A needlessly thourough explanation on why schools do not have litterboxes.

I have no idea why this myth infuriates me so much, but it does. It's such a weird myth too. How did this get started? Why do major news outlets and politicians propagate it? Do people not know what on Earth a furry is? Anyway, here is a way-too-long list of reasons public schools do not have litter boxes.

For those of you who don't intentionally drive themselves to madness, the concept is pretty simple. There are litter boxes in classrooms for kids who identify as cats to use. Occasionally this is also coupled with the idea that said kids are allowed to run through the halls on all fours, wear fursuits to schools, etc. This myth is almost always propagated by conservatives to justify banning diversity in schools, or trans kids, or some other effort that schools do to be nice to their students.

To be clear, this would be an absolutely horrible essay (or rant, more likely) to send to those people. For one thing, this is long and requires a basic understanding of Internet queer culture. For another, I'm going to list a lot of groups these people would love to harass, including me. Anyway, I'm going to go down the list of who would be most likely to be responsible for any rhetorical litter boxes, and why this hasn't happened.

1 Furries.

Honestly, I don't know tons about the ins-and-outs of furry culture, but I dabble in it enough to know a pretty major fact about furries:

ALMOST ALL OF THEM DO IT FOR FUN.

I'm not saying there aren't furries who identify as animals, or engage in animalistic behaviours that feel extreme, but it feels weird that a lot of statements- even those by assumed professionals- use the term "furry."

To be clear- furries do a lot of stuff. There's probably someone out there who's used a litter box, but it feels weird to me that "furry students" would request a presumably costly accommodation for roleplay purposes. This is also just plain impractical, as someone would have to clean it and regularly buy kitty litter. There may be plenty of wealthy furries out there, but I'm not sure how many of them would be that enthusiastic about the ability to defecate in the classroom. Back when I used Cohost and self-identified as a furry (Cohost had a high furry population before it got shut down), I also never saw anything involving litter boxes. A quick check on some furry-related tags on Tumblr seems to indicate this hasn't changed. Wikifur, while probably not a reliable source, directly redirects "litter box" to an article saying the claims are fake. A search for "litter box furry -school" brings up a bunch of stuff about pets, random non-litter boxed fursonas, a comic called Litter box Comics, reactions to this myth, and two (2) drawings where a furry uses a litter box. Not photos, drawings. No filtering seems to change this. All in all, there are about 200 other things that would be shocking to outsiders that would be far, far more likely to somehow end up in a school (as small as that chance may be).

To re-emphasize, yes, someone- somewhere- has used almost certainly litter box for furry-related reasons. Whether or not that happened doesn't matter. What matters is whether they did it in a public school, or at the bare minimum something equally strange. Feel free to inform me if you know/find any literbox-using furries, and I will update this, but it doesn't change the overall structure.

Now, why am I searching so far to find it when I just told you that furries are roleplayers?

Because there is a group that isn't.

2 Otherkin

An otherkin is anyone who identifies as an animal, plant, object, fictional character, concept, etc. I am one myself- I use the label "cat", though I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, it's weird that almost all statements regarding "students identifying as animals" never mention otherkin. The only one I could find was specifically a parody page faking policies for schools. I spend substantially more time in otherkin related spaces, so I can safely say that I have never seen one use or wish to use a litter box in my natural time spent there. I will be fair and say that otherkin definitely exist in schools, and some of them are probably allowed to wear tails or hiss, because that's completely harmless and doesn't cost the school money. Maybe there's even a teacher somewhere that respects someone with it/its pronouns, but I doubt it extends much more than that.

Most otherkin aren't out as such. I only know one other otherkin-adjacent friend (voidpunk), and I've seen.. maybe 2 individuals with a tail or symbol? I personally would never tell anyone IRL about it. This isn't to say there aren't exceptions, it's just a fairly small and generally obscure community who mostly gather online. For the litter boxes to be officially added, you would probably either need a very adamant student/teacher/administrator and a willing audience, or have otherkin in such large numbers as to require it. Keep in mind that this isn't a fight for something I know is a commonplace thing in the community (walking on all fours, wearing a tail, wanting to be dehumanised). Even with larger numbers, I doubt most therians would use a litter box if it was an option. (I have my humaness unlike some so maybe I'm weird- but as far as I can tell most therians do enjoy some aspects of humanity).

A more pedantic point is that while catkin are definitely common, wolfkin and dogkin are overall the bigger group, at least in the circles I run in. If a school was entirely otherkin-inclusive, kids would also be pissing outside. I will be generous and assume that the litter boxes would be more noticeable (and maybe the school would be more accepting of those sanitation issues than random piss), but still. The people who started these myths don't get otherkin either.

I deliberately searched for therians using litter boxes, and I did find two TikTok accounts wishing for a litter box, one of which claimed to bring one to school (I suspect it's a prank as there's only a handful of videos, all discussing therianthropy in the same inflammatory way). I didn't investigate much, but the other one looks real. Most of it were therians debunking the claim. So, in the end, like with furries, it exists, but isn't some widespread desire. It's also weird that even among the people who would be the most likely to use a litter box, there are no posts celebrating the inclusion. Even if we assume that it's a younger population, none of them have social media? None of the parents do? None of the faculty?

3 Those who do use litter boxes

There are a small handful of verified litter box users. As far as I can tell, only the potentially fake TikTok account overlaps with otherkin. One is definitely an interesting story- someone forcing other people to use the litter box in her kitchen- but that has nothing to do with otherkin, furries, or schools. Apparently some do it for environmental concerns, and there are some cultures who use wood chips instead of plumbing inside of the toilet (It doesn't sound unreasonable- but this is also just the search results for human-sized litter box, so take it with a grain of salt). There seem to be a handful of litter boxes for sale, but that's it. Also, even more schools denying that this is true. I couldn't find any instance of litter boxes being used for environmental concerns in schools, just that maybe some schools have it for service animals, and one school has kitty litter in buckets for bathroom use in case of a school shooter. This makes the lack of litter box footage even stranger, since it is theoretically possible to obtain.

4 Schools

As far as I can tell, no school has had any announcement akin to "Hey, we're installing litter boxes for furries!", which, if this wasn't such an obvious hoax, is a pretty big nail in the coffin. This isn't just adding a third gender option on a survey or putting up posters for Black History Month, this would be fairly costly for any potential school. Kitty litter costs money, especially when kids frequently steal or vandalize bathrooms. This myth is usually spread about public schools as well- not private schools where there's potentially more income and less transparency. Also, no remotely legitimate videos exist of said litter boxes. You're telling me that they have that much control over kids' phones?

I brought this point up before, but I think it's also important to note that an institution openly accepting otherkin would probably have more measures taken that would be noteworthy. Even if we're only talking about otherkin and furries, there'd still be some pretty noticeable changes before litter boxes. If it's furries, why aren't they getting ice packs or some other cooling so they don't overheat in the fursuits? If they're paying for litter boxes, is the school also serving kibble, something that seems a little closer to reality? (TO BE CLEAR: I have never to my memory seen anyone eat straight cat food, but there are plenty of recipes explaining how to replicate dog biscuits and the like). Why are all of them catkin? Are the wolfkin, elfkin, dragonkin, etc. just more subtle? I get that the common 'types is going to be different depending on enviroment, but only cats?

So, yeah, if this myth is true, the litter boxes are in a private school with such inclusivity as to include things nobody wants or needs, and somehow also has stricter security than the Pentagon.

I'll add an E-mail later. For not, you'll just have to accept that I can't correct this.