Cat Poop Management

This entry is entirely devoted to cat poop management. You've been warned!

We have 8 cats. Cat poop management is one of the nastier aspects of having so many cats. Neither roane nor I is terribly gung-ho about cleaning litterboxes. The problem is, though, that Rocky is EXTREMELY particular about his box. If there's something in the box, he doesn't want to use it, thankyouverymuch, and will find alternate accommodations. Granted, we're not the greatest at scooping as often as we need to, but with 8 cats and 2 people who are both gone at least 40 hours per week generally, it doesn't matter how often you scoop or how many boxes you have (we've had as many as 10 in the past), there's going to be stuff in the box when he tries to go at least part of the time. I began researching automatic litterbox cleaning options to try and fix this problem.

Several years back, I bought a Littermaid cat box. At the time, it worked ok, but I wasn't terribly impressed. The rake got filthy and was extremely difficult to clean, since it wasn't detachable. The motor in it was so weak that it was constantly stalling, necessitating intervention (removal or repositioning of litter, or sometimes manually scooping) before it could run correctly. You could only put an EXTREMELY thin layer of cat litter in the box, which meant that the box itself needed cleaning quite often, as pee went all the way through the litter layer and adhered a layer of dirty litter to the bottom of the box. But the worst issue was simply the cost: in order to use the box, you had to buy the litter receptacles. With three cats using one Littermaid box with no other litterboxes available, one receptacle _barely_ lasted a week. The cost of these things was outrageous - $18 for 12 of them. At one a week, that was doable, if annoying. With 8 cats, it made the box financially unfeasible. We figured we would need at least 2-3 of whatever we ended up getting, to handle our household.

The CatGenie was the first thing we looked at. It's an automatic washing litterbox which attaches to the toilet. Several times per day, the box automatically washes, dries, and cleans itself. The problem with it is, there's no automatic scoop function, so in between those cycles, the stuff just lies there. That was an issue as far as not keeping the box clean for Rocky, but it was also a problem because the units had to be located near drain lines, which meant that the dogs would have access to Litter Box Munchies (tm) until the cycle ran each time. Not really a good solution, needing at least 2-3 of them at $300 a pop, that's not exactly a cheap solution. Reviews on these were either glowing or terrible - there seemed to be little middle ground.

We next looked at the Litter Robot. Another expensive solution, at about $300, it looked promising. Waste was removed in plastic bags, so no receptacles to buy. However, I was concerned about the design of it working well with soft stools (Oscar has had these routinely for years - no vet's ever managed to determine why). Also, since it was enclosed and looked very, very small, I wasn't sure that Rumpus could fit into it comfortably. Plus, several of our cats have objections to covered boxes.

Then I found Lazr Art. They make a little clip which is designed to fit exactly into the top of a Littermaid receptacle and allow it to be easily lined with a plastic bag. (I'd tried this before, with little success.) This means receptacles can be easily reused. If this works as well as I think it will, it could completely eliminate the cost factor which was the primary reason I'd shied away from buying another Littermaid.

So I went ahead and got another Littermaid. Even with the cost of the clips, it was still about half the cost of the other two options. So far, they seem to have addressed every major complaint that I had with the old box. The rake is now made of thin wire tines instead of thick plastic ones. The metal tines stay a LOT cleaner, and the rake is easily removable for cleaning. The motor is a LOT stronger - it's powered through things that I know very well the old one would've stalled on. They've also increased the depth of the litter that can be put into it. While it's still not perfect - it's not as deep as usually put into a standard box - it's better than it was. Tentatively, I'm extremely impressed with this solution. I think 2 of these boxes will eliminate many or most of the litterbox issues in my house, while making cleanup a LOT easier for us.

I'd definitely call that a win-win!