Automatic Litterbox Central

Hello all,
New here on the board after being like many of you, going through this box and that trying to find one that the cat will use. We recently adopted a beautiful snow leopard (ish) Siamese. We have the littermaid Elite that we bought for our last cat. It was heck to get her to use it, but she has started to but she pees against the rake which makes a HUGE clump that pushes all the litter ahead of it into the bin, and the clump stays on the fork! I have been reading this forum about the many updates to the smart scoop and was hoping the one I just ordered today from Amazon.com will have the "latest and greatest". I read on some of the threads that the fork has a non stick finish now? Does that no stick spray from smart scoop really work?
I am using the Petco premium clumping litter (the one you can get the refills) I don't like it but she does. I bought the WGCL and she doesn't like it, but I do! I think I am going to try to add a bit of it at a time to the Petco stuff and hopefully she will get accustomed to it. The petco stuff makes sticky clumps. Anyway I am looking forward to getting it. She really needs the bigger litter area too as she's a big girl..

Thanks so much everyone,

John

I've got an older SS and a newer one.

Both have no-stick rakes I believe. However, just like a non-stick cook pan needs maintenance, so do these.

I wash mine once in a while and coat the rake and tray with non-stick cooking spray like Pam.

As for litter, my sister also has a SS with one cat, and uses TWBCL. I have 11 cats and 2 SS's, and use chicken layer crumbles - which I talk about in the litter forum.

Good luck!

Thanks for the comments Fierce Critter!
Mine came in yesterday, indeed the black forks and rubber lip. Will see how she likes it. Only thing I hate about it, no way to make it run a cycle without waiting 15 minutes. That's nuts. Seems she only stops peeing on the floor every so often if she has two boxes. I don't understand that, she's the only cat in the house. Only thing I can figure is that her foster meowmy had a ton of cats so she probably had several boxes and Luna got used to balancing her business between more than one box and she hasn't been exposed to mechanical boxes either so I am sure there is a bit of freak out going on too but she seems to be getting used to it. So for now, I have the LM and the SS down there together. I bought some of the WBCL and she didn't seem crazy about it. She LOVES that bulk stuff from Petco (ick, it's sticky and gooey). I am going to start slowly mixing the WBCL into the petco stuff slowly to see if I can accustom her to it. I hope she gets over the dual litter box thing tho, what a pain for one cat but better than floor pee!
But she's worth it..

Thanks again, will see how the SS works for her. It sure seems like a well made box.

John

What are the differences between the old and new SS? I have an older one I think, but it's just sitting in the litterbox graveyard because it never seemed to be pick up all the clumps too well. When did the new one come out?

The "new" box was in testing this time last year. I'm not sure when they released it on the market. The visual differences will be 1) the rubber lip vs. plastic one; 2) metal gears on the motor instead of white nylon ones. The non-visual change included a better motor. I ran both the old one and the new one together and the new motor was definitely a massive improvement.

They were sued by LitterMaid and had to cease producing it with the feature that allowed you to make it run through a cycle by turning it on and off. During testing, we suggested that maybe they could have a feature where you press and HOLD the on/off button to make it do a cycle. Don't know if that made it to the new ones.

Regarding litter. I switched to corn litters years ago when I had Littermaids. I just never found a clay litter that worked with the Littermaid, and corn litter worked great. I've never had reason to switch back to clay now that I use the chicken feed in my SmartScoop.

Try Dr Elseys Precious Cat Ultra - it worked best with the SS when I had one (eventually gave up because my 3 cats would all pee at the front of the box and the rake could not lift it). It is a dust free clay litter, your cat will like it and it doesn't get gooey like some of those clay litters.

They also came out with a rake that had the tines closer together than the original one. This helped stop a lot of the breaking up of clumps. Also, at one point them came out with a lip, but it was shorter and not as tall as the newest one. The newer one goes almost the entire length of the box and is about half again as tall as the older lip. The newer lip almost completely cured any bits getting out of the box. I maybe get a small clump that gets out now about one time in two months use. I never get flinging at all with the lip, just a very rare piece that might roll off the end of the lip only the mat in front of the box. That is with 6 cats

Dawn