As a pet sitter I see a lot of different types of litter boxes. I don’t know about you but to me there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a litter box when you are all done scraping out the desiccated poop and the pee clumps.
I mean, it doesn’t smell great, but I get satisfaction from getting all the pee lumps out of the corners and all the little poops scraped out with the plastic scooper.
Sawdust pellets VS sandy litter
There are a lot of different litter styles now a days. The clumping sawdust pellet type is nice because it doesn’t seem to track as much litter all over the house.
Then there are the fine sandy ones and there are the pellets with a grate where the pee dissolves the pellet into dust which falls underneath into a tray when you move the scooper across the grate. That isn’t as satisfying as pulling out clumps of pee dampened clumps and smells the worst because the pee drippings are down in this underlayer of sawdust that you have not removed from the box at all.
Pee dissolving litter boxes VS pee clumping
With pee dissolving litter you end up with this big ammonia mess in the bottom litter box itself or if you use one with a grate you end up with pee-soaked pads in a tray below. Not recommended because of the smell. The top half is all nice and clean, but the smell lingers throughout the room. Yuck!
And you have to finally take the top tray off or slide the bottom tray out to get all the stinky pee-soaked sawdust out every day or two.
Some of these pellet style two-layer boxes have non dissolving plastic pellets that desiccate the poo and a shelf below where you can place pads down for the pee and replace them daily with a fresh pee pad. But still, the pee smell is strong and you have to use gloves to pick out the pad and fold it up and throw it out. I am not a fan of these pellets.
Whereas all-in-one litter boxes work well because you are pulling out the pee clumps and taking them away in the trash or putting them into the repository so there is not the residual ammonia smell lingering.
(Then there is the incompatible kitty litter nuclear power plant disaster in New Mexico that I stumbled across While looking up kitty litter repositories.)
Automated litter boxes
Anyway, I do like the Litter Robot (affiliate link). I have done pet sits several times with the litter robot. This has zero smell except of course when you have to dump out the pee and poo repository. But again, this is only done once a week. and no scooping.
It self-sifts all the pee and poo out of the way into the tray below. You just have to pull out a big bag of poo and pee once a week. and replace it with a new garbage bag below.
The litter Robot is the cream of the crop at around $750. But I have also used similar systems that are less expensive Neakasa M1 Open-Top Self Cleaning Cat Litter Box at around $600 also very easy to use with drawer that slides out. It is a little tricky to open until you use it a couple of times. Once you get the hang of the slide out drawer it’s replace the bag.
Most of the homes I have cat sat for with more than one cat have at least one litter box for each cat in various locations. One upstairs. One downstairs for instance. Or one in the laundry room and one in the garage etc. often they will have one Robotic and one regular litter box.
Should you line the litter box with a plastic bag or not?
The other issue to discuss is lining the litter box. With regula non-automated litterboxes some people will try to line them with a plastic garbage bag or some kind of litter bag. I find this extra plastic bag lining to be a nuasance for the cat and the peopel who have to scoop the clumps.
The cats just claw holes in the baggy trying to cover thier clumps and then the human has to try and untangle the clumps from the folds of garbage bag that are all tangled up with the kitty litter and clumps. My vote if for no liner bags in your litter box. It is easy enough to rinse out the box when you change the litter entirly once a week or so.