Taking care of beloved feline friends can be a hustle sometimes especially when it comes to their bathroom usage and your standard cat litter box won’t surely start cleaning itself after your cats. This is where automatic self-cleaning litter boxes for cats come in handy as they would do that particular task for you. All throughout these years, as technology progresses, lots of different types of products even for pets become available to make our cat lives easier. Self-cleaning cat litter boxes can detect when your cat finishes using it and does the tedious job for you – no need for you to scoop them out yourself.
We have been trying and testing different brands and models of automatic self-cleaning litter boxes for cats and the LitterMaid Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box is one of the most popular choices these days. The factors we considered for our review are the following: design, ease of cleaning, size, smart features, material, and price. Check out our more detailed review below for more information about this product.
- Could be used by multiple cats
- Scoop-free clean up for up to 7 days
- High walls
- Could be used by multiple cats
- Scoop-free clean up for up to 7 days
- High walls
Factors We Considered In Rating The LitterMaid
Design
The LitterMaid Self-Cleaning Litter Box is designed to serve only a single cat household therefore if you are taking care of more than one cat, you are gonna need to buy another one of this or other brands. It comes with the blue-colored litter box itself, the scoop and rake cleaner, a paw-cleaning ramp that claims to help prevent scatter of litter around the litter box, and disposable receptacles and lids for waste storage.
Ease Of Cleaning
The LitterMaid Cat Litter Box is supposed to help you clean up after your cat, however, after testing this product myself, I found that it does not do the cleaning as I hoped it would. It created more problems than it could solve and I needed to do more cleaning after the litter box itself as the scatter was too much and there were lots of sticking and building up around the inside part of the litter box and also underneath the ramp.
When there’s enough waste in the disposable receptacle/container, just remove the attachment, throw it away and replace with a new one. This can be done once a week because it is only for single-cat use.
The only good things about this litter box are that you can use any type of cat litter but the highly recommended one is the hard clumping clay litter, but biodegradables and silica gel also work well with this litter box and that it contains the odor really well.
Size
This litter box measures 24 x 17 x 10 inches (LxWxH) and measures 30 x 17 x 10 inches with the ramp included. The ramp by itself measures 13 ¾ inches in width and 8 inches in height. Due to its relatively small size, it is designed and recommended only for single-cat households only. You would have to buy another one which may take up too much space inside your house.
Smart Features
The only smart feature the LitterMaid has is the sensor that detects when your cat has used the litter box and then starts the 10-minute timer then the rake starts moving across the litter bed and grabs as much waste as it can and drops it into the receptacle. The does not really do a great job at scraping all the clumped litter as it is designed too widely that the looser and smaller clumps cannot be scraped out and just then stays in the litter box.
Material
It looks like the LitterMaid is made of a sturdy plastic material and its attachment is made of rubber with honeycomb design to help with the prevention of tracking or litter scatter outside the litter box, although its intended use does not really work as the litter are still able to go underneath the ramp which makes it very unsanitary and also difficult and tedious to clean up.
Price
The LitterMaid Self-Cleaning Cat LitterBox is relatively cheaper especially when compared to other high-end smart litter boxes as it is only priced at $79.99. The carbon filters and disposable containers would cost you around $5 per month if you were to clean and change the receptacle at least once a week.
Conclusion
Based on my experience, there are more disadvantages than advantages that you are gonna face if you purchase this self-cleaning litter box. With the advantages, first, it is very affordable compared to its competitors; second, it is compatible with many types of cat litter; third, it is quite spacious and not cramped albeit being small; and lastly, it comes with some accessories such as the ramp and an attachment that fits vacuum hoses.
Now the disadvantages are that one, it does not do a great job of scooping and scraping the clumped litter well enough that lots of smaller and looser clumped wastes were left behind on the litter bed; two, it gets jammed every now and again; three, it uses a disposable waste receptacle/container; four, it operates very loudly when it starts its self-cleaning cycle; and five, it is quite unsanitary as there are lots of sticking and building up of waste around the litter box and scatters litter around and even underneath the ramp.
With all these in mind, I would still highly recommend the Litter Robot Connect over the LitterMaid Single-Cat Self-Cleaning Litter Box when considering all the problems it would create more than it can solve for you which nobody would really want.
I do agree with this assessment of the Litter maid litter box.