apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Eh. I have two cats and I scoop twice daily and change the litter and clean out the box once a week. And it really doesn't take that long.

So my thought is...no way.

300 dollars is bananas. I just threw a fit for spending 40 dollars on mine, and I'm a person who buy expensive bougie cat food. Also, my cats would kick out the litter onto the floor in the pictured-model.

I had a friend who bought this. When it flushed, it freaked out her cats so bad that they wouldn't go near it - and so they used her couch as a litterbox for the rest of the day.

This thing is so ugly, if your going to put the time and effort into creating a product why not try and make it something people won't want to hide. Especially something that is pushing 300 dollars.

I would never.

The worst thing about this machine is that cat hair inevitably clogs the drain pipe and it fills up (and possibly overflows?) with poopy water. Apparently there is quite a lot of hair in cat poop. I really, really wanted one until I found out the nasty details.

erin k, i am SO not surpsied! your cat litter box should be very quiet, but skittish cats (like my fatcat) would get so afraid of it that they'd find other, less scary, facilities!

Yikes. This is weird...it looks like a little toilet bowl. I think you could possibly train a kitten to use this, but I doubt a cat would make the transition from a traditional litter box to this.

We had the self-scooping box, and it freaked our cats out. Plus, the urinated litter always ends up sticking to the equipment.

My eyes saw, "March is Kitten & Catroom month on AT."

This machine is a curiosity. Is the drain that tube that resembels a rope along the base of the tub? Because I can't see cat products going through there. Maybe that's a curly supply line, and a slender waste tube? Clunky design, and many potential points for foul overflow, so just say no.

I have had two Cat Genies for over a year now, yes it is a big investment, but over the year I have saved money and time with them.

I have one cat that before we got the Cat Genie she would not use the littler box if it had not been clean at least three times a day. She would use soft fabric that was on the floor, then she started going on furniture. We tried different types of litter, used litter attraction, and it just kept getting worst. We took her to vet to find out if there was something wrong with her, nothing was, and she is just very, very picky. So, for her it has helped, we don’t go though a bag of little a week.

You can set it to go from one to four times a day. The one in the laundry room go twice a day and the one in the bathroom to go once a day. So, we spend $150.00 every six months need supplies, instead of the $40-$60 we were spending on litter before.

If you have a cat that is not as picky as my, you would mostly only spend $150.00 for a year worth of supplies.

Also, when the company did an update to their product, they sold new piece to update older products for only a penny shipping, but still most company do not do this.

This is stupid. So many complicated, expensive ways to avoid cleaning up after your pet cat. If you have cats, you scoop litter. If you don't want to scoop litter, don't get a cat.

My cats would go to the bathroom over the sides of it, kick litter all over the place...no way. I have two cats, two boxes in different locations. As long as you clean them out regularly, what is the issue?

my fatties would crap out off the side. I have 3 cats, two boxes and clean them daily - everyother day if I'm lazy. It's not that hard.

That's too small for that cat. The size might be right for a kitten.

I don't think I even get how this works. It has litter but it flushes? I think there's some environmental and plumbing issues here too.

I would get this for my dog a JRT I could teach him in a day to go in it and flush it. um

Can't resist saying that one is owned by cats -- not the other way around.

why not just train your cats to use the toilet?

there are detailed instructions online all over the place...

If I were to get kittens, I would definitely housebreak them with a genie.

But the cats I grew up with would never have wanted to use this: too much going on! And if the texture of the granules were not up to snuff, you'd better believe they'd just go on the rug.

After wasting too much $$ on that self cleaning litter box that didnt do as promised, and scared my kitty besides.....this $300 monster would be an absolute no no! and i know it would freak my cats.
Like everyone says scooping and cleaning the litter box is not that difficult.

I bought one of these last summer. It has been GREAT! I was tired of throwing tons of litter in the trash every few weeks. Litter has to go to the landfill, and it doesn't really break down. I thought this would be a great "green" alternative. Also, I had an extra bathroom to put it in. It sits in the shower, behind a curtain, and the pipes run from behind the sink to the toilet. Sure it's loud, and it took my cat a little while to get used to it, but I set it to auto-run while I'm gone. She kicks out the litter into the shower, but I just replenish it as it gets low. The initial cost was a lot, but I've already saved in the cost of litter. PLUS: it doesn't stink!!! There is almost no maintenance for me!

the picture says it all.. that cat is OBVIOUSLY photoshoped in there. look at the shadows- they are really inaccurate. if they couldnt even get a cat in there for the photos.. good luck getting one to pee in it.

I bought a littermaid electric one a few years back, and it was the worst purchase ever. The litter was always sticking and clumping, it would scare the cats ... Now I use a $5 litter box and change it every day. It takes 5 minutes, and everyone's happy.

I had a cat door installed between the house and the screened-in porch, and my handyman installed a lattice screen behind which the litterbox and some of the garden supplies are stowed. Problem solved. It's so easy to scoop when the lumps are frozen solid. Though when it got down to -10 one night this winter, I took the box inside.

The only civilized thing to do would be to not keep animals as pets.

This is the height of laziness. Only in America do people pay big bucks for a fancy machine to do what can be done manually in about 5 minutes a day.

...OK, maybe also in France.

I like the idea of the self-cleaning granules, but it would use up a lot of water. My cats would toss those self-cleaning granules out and play with them all day. I think I'll stick to my compostable litter and rubbermaid tubs!

The granules and Sani solution are SO not green. They are made of noxious chemicals that goes into the water table and also into your cat when it licks its paws .

Also - would YOU like to use a toilet of chemically rinsed and rerinsed toxic nuggets? Esp.if your sense of smell were 200 times stronger than it is now?

Feline Pine and daily scooping FTW, it is 100% biodegradable. Also, if your cat hates the litter you use, try a box full of SOIL - they love it - then slowly mix litter into the soil until you have an all-litter litter box.

Way too small for most cats. Tons of litter would get kicked out all over the place. Blargh. Before going to the trouble of training your cats to use this $300 greige plastic monstrosity, why not toilet train them if you can't stand normal litter boxes?

PLEASE DON'T USE THIS!
Flushing cat waste introduces toxoplasmosis (which is not killed by our water cleaning processes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis ) and then passes this on to our waterways. This parasite is responsible for sea otter deaths and probably other problems that we haven't found yet. Please use Feline Pine or some other green product.
thanks

The idea of animals pooping indoors is a little gross IMO. I walk my dog and pick up her poo outside and also throw it out in trash containers outside.... I think I would freak if I lived near any poo just...sitting there....

Now if cats could be trained to go in the toilet AND flush, then I would be fine....or if they could be walked on leashes outside. But poop in the house? gross.

I had guinea pigs as a child and kept them very clean but the thought of having something similar now bothers me in my pristine place :)

But I am not a cat person so its totally my opinion.

lame and ugly. would go perfectly with a giant ugly beige-carpeted cat tree. feline pine plastic tub under the sink is good enough for me and my cat.

I shouldn't be reading about this at lunch. Yuck!

It looks like a Japanese washlet, but turning on a hot water spray for kitty's behind.... well, hilarity ensues.

To all those that think a person would be lazy not to want to scoop their cats poo or that this kind of contraption is ridiculous, try using a chamber pot for yourself for a week instead of a toilet. I'm sure there were people that said toilets were a bourgeois indulgence back in the day too... Now, not that I would spend $300 on this particular brand of monstrosity, but if they came up with an elegant solution that actually worked I would pay for it in a second; especially since I am a woman of child bearing age and I want to have a child, and the bacteria in cat poo can be deadly to a developing fetus.

On a lighter note, that reminds me... I have to scoop the poo! :)

This reminds me of an Onion headline I saw a few years back. It was on my fridge forever.

"Like boxes of sh*t in your house? Get a cat!"

antimatt's comment is spot-on.

msjessiemeghan - Some cats can, in fact, be trained to do just that, and photographic proof can be found all over the web.

My cats are toilet trained, though they haven't yet mastered flushing. (Where I live, waste water is treated instead of pumped into the ocean. Otherwise I'd still be using Swheat Scoop.)

PLEASE DON'T USE THIS!
Flushing cat waste introduces toxoplasmosis (which is not killed by our water cleaning processes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis ) and then passes this on to our waterways. This parasite is responsible for sea otter deaths and probably other problems that we haven't found yet. Please use Feline Pine or some other green product.
thanks
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Why don't they just start filtering it out? Before the cat Genie, there was "flushable" litter, so even if this product didn't exist, people would still be unknowingly flushing their cat waste (or at least trying to, the stuff clogged my toilet). I mean, obviously it's a problem and I hate hearing about otters dying and such.

Also, I wish there were better green litters... I tried feline pine and it wasn't 5 mins after my cat used it the first time that my entire apt smelled like the inside of a pet mouse/hamster cage. Ick.

cleaning the cat litter box is smillar to unloading the dishwasher... every hates doing it, but in reality it takes less than 2 min to actually execute the task.

Pregnant women shouldn't touch cat litter, yes, but geez, it's not so toxic that you can't have it in your house.

And no, this product isn't "green" at all. What a waste of water and introducing things into the water table. Lose lose.

I'm going to train my next pair of cats to use the toilet. That is the real only civilized alternative. Until then, humans serve beasts in some form.

It's way too small, for one thing. My cats would be hanging their fat butts over the side and there'd be cat pee all over the floor.

Cats need big, deep litterboxes with 2-3 inches of litter in which to scratch. Scooping takes next to no time and keeps the box clean and odor-free between complete litter changes.

From the website:

http://www.catgenie.com/about-catgenie/3-size-set-up/index.php

• "The cat area (Bowl) is 19 inches across"

My quite large cat is comfortable in a box that's 12" x 16". Comfortable, meaning she uses it and she doesn't take out her frustration elsewhere in the house.

The photoshop makes it look rather small in relation to the size of the cat, but it is actually big enough. Not endorsing the product, but it is in fact large enough for a cat to wee in.

the fact that they had to photoshop a picture of a cat into there product makes me say...

.... NO

oh and the price

I used a Littermaid, similar concept, until it broke (the second time.) (It was a gift, I'd never spend the money...)

These systems have their pros and cons. To me they aren't worth the trouble, and the cost of the experiment is too high. (I suspect my cats would be afraid...)

For some of us, having companion animals (dn) is an important part of a happy life and is QUITE civilized. As is rescuing shelter animals abandoned by other people. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Yep. My Mr Big Handsome would beat this up, not crap in it.

The "ick! Crap in the house!" response is understandable, but I'm equally squicked out picking up dog poop in plastic bags.
Litter dries poop out quite quickly; it doesn't smell that much.

CatGenie is the greenest cat box out there. CatGenie’s uses washable, reusable granules eliminate the need to buy clay litter, which goes through strip mining, which is terrible for the environment. The reusable granules also prevent tons of kitty litter from ending up in land fills every year. The Granules and Sani-Solution cartridges are both biodegradable.

Well, its not the ONLY civilized alternative! (thats a lofty claim if ive ever heard one... :D)

I use ScoopFree, which is another self-cleaning box. No risk of contributing to toxoplasmosis as you just toss the trays at the end of use (no flushing/water involved, thus no contamination). Cant think of anything easier... or less smelly... than our wonderful box! I just got on their litter subscription service, so they'll ship my litter to me and charge my card - i literally dont have to do a thing (well, besides putting in a new tray. which is small potatoes.)

the website is www.scoopfree.com (if you wanna see it in action). And their number is 888.726.MEOW (6369) - if you call to order your subscription trays like i just did, you will get a few extra perks that arent on their website yet (like free shipping and money off your first order).

It is a little disappointing to see some people so fundamentally opposed to the CatGenie when they have never tried it. CatGenie is partially about being lazy and not wanting to scoop stinky litter--sure. I admit that part of it. I had a cat for 20 years and scooped several times per day. Not having to do that is definitely nice. Since when is something that makes you a little lazy a crime? How many of you who wrote hostile e-mails about CatGenie use a remote control for your TVs? Isn't that lazy? Shouldn't you get up and walk over to the TV every time you want to change a channel? Come on--being lazy is okay. But, CatGenie is more than just a lazy-person's delight. It is the right thing for your pocketbook and the environment. Have you ever stopped to think how much litter costs? It is very expensive. And, it poses a serious long-term challenge to landfills. All of our trash does the same thing, so why not do something eco-friendly? And, for the writer who said that the cat was photoshopped, I agree with you. It does look that way, but have you ever tried to get a cat to stand still while you take its picture? None of mine would ever do that. My dog will, but not the cats. And, for those of you who think I'm some CatGenie spokesperson disguised as a regular user, it isn't true. I got my CatGenie last week and we just got a new kittie yesterday from the breeder, since our 18 year-old cat died 3 months ago. I had a lot of concerns about the CatGenie: would it be too noisy, would it scare the cat, would the cat use it (since it was using regular litter at the breeder's), would it control odor, etc. And, I'm really pleased after 1 day already. Yes, the CatGenie is somewhat noisy. I would say it sounds about 1/3 as loud as running an average vacuum cleaner. In a small room, it clearly makes some noise. Did our brand new kittie use it? He sure did. I was very worried that he wouldn't use it after we ran the wash cycle because he would be scared of it, but in the middle of the night he left us proof that he is still using it even after having heard it run through the wash cycle. And, finally, it really does control the odor. Of course, the room stinks when the cat goes, but once the cycle completes, the smell of the cleaning solution actually fills the room with a freshly-cleaned smell. It is a little antiseptic, but not like a hospital or anything. At this point in the experience, it is exactly what we wanted. We will recoup the cost in less than 1 year and we now have an eco-friendly alternative to scooping smelly litter. Before condemning it, you might want to give it a try.