I've never personally had issues declining facial recognition at airports for normal domestic travel. For global entry they converted from fingerprint to facial recognition kiosks in the last couple years; not sure if you can avoid it with those. My one time entering the US with those, the attendants didn't know what was going on when I asked to not use facial recognition and just told me to proceed to the agent without using the kiosk, which was the wrong thing to do. Still got past the agent but got a talking to.
Have you seen the cat take a shit outside the box? How close is the shit to the box? My cat sometimes craps outside the box but it is just due to him not walking far enough into the box before squatting, so his ass is sticking out. The poop ends up just outside the door or smeared on the lip.