Litter Miss
Written: May 17 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice idea.
Cons: Poorly implemented idea.
The Bottom Line: Don't buy it unless you enjoy noise, mess and headaches.
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| gunnymo's Full Review: Litter Maid Advanced Deluxe Litter Maid Litter Box |
When I first saw the commercials for Litter Maid I, like many other people, said, "Wow! What a great idea!" As we all know, cleaning the litter box can be a pain and finding something to ease that burden is nice. So, after giving the Litter Maid a year or so to work out any bugs I put down the $99.99 at the local Target store and took home what I'd hoped to be a time saver. In retrospect, they should have spent another year on debugging.
Setup and assembly was straight forward. Before putting in litter I gave it a test run, dry run if you will, and it worked just fine. I did find it a bit noisy though. Now for the real test...litter. Using Tidy Cat Multi-Cat clumping litter (recommended by Litter Maid) I filled the litter area to the marked "fill" line. A little giddy with excitement at the first litter-filled use, I flipped the switch to "ON" and waited for joyful bliss. Motor running, loudly, and the grater arm comes down and begins to clean the litter. When it reaches the up-swing to open the waste receptacle I heard the motor straining, clacking, stopping and reversing. There was no waste only litter in the box at this time and the Litter Maid could not even handle the weight of the litter!. It tried several more times with no luck. So, I removed a little over half of the clean litter in the box dropping the level down to the line that tells you to add litter...and then it worked. I was a bit miffed that this item, which I'd just spent $99.99 plus tax on, could not even handle an empty litter box. But no matter, I would press on.
My two cats, while being a bit mystified at the new, noisy box they had to do their business in, acclimated quickly to the Litter Maid.
Thus began the wonderment at this "as seen on t.v." product and how I'd been duped into buying it. 75% of the time this contraption would not function properly as it lacks the power to get the grater over large clumps of urine or litter. Many is the time I would come home from work to see that annoying red light blinking. Anyone who has ever used clumping litter will know that it does not ball up into neat little clumps every time, especially with urine. Cat urine tends to fan out and make a nice, hard little patch that the Litter Maid cannot deal with. The Litter Maid picked up the nice habit of getting stuck and struggling on these urine clumps. When it would, sometimes, manage to get past them it would do so with a snap! and actually fling whatever waste was on the tongs out of the Litter Maid and across the room. Nice touch.
Cat owners also know that cats are, shall we say, messy in the litter box. Litter goes flying when they bury and their "aim" with liquid waste isn't too good. As we also know, having a litter box without a hood leads to widely scattered litter and urine on the floor around the box. Being the stalwart I am, I decided to give Litter Maid a fair chance. I ordered the $39.99 hood for the Litter Maid. While of good construction and well designed the hood made little difference in keeping the litter in the Litter Maid. Instead of having the litter and urine around the whole set up, the litter was out front and the urine simply collected under the Litter Maid. The hood did, however, do a good job of keeping the ammonia stench inside.
All in all, while a good idea, the Litter Maid is an excellent example of American consumerism gone bad. While I am guilty of contributing to this I should think that a little more tweaking should be done to the Litter Maid.
1. Increase the power of the motor so that plain, clean litter up to the "fill" line does not bog down the system.
2. Increase the height of the sides around the litter area to decrease, or eliminate, litter and urine going outside the box.
3. Make the motor quieter.
4. Protect the gear track for the waste arm from litter with a rubber sleeve of some sort so that the track does not fill with litter and interfere with waste arm movement (this also happened many, many times).
Oh, I should note I sent several emails to the Litter Maid company with no response. Not once did they email, call or snail mail me to try and address my concerns.
Save yourself immense headaches and stick with your traditional litter box. It's cheaper, saner and quieter.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
gunnymo
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Location: Cincinnati, OH
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
Electronics junkie, Gamer, movie buff, politically incorrect, USMC, Somalia Veterans and just.
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