How to Clean Kennel Items

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Just one day of eating, sleeping, pooping, playing, and drooling can be enough to produce millions of microbes in any situation. And in a confined environment like a shelter kennel or cage, those little bacteria and viruses can multiply into big problems if they are not properly and routinely vanquished through careful scrubbing and disinfection. In the ongoing battle against invisible bugs, it’s important to clean not only the kennel itself but everything inside: the litter box, the toys, the food bowls, and the blankets, all of which can be cozy breeding grounds for the formidable microenemies that lead to harmful and sometimes life-threatening feline and canine diseases.

1. Fun with Fomites

A bit like an express train for viruses and bacteria, a “fomite” is any surface that can act as a carrier of microbes from one animal to the next. Whether it’s a blanket, a litter box, a cage door, a toy, or even a person’s hand, the fomite can provide a free ride for opportunistic hitchhikers like canine parvovirus or feline panleukopenia. But you can stop these insidious microorganisms in their tracks if you scrub, disinfect, rinse, and dry every item before it is introduced to a new animal.

There are two different routines shelters often follow to ensure that animals are not sharing germs. One involves disinfecting all items daily and redistributing them randomly among furry guests. The other method calls for keeping the same toys, blankets, and litter boxes with a specific animal for the duration of his stay in the facility; however, these items must still be washed frequently to ensure the animals’ comfort, keep the kennel sparkling, and prevent potential cross-contamination issues caused by cramped quarters.

You may want to opt for a combination of these two methods, disinfecting litter boxes and other such items daily but keeping less washable things—such as porous or easily scratched toys—with the same animals throughout their stay.

2. Being Materialistic, Part 1

When it comes to choosing toys, litter boxes, and food bowls, it pays to be discriminating. Plastics aren’t up to scratch—or rather, they’re too easily scratched: One tiny groove created by an innocent claw scraping across the bottom of a litter box can provide the perfect safe harbor, and sometimes no amount of scrubbing or bleach can get to these potentially deadly germs.

For that reason, stainless steel is far preferable to plastic; for litter boxes, you can even purchase cafeteria-style hot pans from restaurant supply companies, as long as they are deep enough. Alternatively, you can use disposable litter boxes and food bowls—either on a daily basis or just during disease outbreaks. Not only does this cut down on cleaning time, but it completely eliminates potential transmission problems that could arise from the sharing of cage items.

Be creative when looking for disposable materials: Anything that is sturdy enough to hold litter and big enough for kitty to do his business—such as a cardboard soda flat or a shirt box—will make a nearly ideal temporary litter box. (Don’t make cats become contortionists trying to squeeze into pans that are too small; they want to do the right thing, so provide them with a way of doing so.) Though dogs require a sturdy setup for feeding that’s both easy to disinfect and immobile (such as stainless steel bowls attached to kennel doors), most cats can eat comfortably from cafeteria-style paper “boats” that can be thrown away each day.

3. Being Materialistic, Part 2

Many toys aren’t easy to disinfect and are therefore difficult to pass among animals, but ping-pong balls for cats and Kong-style toys or big rubber balls for dogs can be disinfected and reused. If you use non-disinfectable items—like donated tennis balls for puppies—you can just discard them at the end of your furry guests’ stay or send them home with new adopters if they are still in good shape. (It’s probably a good idea to wash a new tennis ball to remove its fresh-from-the-factory smell before a puppy gets his paws on it.) Paper towel rolls stuck into cat cage doors or “flibbers”—newspapers rolled up and frayed at the top—are also free and disposable. While many shelters often reuse Nylabones and the like, they can be somewhat porous, so if disease issues are a problem in your facility, it’s best to send these chew toys home with the same animal who’s been gnawing on them. (Whatever toys you decide to use, make sure they’re oversized so there’s no danger of choking or drainage-system clogging. Sturdiness is also important; flimsy toys that could end up in pieces present a choking and intestinal blockage hazard.)

When it’s naptime, the refuse of government accounting offices can make great kitty bedding material; cats love to lie on shredded paper. And dogs will enjoy a blanket just as much if you cut it into quarters to suit both kennel and animal sizes; the blankets will be easier to clean this way, too, and can be thrown out if dogs have chewed on them. Donations of fabric items—knitted or cloth comfort toys, for instance—are fine as long as they can withstand a tough laundering process and are free of small parts such as button eyes that could cause choking.

4. Give It a Good Scrub

One man’s crumb is a virus’s castle: Dirt particles still stuck to toys, bowls, or litter boxes give nasty germs a place to lie in wait for their next victim. Bits of hardened feces or encrusted food may even make it through a bleach-soaking process, so scrub items vigorously prior to disinfection; scrubbing before soaking also helps keep your soaking buckets cleaner and free of contamination for a longer period.

Assuming you aren’t lucky enough to have a commercial high-grade dishwasher, you can set up scrubbing and soaking “buckets” in 55-gallon drums (or whatever size works in your facility). When scrubbing, use a dishwashing detergent/degreaser that will help you remove the filmy grime left behind by wet noses and sticky paws. Just be sure to keep litter pans in separate vats from those reserved for cleaning food bowls and toys; though cats and dogs aren’t finicky about such things, toiletries and dinner utensils aren’t a healthy mix.

The brushes you use will depend on the item you’re cleaning, but choose brushes sturdy enough to last through many rounds of disinfection. If you keep two brushes in each area, you can use the first brush to clean one cage or cage item, and then steep it in disinfectant so it has time to soak while you use the second brush to clean another item; by alternating between brushes in this way, you avoid reapplying dirty residue from one toy or food bowl to the next. At the end of the cleaning cycle, you can soak all your scrub brushes in a vat of disinfectant or bleach to ready them for the next day’s cleaning.

5. Mix a Magic Potion

Once you’ve scrubbed bowls, litter boxes, and toys, it’s time to soak items in a disinfecting solution—usually a quaternary ammonium product or bleach. Quaternary ammonium disinfectants, or “quats,” are popular in the shelter because they are not as harsh on fabrics, metals, and nasal passages as bleach tends to be—but are considered by many to be powerful enough for daily disinfection. In the face of the hardiest germs like the long-lived parvovirus, however, their effectiveness hasn’t been shown to be foolproof yet.

That’s why some shelters use quats for routine cleaning but then use bleach every other day, every week, or every time a potential outbreak looms. Other shelters take it a step further by disinfecting solely with bleach or by following daily quat-cleanings with bleach soaks to ensure victory over the lurking microscopic predators.

Whenever bleach is used—whether you pour it into a large drum for food-bowl or litter-box cleaning, or whether you add it to laundry loads—mix the solution at a ratio of 1 part bleach to 32 parts water. Avoid the temptation to treat a problem with straight bleach or with a bleach solution that is stronger than 1:32; more is definitely not better. (If you are using the relatively new, more concentrated Ultra Clorox product, dilution should be one part bleach to 43 parts water.) Even diluted, bleach corrodes surfaces and irritates both animal and human noses.

If you decide to use quats during some part of your cleaning process, follow preparation instructions listed on product labels. Whether you’re soaking items in a bleach or a quat solution, allow adequate contact time of 10 minutes or more before rinsing. But don’t let bleach-and-water mixtures sit for too long in buckets before application; after a few hours, the solution will break down and lose its effectiveness. And don’t combine bleach with quats or any other products; mixing chemicals can create dangerous fumes or lessen the effectiveness of a cleaning product.

6. Rinse Till You Wince

Some disinfectant manufacturers claim rinsing is unnecessary, but rinsing is as important to animal health and safety as the cleaning and scrubbing itself. Contact with disinfectant residue can give animals mouth ulcers, scrotal dermatitis, and blisters; cages still wet with bleach solution can burn little paws. Be sure to rinse thoroughly with the hottest water possible; one final go-round with steamy water will also help destroy any remaining germs.

7. Set Up House

Once kennels and kennel items are dry, add newspapers, litter boxes, food bowls, blankets, toys, and any other items that may help animals feel comfortable during their stay in your facility. You’ve now made a house a home—and a clean one at that. The only thing left to do is add the dogs and cats!

Reproduced from the May-June 2002 issue of Animal Sheltering magazine.