Some people love these. Some people hate them. You’ve had one reply from someone who loves theirs, so now here’s a reply from someone who hates them.
I have three cats. I bought an automatic litter box, and for a week it was heaven. Then the trouble started.
Briefly:
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The motor is quiet at first. Then litter dust gets in it, and it gets louder, and louder…
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The sensor eyes get clogged with litter. When this happens, the box runs every 10 minutes. If you are asleep, the noise can be enough to wake you up. So you have to get out of bed to clean the sensors.
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The little bin everything gets scooped into is not airtight. So you still get the litter box smell.
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Because of the way the sides are constructed, if you have a male can who stands when he urinates, it will leak onto the floor.
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The litter box will run when a cat is in it. I watched in shock as my cat was pushed out of the box. But it only makes sense. After all, when the sensors are clogged with litter, the thing runs every 10 minutes. If the timer was being reset as they state in the ads, it wouldn’t run at all when the sensors are clogged.
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After a while, the motor gives out. I had mine replaced 3 or 4 times. Finally, I demanded a refund. I got it, but I was still out all the money I spent mailing it in to them for replacement.
As for your specific questions:
“Does the scraper thing ever NOT scrape?”
Yes. If your cat digs down to the bottom of the litter and urinates, the resulting clump will stick in the bottom of the box. When the “rakes” comes along, the lump will break apart. Some will get scooped, and some will be left behind.
“And if does break, what about getting it fixed?”
If you buy it at Wal-Mart or Target, you can try and take it back and exchange it for a new one. I had to mail mine in when it broke. They then sent me a new one. When it broke, I had to pay shipping to send it to them, plus $20. They sent me a new one, and it broke…but I’ll stop ranting about that now.
How about clean up, robot vs. manual, dealing with the bags, or whatever the stuff is scooped into?
Occasionally you’re probably going to want to dump the old litter out and scrub the box. As I remember the bottom of the tray slides out. So that part’s fairly easy to clean. But in my experience, with three cats, the sides needed to be scrubbed too. It was difficult to do this, because you can’t get the motor wet.
Expense, how often do you have to change the bags, and how costly?
The clumps are raked into a long rectangular bin at the end of the box. It has a lid, which keeps some of the odor in, but it’s not airtight. You can put the lid on the container, seal it, and throw it away. But this will get expensive. It costs $15 for 12 of them. I just dumped the bin into a wastebasket with a lid I keep in the garage. Every once in a while, when it got really dirty, I would replace it.
The thing that makes me angry about this, is I wanted it to work. On the rare days when it worked it was fantastic. But most days I ended up having to get out of bed to clean the sensor eyes, empty the bin, scoop out what had been missed, clean the sensors again, etc. It was more trouble than it was worth.
But to be fair, a lot of people like these boxes. Here’s a link to a consumer review site. You’ll see a lot of different opinions here.
http://www.epinions.com/pets-Cats-Litter_Boxes-All-Litter_Maid_Advanced_Deluxe_Litter_Maid_Litter_Box/show_~allop