I have two cats, but I have heard bad things about litter robots; i.e. bad for the cats, not that the machines do not work as advertised. I scoop the box once a day, which doesn’t bother me and lets me keep an eye on their “functions” (they’re 13 so considered “geriatric”). The box is on a mat that helps corral the litter that goes over the side.
The issue with the robot vacuum is the litter dust that gets thrown into the air and then settles in the room or blown by the A/C into the hallway outside. It’s not crazy but, as stated above, it tends to get smeared by my robot’s mop pad. And, clearly, over time (three years in this case) it overwhelms the robot’s ability to clean itself.
A smart litter box is not a fix for litter dust, so I’d rather clean the inside of the vacuum dock every three years than have to clean a smart litter box much more regularly (and probably still have to clean the robot vacuum anyway).
At 13 you’d also run the risk that they wouldn’t use it. At that age they’re pretty set in their ways. When we got ours our senior cat refused to use it, so we ended up having to clean both the robot and a regular box.
Ditto, 2 cats! I don’t do any sifting, I just throw the litter out when it gets bad. I was going through 4 @ 40lb
boxes of litter a month before. With the robot, it’s down to one.
They have always been fastidious about using a litter box from Day #1. They haven’t shown any signs of age as yet, but I don’t want to upset the routine and end up with them peeing on a floor somewhere. That’s a bell you can’t unring.
We put an air purifier in the room with the litter boxes to cut down on the dust. It’s got a big illuminated circle that indicates the air quality, and it better stay blue or that motherfucker will fly into action and scrub the air until the circle goes blue again. We have a big orange male cat who drops bunkerbusters that turn the air quality yellow or god forbid even red, but it doesn’t last because the jet engine air purifier scrubs that shit.
I don’t know if there’s a smart home version though.
We have three cats. And a menagerie of other strange animals. I love @NeilT ’s idea to put an air purifier near the cat boxes. I’m going to try that. We have one in our bedroom that does all the things that he said it does but it’s usually me cooking that sets it off. Not some toxic anal explosion by the cats. I think it’s funny that it is my cooking that makes it send an unhealthy air quality alert to all of our phones and turn into a jet engine to clean the air.
I’ll take credit, but the air purifier isn’t my idea. We have two animals, both found rescues, a Chihuahua and a cat. Not my choice of dog, but over 7 years she’s grown on me. We just drove 3800 miles together. The cat was a kitten that got dumped at a gate where we go to fish bass ponds. How do you leave a kitten that’s clearly dumped and mewing at you?
I handle the cat litter by letting Kris handle the cat litter. It’s a really superior system.
ETA: I should add it’s a really expensive system, involving crystallized kitty litter and automatic scrapers on the kitty box, but it could cost 10 times as much and I’d still think it was better than me cleaning kitty boxes.
