here is Frieda. We had, like, five of them at once; and Kika would still rather do her business on the patio.
How do I either teach Kika “it’s fine to share a litterbox”, or teach Siegfrieda “that’s Kika’s litterbox, leave it alone”?
Probably a dumb suggestion but… I know you can get cat feeders that will detect your cat’s microchip and only let them in. I wonder if you could get a litterbox that uses similar tech to only open for Kika?
This was the first thing that came up in a search. Looks like there’s a few sizes too:
https://meowspace.biz/product/meowspace-microchip-system/
It looks pretty pricey, but considering microchip pet doors on their own cost about that much, this seems like a cheaper option than DIYing some contraption involving a microchip pet door.
Look around for this kind of stuff OP! It exists!
I mean I could probably do it with around 100 bucks in hardware….
Convincing the CIA or NSA or FBI or half a dozen alphabet soup agencies that you really need their facial recognition code in a FOIA request…. That’s both priceless and probably expensive at the same time.
Probably easier to just do some machine learning stuff. Cat recognition, no chips needed.
Op might need some electrical engineering but I’m fairly certain there’s a homemade solution using an rfid tag on a collar.