Thoughts on Automatic Litter Boxes?

[Deleted]

Specifically I'm debating getting the Litter Robot 3/Open-Air.


I have 3 cats, and am moving in with my parents who have an elderly cat as well who we are hoping to integrate into a happy cat family. Despite the fact that Jellybean & Junebug used to live at home before and did not get along with Misty. The difference is that I'm going to be there to facilitate intros rather than have my parents struggle with them like before. As much as they really do mean well, they have no idea how to deal with feline behavioural problems.


So anyway, the major issue that I foresee is litter box location & cleanliness. My mom has basically told me I'm not allowed to have as many litter boxes as I need. (4, just for my 3 cats, otherwise I know they're going to revert to their bad behaviour.) She said I can have one in the laundry room, and one in my bedroom. She has one just for Misty in her bedroom/ensuite bathroom as Misty basically lives on my mom's bed. She's 15.5yrs old.


Basically that means there will be 3 litter boxes for 4 cats and that is simply not enough. I was hoping that getting a Litter Robot to make sure that no matter what one of the litter boxes is constantly clean would help us out a bit and make up for lack of boxes in the house. Of course, said robo-box will be located in a Rolo-free zone as he doesn't weigh enough to trip the sensor and stop the machine from rotating if he were to climb inside.



Should also add that the Litter-Robot 3 costs around $600 CAD and is very pricey so I was hoping someone on here would be able to weigh in with their experiences with automatic boxes.

Oh! And should also add, I'm really not concerned with begin able to "read" the cat poop like I do with ferret poop to look out for illnesses. With so many cats, I've always found it far more accurate to see if anyone was sick based on eating habits/behaviour. Never have I caught any kind of illness by looking at the cat boxes in my nearly 16years of caring for cats.

[bitbyter]

So your mom would rather have litterbox issues / accidents than one more litterbox? That doesn't seem to make much sense.

[Deleted]

Feb 14, 2016 22:44:29 GMT -5 bitbyter said:

So your mom would rather have litterbox issues / accidents than one more litterbox? That doesn't seem to make much sense.

It really doesn't make any sense. Two of my cats were originally my mom's cats and the reason I have them in the first place is because my parents literally begged me to take them.

My mom has actually asked me to give them away to my roommate instead of bringing them home as well. (Nevermind the fact that I have literally invested thousands of dollars on sorting out their various issues and we have only had one litterbox mishap in the past 4months, which are now extremely predictable and easy to manage.)


Anyways, she knows I'm bringing them back and so to soften the transition I have explained to my mom everything we need to do to make sure the cats stay on the right track with their litter box problems, and all I get is my mom telling me I'm not allowed to do such and such a thing.

If things really do get to hectic at home I suppose it means I'll be moving out again sooner rather than later.

[Deleted]

The generally accepted 'litter box math' is one box per cat, plus an extra box. Having so many boxes is a little bit less about having clean litter boxes and a little more about territorial security; cats can be really insecure about their territory, especially in multicat households. If they don't have a safe place to go, and if they can't put their scent down in enough places(I.E. if you have a 2 story house and litter boxes only upstairs), they can become insecure and are likely to have 'accidents' in areas where they want another litter box to be.

The problem with automatic litter boxes is that it removes their scent--if their scent isn't there, it isn't their territory, they may become insecure. Worse, some automatic litter boxes roll or otherwise cause the litter to go all over the walls of the box--how would you like to go to the bathroom in a room where the walls were smeared with of your waste, and the waste of your roommates?

The BEST option is to stick to 1 box per cat, plus one, or at the very least having as MANY un-lidded, non-automatic boxes as possible. Having no covered/automatic boxes is preferred.

[Deleted]

I was at the local cat rescue center last weekend where I sawmy first automated cat litter tray. They were plumb in with water and drainage and some were busy whirring away washing, disinfecting and drying the cat litter in them.

Each pen had one in and I was told they certainly save a lot of time when you have as many cats as they do in the rescue center but they said that some did not always function well and would need attention.

Plus, whilst most of their cats would use them, some cats would not.

We have four cats at present all from the same litter (our fifth cat blue recently died aged 21) and we survive well with two large litter trays. That said we have cat flaps installed and our cats do most of their business outside.