Automatic cat litter boxes?

After being cat-less for the last 10 years, we are getting a new kitten for my daughter next week.

Has anyone used one of the new litter boxes that automatically rake the litter clean after kitty does his business?

Thanks for any opinions or suggestions.....

Marc

Yep!

my cat, Jake who has been at mother-in-laws home for the last three years while I'm overseas. has been "utilizing" an Automatic cat box and it's the best thing for a cat owner! just gotta plug it in, buy the disposable boxes and let the cat do it's business. Besure to replace the disposable boxes atleast once a week.

IMO worth every penny

Doug

Thank you, Doug! Do you know what brand it is? Is there a litter that works best with the unit?

Marc

ditto, worth every penny
Now you have 2 choices, The LitterMaid and Lucky Litter automatic litter box.
I've read some bad reviews on the Littermaid with it's motor burning out.
I haven't had mine long enough for it to do that.
But check out the other brand Lucky Litter by Scoop Free.
It uses cartridges and the fresh step brand litter.

I had one that had a rotating litter pan and the "clumps" were supposed to get scooped up by a stationary rake as they spun around and were then lifted up and put into a catch box. This kind did not work very well to begin with and became gummed up very easily. We finally abandoned it and went back to scooping. So stay away from that kind. I've generally heard good reviews of the other movable rake type, but nothing is going to be maintenance free.

Both the LitterMaid and Lucky Kitty are moving rakes that scope into a container. And, fresh step is not clumping litter so it shouldn't fill up the container with urine clumps.

My buddy has, or at least used to have one of those, and said it worked, "choice."

Thanks, guys!


Marc

I have to disagree. I have a Litter Maid which I stopped using soon after I bought it. I found it to be more trouble than it's worth. If the cat has a loose movement, the rake gets gummed up with it and you have to clean it, which is a very unpleasant job. At other times I found that it didn't have the strength to lift all the stuff into the receptacle and it would recycle repeatedly. I find it much easier to do things the old fashioned way. Anybody want to buy a Litter Maid cheap?

My wife has a cat, and I tolerate it for obvious reasons.

BUT, I could never get myself to intentionally get a pet that craps, and pees, in my house.

We have new carpet in the room with the litter box. It was ruined shortly by the cat "walking" waste out on the floor.

Yuck!

And $$$$.

I have nothing nice to say about self-cleaning litterboxes.


I bought one of the LitterMaids for my girlfriend a little while back, and we soon encountered several problems:

First, when it runs, it's pretty loud.

Second, unless you have just the exactly right amount of litter in the box, when the little rake piece sweeps back across the box after scooping the poop, the excess litter will fool the box into thinking that there's a cat in the way. When this happens, the rake will reverse directions, and will inevitably end up raking back and forth across the box, over and over again, until someone goes over to it and scoops out the excess litter. Some days this would go on for several hours.

Third, the cat was fascinated with the mechanized rake, and would poop over and over again just to watch the litter box clean itself.

Fourth, it stinks. Badly. Between raking through the litter, and dropping the dropping into a pile of old droppings, the machine created a world of bad smells. We could actually tell whenever the cat had done his business, because the whole house would suddenly smell quite foul. I wish I was exagerating, but I'm not.

So... the litter box is now stuck up in an attic somewhere, hopefully never to be used again. We've gone back to a regular litter box, and are quite happy with it now.


(side note: I bought my gf the litter box, and in return she bought me a Surefire E2e. Guess who won out in that deal? Hehe...)

I don't own a cat. Can they be made to go outside? If a dog can be trained, why not a cat? What animals crap in their own lairs?

I've heard of those problems. especially the noise.
That leaves Lucky kitty in the running.
If you're in NYC for a visit and have nothing better to do,
Meow mix is having a fun silly promotion, A kitty reality show
with a webcam of said show.
That's where I heard of the other automatic litter box.

http://www.scoopfree.com

I bought an automatic litterbox for my three cats and only one of them used it, the others preffered the less noisy regular litterbox. The one cat that did like it noticed how after she exited the box, the motor with the scooping rake would empty the contents into the recepticle at the end, and it became a game with her to activate the motor! In the end the expensive automatic litterbox reverted to a manual litterbox. *sigh* Sometimes I wish I'd just toilet trained them.

vtunderground said:

Third, the cat was fascinated with the mechanized rake, and would poop over and over again just to watch the litter box clean itself.

Click to expand...

Catnip said:

The one cat that did like it noticed how after she exited the box, the motor with the scooping rake would empty the contents into the recepticle at the end, and it became a game with her to activate the motor!

Click to expand...

What animals crap in their own lairs?

Click to expand...

I have had dogs all my life, except for the last 3 years. We have 2 cats now. Trust me when I tell you that cats are much cleaner than dogs. If I had a dollar for every time one of my previous dogs tracked poop through the house because he had stepped in his own mess I would be very rich.

Cats don't really go in their own lairs. You provide them with a "bathroom", a spot they go in. My cats are very clean about this business. They will spend several minutes digging a clean hole in the cat box then covering it all up before they emerge.

To the OP, we have one of the Littermaid automatic boxes. It is not the panacea for easy cat cleanup that it claims to be. As others have mentioned, the poop will sometimes get mashed in the rake, and if it happens to get behind the rake it will just run constantly until it happens to dislodge or you remove it. Precise measurement of the litter is also necessary to avoid it building up behind the rake and causing it to run constantly.

We don't use it anymore. It was adequate for 1 cat but now that we have 2 cats it is easier to just clean the box manually each day. Found a cheap 2 box system at Wal-Mart. You fill one box with litter. They give you a plastic screening device. You put that device in the other box and pour the litter from the first box on to the screen in the second box. You pull the screen up and it catches the big clumps, leaving the litter behind. This is what we use now.