Automatic Litterbox Central

I want to start off by saying thank you to the person(s) who maintain and designed this site, it iswonderful.

We have two female cats, Gracie and Rugger. We rescued them from the construction site where they were living as feral cats in a colony. They were very wild, but have tamed down and adjusted to their new princess
like lifestyles very well. We rescued them at about 5 weeks old and now the are approaching four months.

We started off using a regular litter pan, tried to do the toilet training and realized how horribly unnaturall it is for them. We have only have problems with regular litter when it is dirty. Looking to avoid the litter detail for the next 15+ years we opted for a better solution and carefully
considered litterfree vs. littermaid. We decided on litterfree based primarily on the discussions presented here.

Now the problem: we followed the instructions for adapting the cats to litterfree provided by the company. Now we are in full swing. Worked for rugger, thus far.
Gracie absolutely refuses to use it. This morning we caught her deficating in the bathtub. My readings have lead me to beleive that she does this because that area is clean but I am not convinced. We believe
she is having a hard time adjusting to the granuales. HELP!

Another area of concern for us is the lid. I know it is not necessary for the operation of Litterfree but should we be using it, they never had a lid before? could this be a cause of gracies rebellion? DO you think that the top contains the smell so she thinks its dirty?

as it stands right now one of us is spending a lot of time at home waiting for them to use the potty and then doing the whole praising and treat thing. We also have a routine established for times to releive themselves.
When we are away from home they are confined to our bedroom and master bathroom(location of the unit).

A little trick that I have found to work well. Our cats get up with us in the morning for food and love, then go to bed as we are getting ready to go leave. If you want to encourage your cat to go to the potty, place a treat in front of it without them seeing you do so. I am not ensuring that they will actually perform a duty, but sometimes they will. At a very minimum it rewards the cat for going to the potty, Any comments?

I think it is time we mentioned again that we are no longer using the Litterfree and are waiting to test another product, the LitterRobot.

As you can tell from the other posts, many people have success with the Litterfree. I am hoping that Gracie will come around for you.

We are continuing our quest for an ideal litterbox for our house. Our review of the LitterRobot should appear in a couple of months (the unit still hasn't arrived).

Thanks for your comments and we'll keep you posted on the developments at our house.

cas wrote:I think it is time we mentioned again that we are no longer using the Litterfree and are waiting to test another product, the LitterRobot.

As you can tell from the other posts, many people have success with the Litterfree. I am hoping that Gracie will come around for you.

We are continuing our quest for an ideal litterbox for our house. Our review of the LitterRobot should appear in a couple of months (the unit still hasn't arrived).

Thanks for your comments and we'll keep you posted on the developments at our house.

Hey, think you can update the main litterfree review with what you said (that you're no longer using it) and why? Might help others.... we're currently Littermaid users who saw the litterfree at Petsmart. And the grocery bag trick works well enough (better than daily scooping) and you just need to watch the litter level.

Wy,

Yes, I think we should update the original review. However, life's thrown us a few curves lately, and the LitterFree review is not top priority. It is on my mind, though.

Of course, our issues and those of others are very well documented on this forum. If you're truly interested, please check out the posts in the Litterfree section of the forum. And, the LitterRobot sections, too.

The short story: we've moved recently after we received the LitterRobot for testing. It is now in working order again and is being tested by Harley, Lily, and Shadow. We gave them a regular box for a few days - a move being hard enough on them without any strange litter boxes adding to the stress. Now, the LitterRobot is their only catbox option.

This has been the situation for only two days. We are having success - even with Shadow the skittish one - if this keeps up we'll have a comprehensive review and hopefully time to update the Litterfree review.

Thank you for reading and contributing.

cas

Wy wrote:And the grocery bag trick works well enough (better than daily scooping) and you just need to watch the litter level.

What is "the grocery bag trick"? Placing a folded paper bag in front of the unit to collect tracked pellets?

We have 3 cats. One loves it, one tolerates it, and the final one avoids it like you would avoid a possessed toilet (he pees in the shower and poops next to the LitterFree, so it's liveable-with).

To ThCliff:

You do not need to use the cover as far as I know. It's there for your cat's comfort, if that's what he's used to. My cats both use the Litterfree, but I think adjustment was easy because they were both kittens.

susannah wrote:To ThCliff:

You do not need to use the cover as far as I know. It's there for your cat's comfort, if that's what he's used to. My cats both use the Litterfree, but I think adjustment was easy because they were both kittens.

Indeed, the instructions direct one to not use the cover unless the previous catbox had one.