Lovely Lita Litter Maid…
I’m curious about this self washing litter system. It’s called Cat Genie. it’s supposed to do everything but flush the toilet.
Has anyone sprung for the $300 for this? If it works like they claim, it might actually be worth it.
I do think the litter area is too small, my girls need lots of room.
Actually, it IS self-flushing!
My husband and I looked at it, and it looks great, but we can’t do it for a couple of reasons: it needs a cold water hook up, and our landlord would not be cool with that and it’s slightly too wide to fit comfortably next to our toilet. The $300 price tag was a little oogy as well! (Although that’s less than 2 years of cat litter.)
I have one of these which works on the same principle as the litter robot, but you have to rotate it yourself every now and then. A little more work, but a lot less money.
I read an absolutely hilarious customer review of that one when I was shopping around for a litter solution - I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it was hilariously written about how they broke the plumbing for the whole buildings getting the water attached, and caused a flood, and then when they got it working the cat was so scared of the thing that it peed itself in terror. And they gave it to somebody else and their cat did the same thing.
I want a Litter Robot, but haven’t convinced hubby it’s worth $300. Besides, he’s scooping the cats now since I’m pregnant.
He may change his tune soon then 
To me, it’s worth if it works as advertised. I spend $4 nearly every workday on coffee. This is spending $3 a week over a year to have something clean my cat box into a garbage bag for me. I have two adult cats, and keep their cat box in the basement where I also have my home gym. We generally clean their box out 4-5 times a week, and use Arm and Hammer clumping litter with “odor eater” crystals. Even so it often smells right after they do their business, and doing push-ups and riding an exercise bike where it smells of cat crap is not fun. Neither is having to remember to clean the litter, or argue about whose turn it is to do it, which believe me has escalated into several bitter fights.
If it lasts for three years, it’ll end up being $1 a week. It seems like a no-brainer.
I was originally looking into the Litter Maid at roughly $125-150, but it truly pisses me off to drop money on technology that doesn’t live up to its promise, as some people have related with the rake burnouts on clump-chunks or your linked-to story cats learning to play Turdly-winks with their scat.
If within one year, I find I can’t use it, I will be disappointed and post about it here and elsewhere. But if it works as promised and breaks down due to wear and tear after 2-3 years or longer, I’ll be happy with the price. Anything longer than three years of service and I’d think of myself as well into the black on this one.
My cat managed to crap all over the rake in the Litter Maid several times. :rolleyes:
We had one of the ‘rake’ ones. It broke after 6 months, burned out motor. We sent it back, and the manufacturer replaced it. And that one broke after a few more months.
It also got clogged and stuck quite often. And the special ‘clumping’ litter was the most disgusting smelling stuff – it was like sticking your head in a very very dirty chemical toilet.
Yep. One of the grosser things I ever experienced was scraping chemical-toilet blue cat poop off of those teeth. At least with a normal box you could dump it out when it was too disgusting to scoop. This thing needed weekly surgery.
PS - the best thing about the Litter Robot is that it looks like Kenny from South Park. Quite the conversation piece!
“Hey, what’s that?”
“That’s the robot the cats shit in. Please don’t tell people from third world nations about it.”
“Kewl!”
Our city advises against flushing cat poop into the city sewer system. Yet that is what this device seems to do.
What about the cats who are trained to go in a human toilet? That’s bad for the water system?
Is it because of toxoplasomosis?
Is that because of the cat litter that’s usually stuck to it? That thing rinses the “litter” (it’s not clay or clumping litter, but special plastic beads that get reused indefinitely once they’re cleaned) off the poop before putting it into the sewer line. Seems to me that cat poop is pretty much like people poop at that point.
I’ve no idea exactly why they recommend against this. But I have heard before that the sewage system is designed to deal with human waste, and anything else thrown into the system (sanitary napkins, tissues, diapers, misc. garbage, etc.) is a nuisance to them, and needs to be filtered out of the system and incinerated eventually. I suppose all this just reduces the efficiency of the sewage treatment system.
I know that here in Minneapolis, all the (non-recycled) garbage is burned in an energy recovery plant, that produces heat for a lot of downtown buildings. So putting them in the garbage is much more environmentally friendly that flushing them down the toilet.
Also, regarding flushing cat poop down the toilet, a plumber friend has told me that the poop flushes but litter tends to accumulate in the trap of the toilet, decreasing its’ efficiency, and can eventually clog it entirely. He’s been called to work on some that he has found almost completely plugged by the remains of clay cat litter. Not an effect on the sewage system, but certainly a problem in your house.