Product Review for Cat Owners: The Litter Maid

If you cannot stand how often you have to scoop out your cat’s litter box you may want to check out the self-cleaning boxes. How does it work? The cat enters the box and once it leaves motion detectors set a timer for a cleaning cycle. It will wait until to set the timer until it detects that the cat has left the box after a few seconds. This cleaning cycle will start at the end of ten minutes and set the rake into motion. The rake will slide along the tracks on both sides of the box and move any waste clumps into a plastic receptacle. Then when it is full you will wrestle with the container to free it from the grasp of the end of the unit and replace it with a new plastic bin. You can spend a lot of money working your way around their plastic storage containers and throwing them out every time they are filled. This is a great option for many households although you should know that it will not last forever, machines get old and die too.

When we first moved in together with our beloved cats, it was clear that we both had very different takes on how often the litter should be scooped. I was raised in a household that believed in scooping it out twice a day, changing the litter and washing the bin out every Saturday regardless of if we wanted to do it or not. My husband on the other hand had the advantage of three litter boxes spread throughout his childhood home so they could scoop less often. It was also his chore to scoop out the litter, but he only had to do it every other day and was not responsible for washing the boxes out.

Enter the hero of every cat lover the Litter maid, with its motion sensor and plastic storage receptacle now neither of us has to scoop out the litter box ever again. That is what they would like to have you believe as now almost every pet store across America carries this brand. I love our litter maid although it has started to die now that it is on its second year in our household. It had a good run though we placed it on a large ribbed rug and put it in a corner to cut down on litter being tracked out of the box. Then we placed the box inside of a litter privacy tent and plugged in the carbon filter that we bought to cut down on any smells. The downside of the tent is that we could not get it to zip up which was fine with my husband since he said it would be a pain to remove before every refilling. We loved hearing the machine turn on and lovingly replaced the twenty-dollar liners and tent cover every other night.

Little did we know we would also have to start removing the tent towards the end of the machines life to clean the box ourselves. We tried in vain to get the machine to even out the litter, but it would get stuck on the smallest hill or tiniest clump. The filter lasted a little under 9 months, which got me through the later end of my pregnancy with our son. I threw it out after it burned out the motor from running non-stop. We are sure that every self-cleaning litter box eventually comes to the same eventual demise. Over Four Million of these boxes have been sold to people all over the country the average life of the box is two to three years. If buying a new litter maid does not sound like a great deal to you, there are other options to removing the stinky cat litter from your home all together. You can give your cat a chance to become toilet trained that is if you have enough time and resources available to do this, but be careful since you may have to dedicate a bathroom for only their use!