We’re a small team of furniture designers, engineers, and animal behaviorists and we’re obsessed with cats.
This is a text-based version of the Cove litter box project. A full visual version can be found here.
If you ask any cat owner they’ll tell you the most annoying part about owning a cat is the litterbox. It’s something that you interact with every day, yet it’s a hassle to clean, and the available options are really bad.
You either get a simple but really ugly plastic bin that looks like it came from the dollar store. Or you get some space-aged robot that's huge, loud, and prone to breaking.
Our team is obsessed with design and cats. We just wanted a litterbox that was simple, beautiful, and easy to clean. But nothing existed - so we designed one ourselves.
Introducing Cove. A simple, beautiful litterbox.
Cove is a beautiful litterbox kit with an integrated scoop and dustpan, built by furniture designers, engineers, and animal behaviorists.
After in depth user research, we discovered the most important feature of a litterbox is that it should be easy to clean. Yet many litterboxes have shapes and materials that don't align with this. Cove's shape is incredibly simple and open - there are no unnecessary bends or hard-to-get-to corners. For the material itself, we considered a variety of options, but ultimately landed on plastic because it’s durable and especially easy to clean.
Most plastic litterboxes are flimsy and have a cheap finish, but Cove uses a double wall and slightly textured outer matte plastic that looks and feels sturdy, and is pleasant to the eye. The inside of the box is smooth, and easy to clean with a single wipe. Contrasting silicon rubber at the base keeps the box firmly planted to the floor and prevents sliding when your cat goes in and out.
One thing we found during our research was that the litterbox tools are as important to user satisfaction as the box itself. Yet, most litterboxes include, as an afterthought, a cheap flimsy scoop that ends up just being tossed on the floor beside the box. Another common user frustration is the litter scatter caused by a cat’s coming and going.
So we thought – why not engineer a litterbox with well-integrated tools that address the realities of maintaining a litterbox? The Mio includes a brush, dustpan, and hand brush that fit perfectly into an accessible top compartment.
The scoop is sturdy, and the molded silicon rubber grip feels great in your hand. The angle of the scoop edge is designed to slide easily through coarse litter without much effort, and the angled slots have been carefully engineered to allow litter to slide through quickly with minimal sifting. The shape of our scoop matches the exact contour of the litterbox, so you can easily slide it along the edges and corners without missing a spot.
We have some amazing people on our team.
We’re obsessed with cats, and we feel we’re the perfect team to launch this product. Over the past 18 months, we’ve developed countless iterations with constant improvements – we’ve explored a ton of options. Now we have the final product ready to go and we believe it’s the most beautiful litterbox in the world.
But we need your help Kickstarter – large scale production runs require us to pay for expensive tooling up front. Please help us make this project a reality.
Cove was recently featured in All About Cats' best litter boxes article.
