Litter boxes outside

So I had a litter box in the basement of my sim's house. the cat would get all red and I would ask it what was wrong and it would say it needed a litter box. I would literally have to have my sim walk to the basement and call the cat to us the litter. Same with the food bowl. It would be full of fresh food and the cat would start to death unless I had a sim physically call it to eat or they were standing right next to it. I concluded they must have terrible autonomy programming with a very limited range.

"Dannakyri1;c-17458736" wrote:
So I had a litter box in the basement of my sim's house. the cat would get all red and I would ask it what was wrong and it would say it needed a litter box. I would literally have to have my sim walk to the basement and call the cat to us the litter. Same with the food bowl. It would be full of fresh food and the cat would start to death unless I had a sim physically call it to eat or they were standing right next to it. I concluded they must have terrible autonomy programming with a very limited range.

That's a bug: Pets won't see items (food, litter boxes, scratching posts, toys) on another floor from where they are, even if they're old/big enough to use stairs. There are some mods that fix that, but it is definitely a bug in the game.

I have had them outside and the cats used them, but never the electronic ones because I thought the rain would break those. Sometimes sims 4 cats get that even if they do have a clean litter pan inside - not sure if it is a glitch or not. Do notice that sometimes when I replace an electronic one with a regular one - they will use it though - maybe just scared of the electronic one? Not sure.

"AprilDawn;c-17453634" wrote:
I have had them outside and the cats used them, but never the electronic ones because I thought the rain would break those. Sometimes sims 4 cats get that even if they do have a clean litter pan inside - not sure if it is a glitch or not. Do notice that sometimes when I replace an electronic one with a regular one - they will use it though - maybe just scared of the electronic one? Not sure.

hmm..i never even thought about the electronic one not working outside because of the rain. But it's under a porch...so who knows. It's inside now. i'll keep it there. haha. thanks!

Litter boxes I usually don't have too much of an issue with - but I also try to make sure there's at least one per floor, usually in a bathroom or laundry room. I also try to follow the real world guide of one more litter box than I have cats. They'll occasionally get red/uncomfortable, but will eventually go. (I have had to occasionally reset the litterbox when it wasn't cleaning correctly, though.)

Food, on the other hand, there's some sort of bug or something, because I'm regularly calling the cats over to eat at one of the food bowls. Same with dogs. Though food I do keep just in the kitchen.

I always put the litter box in the bathroom, I've never had them not use it.

I've had litter boxes outside that the cats used with no problems.

I just had the same issue in my game. I plopped 3 different kinds of litter boxes in the room with the cat and it still wouldn’t go. I posted in the answer HQ section as I couldn’t find out how to start a thread to ask. I am happy I am not the only one with this issue.