Haven’t had cats in the family for about 12 years and thinking of getting one in the near future. We used to have a plain old litter pan with the clay absorbent. Worked OK.
I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with the litter pans that empty them selves. Well, not really empty, but a motorized rake scoops the clumped material into a separate container. Ideally after kitty has left the area.
Do they need a special litter material? Are they battery powered, or do I need to plan a location where AC power is available?
Any experience with alternate litter box materials, realizing they may or may not work with the moterized litter box?
I have two Littermaid Megas going on 5 years now and they work well. You do have to use quality litter – I’ve found that Arm and Hammer brand works great.
The cats dig them too… always a clean fresh pan for which to do their business.
There’s only one verry irritating thing about them, when you go to remove the … “receptacle”, it tends to want to fling the used litter up into your face, due to its “brain-damaged” design. You just have to remove it slowly and look away. :rolleyes:
There are a couple other brands out there as well… Stylette and Petmate. Might be worth checking into those as well.
I use pine pellet litter - sold under the name Feline Pine, but available as Equine Pine (or other names) at a feed-n-seed for much lower prices-per-pound. IIRC, the Feline Pine costs as much for under 10 lbs as the Equine Pine does for 40lbs.
I have a Littermaid and I love it. We’ve had it 3 years and it’s till going strong.
The one problem you may find is that if there is too much litter at the back of the unit the rake may not be able to retract all the way and will continue to cycle until the motor burns out. The best thing to do is cycle it a few times after you clean it and put new litter in it to be sure the rake can move unimpeded.
The model we have can use batteries and also has an attachable power cord. You still have to do some maintenance/scooping if you wan the box really clean but it actually works better than I thought it would.
One of our cats, Marty, is shall we say, a bit skittish? He won’t use the litter box if the washer is running, because it scares him. In the last house, he had to have his own box, away from the furnace closet where the other cats went, because when the furnace ran, it…scared him.
I cannot even imagine his reaction at an automated litter box.
Snakes, I’m going to Farm 'n Fleet later to look for that, you’re the third person now that’s recommended it over the clumping sand.
I switched to pine last summer when I moved to a place where the litterbox had to be on carpet. The pellets are so much easier to sweep out of carpet. The smell of the fresh pine can be a little ovewheming when it is new, I leave mine open in the garage for a while until it dissapates (the smell, not the litter). I also took some nice Doper’s advice to underfill the litterbox. The litter expands as it gets wet, so what is underfilled fresh, is fine in a day or two. The only bad thing about the pine is that the stools seem to be hard for the kitties to cover and sometimes require immediate if not sooner removal if the box is in a living space. I poop patrol every few days and complete change every two weeks or when the litter is damp throughout. Also, you do NOT want to let the pine go for too long without a change, I had my litterbox mold once and my kitty decided that she wasn’t brave enough to do her business on a white fuzzy carpeted litterbox. Fortunately, that was right before I moved, so I used really smelly cleaner to clean the area in front of the litterbox and the next tenant will have to deal with the residual odor if there was any. I think it was about a month without a complete change…definitely too long.
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I’ve seen that advertised on TV. Looks like a good product. One of the Google Ads was for a Litter Robot http://www.litter-robot.com/
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I bought one of those for our cats several years ago. The design is ingenious–after the kitty has done his business, the entire spherical top rotates to pass the litter thru a metal screen and drop the solids into a sealed pan below.
Unfortunately, the cat’s didn’t go for it. The litter area is a little small, especially if you have two cats, and every once in a while a grain of litter would fall into the mechanical sensor on the bottom that tells whether or not a cat has used it recently; the result was the unit would think the cat was in there continuously, and so it would never clean the litter. Otherwise, when the cats used it it worked great, but over time they decided the floor in front of the box was a better place, so I was out $300. Today they use a giant plastic box I found a Target and I’m reduced to scooping.
I bought a covered box from Target for about $20 that has some sort of contraption inside whereby you tip the box on its side almost til it’s upside down and all the clumps and poo fall into a little drawer that you remove manually and empty. The “clean” litter filters back into the usable area. Not motorized and no scooping. I love this thing! I was a decidedly remiss box-scooper, I’ll admit it. I also use way less clumping litter than before for some reason. My kitty’s rather small, but she seems to like it just fine. Then again, we ended up “converting” a small coat closet to a bathroom for her (kitty door) to prevent the dog from “snacking” :rolleyes: , so I suppose any cat with her own private bath has no room to complain, lol.
Feline Pine (or its generic equivalent) is the only litter for Emily the Giant Rabbit. She doesn’t care for the clay types, and since rabbit poo is by its very nature hard and non-clumping (except for the occasional “cluster-poo”), it’s best use is soaking up rabbit urine. We only have to change her potty twice a week.
We have to use a litter pan with a high guard around the edge. Otherwise, Emily may accidentally fling poo and litter climbing into or out of her potty.
My two cats share one large corner plastic box. The box has a screen built in that I just pick up that filters the litter for me. The lid is then placed on the floor as the bottom of the box, insert screen, pour litter from the base to the lit, flip base which becomes the lid, so on and so forth…
It’s a pretty damn big box, so the two kitties don’t mind sharing. If I’m good about cleaning the box frequently, it’s easier to clean by hand. If I don’t get to it for 12 hours or so, its easier to use the built in sifter.
pardon the hijack – I purchased the litter locker. Its a contraption that you place used litter in to make disposal easier and help suppress the smell. If you don’t plan to carry out the trash every time you put litter in it, I highly recommend this product. It’s worked quite well.
Lots of good information here. As a techie I’m impressed by the rotating units, although I can see that there might be issues.
If we decide to share our quarters with a cat we’ll probably start out with a conventional pan, for sure if we end up with a kitten. I think I’d prefer a slightly older cat. Maybe 6-7 months or so. Have to see what might be in the shelters or rescue groups. A slightly older cat might have a better chance getting along with the dog.
