Catgenie???

Has anyone tried or heard anything about this self washing cat box? It's sounds interesting but I don't understand the concept of how they wash and dry the litter. Let alone making the solid waste a liquid waste. Sounds smelly to me.

http://www.catgenie.com/

Originally Posted by snosrap5

Has anyone tried or heard anything about this self washing cat box? It's sounds interesting but I don't understand the concept of how they wash and dry the litter. Let alone making the solid waste a liquid waste. Sounds smelly to me.

http://www.catgenie.com/

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I am not familiar with this. Probably quite expensive.

Originally Posted by Judi

I am not familiar with this. Probably quite expensive.

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It looks expensive. I think I heard about something similar a long time ago.

Looks like a total waste of money to make a quick buck...why didn't I think of this??

I looked into this one, too, when I was searching for an automatic self cleaning litterbox. The "litter" is not regular cat litter- I believe it is some kinda of plastic maybe? pellets (so no dust), and the sanitizer breaks down the solids, and then washes and dries the "litter". You have to have a water source to hook it to (like the connection at the commode- you just screw on a fitting) and somewhere to have it run out- it has a hose that hooks over the side of the commode- under the seat, lol-or you can hook it to another drain- like the washing machine drain. You do have to buy the sanitizer cartridges, and the "litter" refills (but just to replace lost litter). I think it runs around $300, if I remember right.

It was actually pretty neat, but I went for the Litter Robot (reconditioned from the company- much cheaper!) instead because all I needed for it was clumping litter, kitchen trash bags and I could take it outside and hose it out if I needed too, or just wipe it out with Clorox wipes.

A good place to research automatic litterboxes is www.litterboxcentral.com .

I've heard of a few problems with the Cat Genie. First, they have special pellets (not regular litter) and you have to buy these from them. They don't have to be changed very often, but they are a bit expensive. Plus, you have to but the company's special cleaning cartridges which IIRC last 1 month each. The total maintenance cost for the Cat Genie ends up being more expensive than a regular litterbox.
I have also heard from some people who have it that the box can be smelly, especially during the drying cycle and some cats will end up with smelly paws because when they pee in the box there is nothing absorbing it and they end up walking in it (yuck...)

The litter is not cleaned until you run the 30 minute cleaning cycle. To me, my Litter Robot is still better, because it cleans the litter every time a cat uses it.

The precursor to the CatGenie was the LitterFree, which, in the words of one poster, "made the house smell of washed poo." I hope they have covered that base!

However, that forum has some happy users. As always, it would depend on you and your cats.

One always should consider the maintenance costs of actually using the device. I've known people to be sucked in with a certain box because of the low initial cost, then discover they were paying a lot each month for special supplies.

My Robot uses regular litter and the cheapest possible bags. And yes, I find it's worth every penny!

I just Googled this and then searched it in the forum after a friend told me about it this evening. It sounds like they have lots of fine-tuning to do, but yowza! What a long way we've come from the days of the LitterMaid and that horrible "rake" that clogged every other day! I can't wait to see this product after improvements in a couple or few years.