"Yeah that's great and all but I've tried that. 3 litter boxes. All cleaned twice a day, and he still shits on the carpet 2 feet away from the box. Lid on, lid off, big sidewalls, different cat litter. I've tried it all. The little shit just likes shitting on carpet I guess. And putting the fear of god into him does nothing."
I know, right? I have asked him, telling how convenient it was, but he just felt puzzled, my guess is that he hasn't thought this trough! Or he's afraid the cats could fall down or something...
I'm sorry, but is this a joke and I'm just missing it? I find it hard to believe that you are seriously suggesting a cat rolling around in a feces-covered litter box is "cleaning itself".
>freshly cleaned litter box
There is essentially no such thing as this. You would need to completely remove the litter and sanitize the box with bleach _each time your cat poops_. No one does this, they scoop out poop and put the contaminated scoop in a bucket or something. The next time the cat enters the "clean" box it is covered in it's own feces, and your scoop acts as a cross-media reinfection device. Litter boxes are, in practice, perpetually dirty things.
I have a friend who never trained their cats for that, yet the two cats seem to prefer the toilet. The cats even have two spacious litter boxes away from food and noise. Every time I go to his house my friend reminds me to put the lid down after using so the cats don't use it.
Yes, the problem with all these automated cat poop solutions is losing access to a super important clue about your cat's health. If you scoop every day, you'll notice when suddenly there is more or less pee in the box, or blood in your cat's urine or stool. Cats hide pain. Sometimes the litter box is the only way to catch something like a bladder obstruction before it's too late.
Being able to smell their waste in the litter box is also an important part of a cat's territory marking. Having it all flushed away or covered up in scented cleaning solution is going to raise the chances a cat starts peeing in inappropriate places under stress. Same with the lack of 'sand' to dig in when peeing in a toilet (at least the automated boxes still have a digging substrate). The digging is so instinctual that you don't have to train even feral cats to use a litterbox. As soon as they realize it's the only place in the house they can dig, they'll use it.
Yeah that's great and all but I've tried that. 3 litter boxes. All cleaned twice a day, and he still shits on the carpet 2 feet away from the box. Lid on, lid off, big sidewalls, different cat litter. I've tried it all. The little shit just likes shitting on carpet I guess. And putting the fear of god into him does nothing.
That makes sense, but then why not then advise the pet owner to flush the cat's poop down the toilet? Seems simpler than having a special container and a return trip to the vet.
If you have a cat which uses the litter box without any problems, count your blessings and call it a day. Having a cat use the toilet is counter to their instincts to bury their business from other animals. If they fall in, they’ll be traumatized and start doing their business in other unpleasant places.
I’ve used the litter robot, and honestly I think a plain old litter box is easier to keep clean, and in general better for all parties.
"Every once in a while, when the scoop misses a giant cat poop the drying cycle cooks it. It gets dried out like a little raunchy piece of beef jerky. It ends up stinking the apartment up worse than one could imagine. It’s rare, happening maybe once every week or two"
Thanks for striking this off my list of "things I think might be useful." I don't need the odor of fresh-baked cat poop wafting through my house. I'll stick with the freshly-poop cat poop smell that concentrates itself fairly well to the room the litterbox is in.
Although it's worth noting that there are other non-toilet alternatives as a middle-ground that also let the cat perform natural burying behaviour without there being old poop in there - like a self-cleaning litter box.
Hey, it's me - my friend specifically told me about collecting poop from the litter box, not the whole thing. But maybe she got it wrong, I'm not sure.
I wonder whether that’s a neurotic thing about wanting clean litter or an emotional support thing. Your cat might only feel safe enough to go potty with you nearby. Just guessing with little info admittedly.
> I've tried all the other robotic litter boxes too, and they all suck.
I wonder if there's something about your cats' diet that renders their excretions too incompatible with what the robots are designed for.
When we switched from commercial food to the homemade recipe on catinfo.org, the feces of all three cats in my home went from being the stereotypical, wet, stinky kind, to being dry and nearly odorless. (In addition to other visible and invisible health benefits).
Although the robots we use [1] handled the wet feces OK enough, the new feces ended up consuming less litter (i.e. approximately zero, with only urine consuming any) thereby slightly reducing the frequency of waste drawer filling up, requiring less frequent full emptying/cleaning of the robot itself, and never requiring an emptying of the waste drawer due to odor (rather than filled capacity).
[1] Litter-Robot IIs and one LR III. I'm less of a fan of the III, as it has a smaller effective waste drawer capacity before complaining of fullness and takes up significantly more space, meaning there are fewer locations it can go in. Considering how big the LR-II is to begin with, that's a problem.
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