Advice - considering cat in urban area

Hi all!

My partner and I have both grown up with cats, and we're now living together in a suburban area. We have a terraced house on a fairly well-trafficked street. The house has a small garden, but as it is rented, our landlord had the whole area covered in gravel to reduce maintenance issues.

We've been given permission to get a cat, as long as it's an 'outside' cat, and (obviously after kittenhood) will not be left in the house unsupervised for any significant length of time. The house is lovely and I don't want to disobey his rules as it was hard enough getting permission at all!

I grew up in deep countryside, and my childhood cats had a five-acre field and large wooded areas and hedgerows to do their business in. However, any cat that my partner and I get now will only have a small gravel yard, which clearly won't be very attractive for it to dig in! I don't want to encourage it to roam too far,and I also want to make house-training as easy as possible for a young cat.

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for measures we could take to provide a safe, clean outside area for our cat to toilet in? Various friends and relatives have suggested a child's sand-pit or a large flat tub of soft soil, but I'm worried about both keeping these clean, and not attracting every neighbourhood cat in the area. How practical are these options, or is there another way?

Does anyone have any ideas or advice?

Thank you so much!

It's an absolute 'no' on a dog from the landlord, besides which, my partner doesn't like them and as he's the one home all day and I'm at work all day, it'd be very unfair to get one.

When the cat is mewing to come in, one of us will get up and let him in. This is how it's worked my entire life and my parents' three cats are very happy and content. On the rare times that neither of us are home, there will be a cat flap into a warm, rainproof garden shed, which is empty except for a wide shelving unit screwed securely to the wall, with the shelves covered in old carpet, and there will be a couple of cosy kitty beds. So it's not like the cat will have nowhere to go in the cold and rain, if no one's home for a few hours.

I've been googling 'Stall Dry'. can it be used outside (i.e., open to the rain) to does it have to be under cover?

Thank you for your help!

Thank you!

I'll see what we can come up with with providing a covered area.

And yes, of course any cat we may (we haven't decided yet!) get would be kept in and very slowly and calmly introduced to the outside when it's ready.