The Truth About Automatic Litter Boxes
The Truth About Automatic Litter Boxes
Automatic litter boxes: are they really worth the hype? In my decades of experience working with cats – many of whom have litter box issues – I’ve found them to create more problems than they solve. From the risk of potential malfunctions to the dangerous stripping away of your ability to monitor your cat’s health, in my opinion it’s just not worth the risk! As cat guardians, we should avoid making decisions that take the power out of our hands when it comes to our cat’s well-being for the sake of convenience. Have you ever used a self-cleaning litter box? I’d love to hear your thoughts so comment below!
0:00 Intro
1:28 Overview of Litterboxes
1:47 Litter Robot
2:04 Littermaid
2:52 Omega Paw
3:16 Purina Breeze
4:16 Territorial Signposts
6:07 Report Card
7:23 Malfunctions
8:51 Enclosures
10:14 Still Gross
10:44 Embrace the Box
Litter Box Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAJvHNBwbBNuzFZeHRkBmQaiPG-sqZjIZ&si=M0IO2UA-7Gc-iOdE
My Favorite Litter: https://bit.ly/3uUJFoE
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#JacksonGalaxy #Cat #Advice
We just bought one of those for our new kitty and it’s a picture of crap, so we have to buy another one
What about stainless steel litter boxers? What is your opinion? Are better compared to plastic ones?
I bought a Littermaid automatic litter box back when they were new years ago for my late kitty, AliCat (R.I.P. 2013 to the best kitty!) and in the middle of the night I was woken up to the sound of the litter box repeatedly going off. I investigated and found AliCat lying in the box and the automatic comb kept trying to throw my sweet kitty boy into the litter receptacle! I took the litter box back to the store the next day and explained what had happened and they took it back. Too funny!
Hi Jackson, what about the new PETKIT Litter box, the Puro Robot, that has a camera that identifies the cat and analysis the pee and poop using AI technology based on the amount of information available… sending us reports via the app.
Is this not what was missing in the automatic machines? Myself I’ve decided to give this one a try for the first time.
Thank you for you reply.
Agree with all your advice, Jacks !! Love ya, our kitty guru !! 😁💗👌🏼
Hey Jackson….not only do we both share a great love of cats….we also share the same birthday – April 28th!
LR4 owner, really lame excuse, you can unplug the litter robot and collect a sample, did he not know that? This guy is supposed to be some sort of professional?
Good machines are designed with fail safes, buy cheap import garbage that’s on you.
I normally agree with you 99.9% of the time but this time I have to say, l’m on the other side of the fence with you. I have had cats for 30 years and have only used a litter box. I currently have two cats, an 18year old female and a 6 year old male, both rescues I might add. I decided to research and purchase an automatic litter box as I go on holidays and the people who stay at the house when I’m gone don’t like to clean the litter. They usually end up doing it the day before I get home. Hence, my cats have dirty litter when I’m away. Before you judge, they are good people and look after my cats, dogs horses, and donkeys very efficiently. With that one exception, I purchase the.Litter Robot 4 (no ,I do not have any affiliation with them). I chose it because I felt it was the safest, quietest, and most informative on the market there is no doors for them to get trapped in. There is no rake for their foot to get trapped in. It is extremely quiet and it records everything I can now see my cat weight as it weighs them. Every time they go in, I can see how often they go in, and therefore can keep an eye on that activity and if I so choose, can go and look at their defecation, if need be. It keep tracks of both cats, so there’s no guessing who is going to the bathroom more or how often. I found this a great help, as you could be out for the day when they go to the washroom and you don’t know who it was. I can see if there’s a change in cat’s schedule as far as going to the washroom, as well as a change in their weight. You can set it to clean for a specific amount of time after they’ve used it so therefore there is no worry that they are in it when it rotates. You can put it on sleep mode whenever you want which I tend to do at night, so I’m not worried about anything I feel I have more immediate knowledge as to what’s going on with him than before, and I feel much better knowing that they have a clean litter box when I’m away. I can even track things from wherever I am to see if there is a problem developing. These are the reasons I feel I have a difference of opinion with you. I really appreciate the features of Litter Robot 4. Ps. I also purchased the ramp for my ‘ole girl and she uses it no problem,.
Let me preface this by saying I have a great deal of respect for you, Jackson Galaxy, and the work you do. But, on this issue, I have to respectfully disagree. My counter arguments to your points:
1. Scent. Trust me, not every drop gets absorbed and whisked away. There will still be scent markers.
2. "Report Card" – If you have a multi-cat household, figuring out who left what can be a real challenge anyway. Many automatic cat boxes have sensors and cameras that allow you to monitor the frequency and quality of each cat’s goings much more accurately than you can with a traditional box. Check out One Man Five Cats; he talks about being alerted to one of his cat’s health issues when the robotic litter box alerted him to her using it way more often than usual.
And as for getting samples for the vet, they all have a window between the cat leaving the box and it being scooped. You can take a sample then. Or turn it off temporarily until you get your sample.
3. Danger – Yes, there are some dangerous designs out there, particularly among budget Chinese brands. But there are also safe designs. DO YOUR RESEARCH before you buy one. Avoid boxes that have compartments that close off completely during the cycle.
4. Enclosure – Fair point, but there are some designs that are more open than others. And as much as they may dislike enclosed cat boxes, in my experience, they dislike dirty cat boxes even more.
5. They’re expensive (I can’t argue with that) and still gross – True. But it’s a once-in-a-while chore, rather than a multiple-times-per-day chore. That may mean nothing to you. Fine. More power to you. But for other people who have different abilities/disabilities than you do (executive function issues, or difficulty bending over, for example) that distinction may be the difference between being able to enjoy and properly care for their cats with minimal help, and being completely overwhelmed by their daily needs.
As to your conclusion, your argument against automatic boxes seems to boil down to a kind of weird reverse snobbery: I must prove I love my cat more by scooping his poop by hand! Really? Should we apply this thinking to all advances in technology? Do parents love their children more if they do all the laundry by hand? Am I a more dedicated worker if I leave my car at home and ride a horse to work? Will the quality of my food be better served by unplugging the refrigerator and going back to filling the cool chest with hunks of ice every day?
Do your research to make sure what you are getting is safe and be prepared to pivot if your cat doesn’t like the new setup. But let’s not automatically throw out technological innovations that can improve the quality of life for both us and our cats.
I’ve never had an automated litter box. Mostly it was me and a scoop, and the old boy was a stickler for clean litter boxes so I learned early on with him to listen for the sound of litter being kicked about. Honestly having had 5 cats at one point and three litter boxes to keep clean only reinforced what Max had taught me; I have scooped many boxes. It’s not that difficult and to be honest a diaper is far grosser than a litter box. Cats are very tidy. The biggest problem we had was training guests to shut the gates/doors to the bathrooms to keep the dog out. When she was a puppy she could just squeeze through the cat door so for a few months until she got too big for that the litterboxes were kind of a problem, but really it was the dog, not the cats.
Amazon sent me one of these to review for them. I have 3 male cats that are about 4 years old now. One of them jumped right in and went no problem. However, the litter area was a bit narrow and he ended up with his head out the front. The largest of the 3 wouldn’t go near it the first night, but I left his brother’s poop in it and he went in the following morning without issue. The 3rd and smallest of the 3 will not come within 12 feet of it. He refused to eat, drink or even enter the same room with it. (The food is in one spot, but the litter box is on the other side of the room, but viewable about 10 feet away.) He spent all day under my bed or hiding in my pantry and would not even go into the living room where their litter box is. (It was his favorite room because I have a heating pads spread around for them that are covered in thick towels so they can’t claw the wires.) For what it’s worth the box worked fine and did everything it claimed, but I can already see that it’s not going to save all that much time because now there is more parts to clean. (I’m sorry, but I can’t sit there comfortably knowing that poop might be on the ceiling.) It’s not saving me any money cause you have to buy the litter, the bags and the air fresher thing to help keep the smell down. I normally fully rotate out the litter about every 2 weeks because it smells awful with 3 boys, but with that fake air freshener you start to lose track of the last time you swapped out all the litter fully. (This brand costs $600.00 and that’s a lot to spend on something your cat might not like.)
One litter box 3 cats clean the box every night I love my cats so clean the box
Thanks for your wonderful advice you are right the simple litter box is simple and works we did a trial with the litter robot we weren’t sure if our fur baby would take to it we left out her other litter box out she took to the litter robot right away she loves watching it still to this day it has so many safety features it never went off with our cat in it we got the extended warranty it just recently broke they sent us all the replacement parts and is working wonderful again we are going to get the 4 and give this one to a friend what we do to keep track of our cats heath when she goes we can see what she went before it cycles because of the delay and when we clean out the waste bin we can see all the clumps of waste she produces and there were times she has jumped in and out and it always resets that timer another reason we love the litter robot it’s made in America not China
For safety issues, keep it on manual. Turn it on only when u can be there to watch it safely cycle and then turn it back off.
Ive read some comments that their cats had some horrible experiences. So I wanted to add a fresh comment. ❤
charmingest thanks a lot! and uuuh, anyway.
PLEASE don’t EVER use candy to refer to cat poop or any poop EVER again. 🤮*sigh* chewy can’t come fast enough. I’m out of litter. The current stuff is STINKY. Male cat pee. Even though he’s neutered that stuff is RANK. Plus I’m two cans from anarchy with his wetfood. I can’t help it though, I only get paid once a month!!!
I can’t afford an automated litter box. If Bandit ever gets hurt or sick I’d have to put the vet visit on a carecredit card. You get six months interest free but if you aren’t on time they will SOCK you with high interest. It sucks.
So here’s the closest nightmare story i know. i got one of those boxes with the sifter built in, i figure it still follows Jackson Galaxy’s advice about poop being a warning sign. But I’m also a very bad hoomin bean who can’t bring herself to touch the litter box, or many other gross things. So i don’t clean the box as often as I should, and that was my undoing. Cat pee would settle under the sifter and turn the litter basically into mud or cement. Then the flies found it. The final blow was when my cat brought me a maggot. I chucked the sifter part, banged the living daylights out of the remaining two pieces which were still good enough to be litterboxes, and chucked the *censored* sifter. Then I set about using boiling water and nature’s miracle to clean first one, then the other, rotating one into use while I cleaned the other.I normally don’t try to remove my cat’s scent from the box, but it had to be done that time. It was just too grimy.
He’s brought bothersome bugs to me before too. Like when we had a bedbug infestation (all gone thanks to prompt action by the landlady) he brought me a bedbug trapped between his toes! It ended up on my knee in the evening so I was in my nightshirt, and I sit indian style at the computer, so it ended up on my bare knee running in circles trying to figure out what happened. Poor thing was as stunned as I was, and Bandit was very relieved to get that thing out from between his toes.
You see, because of my denseness, I’ve trained my cat to show me what he wants. So for example he’ll smell my coffee cup if he wants me to change his water, or shove his nose in the bathroom faucet. If he wants food, he’ll lead me to where its stored. Ect. If he wants me, he’ll lead me to my bed. XD which is funny. But if I neglect something, it can backfire in its grossness. Its called avoidance behavior btw. In humans. A compulsion to act on one’s revulsion and avoid something gross. I have mental health issues and my cat is a serious balm to my psyche. It’s not just the box either. Dirty dishes, the fridge, MY toilet. I just can’t bring myself to touch them until it reaches a crescendo of anxiety.
So in the end, simple is best.
Islam is coming for Amztoys
I like that big deep litter box that you held up in tht begging of the video. Do you mind sharing what one it is? I’d like to buy one
Thanks for making this video as I was interested in an automatic box and I think I will stick with an old fashioned box for my little kitty as I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to him
I have 14. I struggle. I have depression. 😢
Yes there is a video on YouTube about AMZTOY. Poor design
Danger danger
"I love a good kislux because it helps me decide if I want to buy the real thing or NOT." That part right there. That’s IT. I feel like people stigmatize dupes but for me, I pause on large purchases that are trendy or when I feel the overconsumption mania setting in FOR ME. (It’s something I struggle with LOL! I’m easily convinced to buy things I don’t wear or use. They’ll literally have the tags and I’ll even forget I bought something and have 2 or 3 of them in my closet.) Love this video!
Hi Jackson, MY Cat has an Open litter box, Unscented litter and low entry way.
I would also recommend using a simple box. Nothing a-paw-colyptic about that.
I love my genuine litter robot. My cat is fine with it
I agree with you. But I bought an open top automatic liter box. Because if I go out of town I don’t have to rely on anyone coming to my home to clean their box. I also bought an automatic cat feeder and water fountain
I normally agree with you 99.9% of the time but this time I have to say, l’m on the other side of the fence with you. I have had cats for 30 years and have only used a litter box. I currently have two cats, an 18year old female and a 6 year old male, both rescues I might add. I decided to research and purchase an automatic litter box as I go on holidays and the people who stay at the house when I’m gone don’t like to clean the litter. They usually end up doing it the day before I get home. Hence, my cats have dirty litter when I’m away. Before you judge, they are good people and look after my cats, dogs horses, and donkeys very efficiently. With that one exception, I purchase the.Litter Robot 4 (no ,I do not have any affiliation with them). I chose it because I felt it was the safest, quietest, and most informative on the market there is no doors for them to get trapped in. There is no rake for their foot to get trapped in. It is extremely quiet and it records everything I can now see my cat weight as it weighs them. Every time they go in, I can see how often they go in, and therefore can keep an eye on that activity and if I so choose, can go and look at their defecation, if need be. It keep tracks of both cats, so there’s no guessing who is going to the bathroom more or how often. I found this a great help, as you could be out for the day when they go to the washroom and you don’t know who it was. I can see if there’s a change in cat’s schedule as far as going to the washroom, as well as a change in their weight. You can set it to clean for a specific amount of time after they’ve used it so therefore there is no worry that they are in it when it rotates. You can put it on sleep mode whenever you want which I tend to do at night, so I’m not worried about anything I feel I have more immediate knowledge as to what’s going on with him than before, and I feel much better knowing that they have a clean litter box when I’m away. I can even track things from wherever I am to see if there is a problem developing. These are the reasons I feel I have a difference of opinion with you. I really appreciate the features of Litter Robot 4.
After reviewing and trying out a couple automatic litter boxes I would have to respectfully disagree with you that they’re not worth it. If you get the ones like the PetSafe smart spin or the litter robot or other ones that are safe the features are wonderful. I have six cats. With the pet safe SmartSpin I learned pretty quickly because each cat weighs different which one uses the bathroom. I can still investigate their feces if it doesn’t look right. I can identify which one used the bathroom at which time and if something came up with one of these cats I would know which one was sick instead of guessing
TL;DR Breeze Boxes are a nightmare when used as intended, BUT end up as one of the cheapest and easiest litter systems if used as sifting boxes with pine pellets.
Unlike other sifting boxes where you have to pick up the top one, you can just shake the whole breeze box because the top and bottom interlock. Just seal the drawer with tape or use a liner. I have the full cover ones and I hauled them around one handed. It makes deep cleaning days incredibly easy. You don’t even have to dry them because the pellets absorb the moisture.
40lb bags of pine pellets are $24-ish for cat-specific brands or $10-ish if you get equine bedding (just make sure it’s kiln dried for allergy reasons) and lasts for months even with two cats/boxes. Low dust, low tracking, and less frequent need for deep cleans or full changes bc you top off with fresh as it’s used. Odor control is on-par with your standard litter. It even held it’s own though my cats digestive issues.
There are a few robot litter boxes that are not enclosed. The litter is emptied by a slide up in the front, dumps the clumps in the back and slides back down. I have a hood without a door because my cat likes to toss the litter as far out of the box as he can, it’s a contest, I think. He still gets some litter outside the box, but it’s not spread a foot or more across the floor. I did get one of those litter colleting rugs, but this is easier.
THANK YOU & the comments – we were just about to buy 2 litter robots
I feel like if you healthy person and have no crazy schedule and has some backup for pet sitting in your long absence you do not need it
I’m a dog person.
I’ll get an automatic litter box.
Do not buy these automatic cat litter boxes. Many cats have died from these devices.
I love the robot. Cats go and love the clean litter. I spend less on litter and NO Smell. I take out the bag once a week. All happy and all good. If it were to break I would buy another one. They hated the litter box s and so did I.
Omg there are positive and negative to the litter box and robo. How do people check their dog fescues when they open the door and let the dog out
I have been using the Tidy Cats Breeze litter system for years now. I love it. The Breeze system is easy to use and keep clean. My cats love it. Many cat rescue organizations recommend it.
The truth is my cat’s litter box has never been cleaner since I spent $800 on this thing. My cat has an $800 toilet, I doubt mine cost that much, but I’m happy because I do not like scooping poop.
Ive had a Litter Robot for 14 years though 2 cats and never had a safety issue.
As with mnay other commenters, i have a physical disability so this is a huge help. Kinda wish he’d apologize to those of us who may not be mobile, so im going to unsub.
I kind of agree with your take. So what is your recommendation for those with disabilities or mobility issues? Because I don’t really want a litter robot but we need something my mom can manage
What box is he holding up.
You can still monitor the “report card” when you empty the waste, it doesn’t disappear guy
Very traditional… that’s ok too 😊
I have 3 cats. I have four litter boxes placed in different rooms in my house: a boxscoop which all three use for urine only, a pullnscoop which two cats use, an automatic pet snowy that only two cats use and a regular litter box which only one cat uses that is the largest of them all. Cats are picky. I appreciate your opinion. And Thank you for sharing.
I have 3 litter robots and 6 cats. They are a Godsend. Once I bought one I had to get rid of all my traditional litterboxes and I bought three more. I left my old litter boxes out (for a trial period) when I bought the Litter Robots and my cats always went straight to the LB4 when they had a choice. My theory is that they like always have a fresh place to go. For me it was a no brainer. (Also check out the song "I love my cat but I don’t like you".
My mum asked me if we should get one for our cat, but I outright told her no. I also explained to her that if our cat wanted privacy to poop, he wouldn’t walk into the bathroom while we bathed, or cleaning his litter to do his buisness.
We did get a new litter tray, where it has two seperate litter boxes, and a sieve to collect poop and it works for us. I would always rather scoop or sieve cat poop than to use an automated cat litter box.
Ooof I had a feeling this guy would say no.
I just bought one for 2 cats. I have put it together but I have not put cat litter in it yet. Should I return it? What should i get. I don’t like bad smells. Should I get an air purifier and pair it with a simpler sustem ?
Autmated! 😂 i love the way you teach your things.. Great!