may I just point out

That as much as I love my cats for their independence, they still need me. They need their food dish filled at least once a day, and usually, it's twice a day. And they need humans to turn on the faucet or leave up the lid for water. (Sick, I know, but they refuse to drink water out of a bowl on the floor.)

More than that, when we first moved here, we had an old, sickly, sweetheart of a cat, named Lucky. In her last years, she was unable to eat cat food, so I would boil hamburger for her and freeze it in flat slabs in ziplock bags so I could break off pieces and reheat them every morning in the microwave. But she was worth it and it was a sad, sad day when she left us. Jack made a wooden box and carved LUCKY into the lid for her final resting place.

I hadn't realized how little Lucky ate and pooped until we got Millie. All of a sudden I was filling the food dish daily and don't even get me started about how often I now needed to clean out the catbox. Lucky had been sicker than I'd realized. Then Weezie joined Millie at the food dish and in the catbox. While Weezer doesn't eat as much as Millie (aka, fatcat), the amount of catbox cleanup was much more with two cats than with one. Now with Oscar joining the bunch, it astounds me how much more crap (literally) there is to clean up in the catbox.

All I'm saying is that even though I didn't finish a physics class, I'm certain there must be some equation that defines the ratio of cats:food:poop that will clearly show that it is not a lineal line, but rather some quantum leap chaos theory thing. While I don't know how it works, I'm sure that three cats make way more poop than one cat times three.