Automatic Litterbox Central

After reading through all the threads on here with people having their cats not turn around, and consequently peeing and pooping out the hole and onto the steps instead of inside the LR, I was thinking about how you could fix that.

I have a standard litter box right now. It's just a box, but its pretty deep, about 2'. It also has a lid that goes across the entire thing, with a hole cut out on the TOP. Hobbes jumps in through the hole, there's plenty of space for him to walk around inside, and he does his business.

Quite often he just stands on his two rear legs and stands up through the hole with his paws on top. And he just looks at you. With this look on his face that is indescribable. Its freaky. Anyway.

All they need to do for the Litter Robot is just make it so the hole is on *top*, and the cat jumps down inside the thing. That way there is no where and no way it could do anything outside of the box on accident.

Ultimately the best idea would be for the machine to sit dormant with the hole on top, then after the 7 minutes, rotate down to its position it sits in currently, *then* run through the rotate cycle to filter out the clumps.

I was thinking if I got one, maybe I could just lay mine down on its back for when he uses it.

Either way, for all of you who are having problems with your cat *not turning around*, perhaps it would help if, for a while, you completely unplugged the machine and tipped it over onto its side somehow, forcing the cat to go in through the top. Then once a day or so you could come in and turn it back right side up and let it run through the cycle to clear out the clumps. The basic point of this would be to show your cat that it needs to be *inside* the machine, and get it used to being able to turn around in there. Maybe after a couple weeks of using it going in through the top, then you could turn it back to be entered from the side, but the cat would understand the feeling of turning around in it then and want to do it.

You'd think they would want to look outside while doing it anyway, instead of smashing their face against the wall.

One problem is that people have trouble just getting their jumbo-sized cats to walk into the LR. Having them jump down into an enclosed space and jump back out is not something some cats would want to do although many cats wouldn't have a problem with it.

Also no one has really had any luck "teaching" their cats to turn around. I've been using the duct tape rope across the entrance for years and my dumb cat hasn't learned a thing from it. Whenever I leave it off, it's only a matter of days before he takes a dump on the step again.

I guess they should have just made the thing larger?

The LR already takes up a large amount of room compared to other automated litter boxes. Some of that is due to the reservoir that the litter has to be sifted into. That's what made the Litter Revolution seem like a great idea but the fact that it never made it to market may mean that the reservoir idea is the most practical.

That might work for some cats but I don't think so for most. I'm still waiting for them to enlarge the globe. In fact, I have wondered why they don't try switching the dimensions around so that the screen would be on the short side and the entrance would be on the long side. My cats are getting old (13,11,7.5). Jumping into and out of a litterbox just won't happen. Poor Isis was diagnosed with arthritis earlier this year and gets medication. I think she is sometimes having trouble going up and down the step that's there now.