Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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381 of 387 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Convenient, but be prepared, November 15, 2006
I have two cats, one 5yo and one 2yo, both female. I got the Cat Genie for them, after dealing with several other auto-scooping litter boxes that broke after maybe 6 months each.
In terms of cleanliness and maintenance, this is a great product. If you can put it in your laundry room, you'll be much happier than if you put it into a bathroom that sees any kind of frequent use. If you DO put it into a bathroom, make sure you flush the toilet at least once a day (but NOT while the cat genie is in a cleaning cycle!)
Some words of warning:
1) the little plastic pellets that act as "litter" get all over the floor. You'll have to sweep them up occasionally and dump them back into the bowl for cleaning. This isn't from the cats kicking them up, it's from the normal cleaning cycle ... there's a mechanism to shake the rake free of pellets, which causes some to scatter.
2) Be prepared for a long adjustment period with your cats. The 2yo took to it pretty well, but the older cat had a hard time. She used a laundry basket, a bathroom rug, and my bed before she finally came to grips with it and started using the genie. (Laundry hint: white vinegar in the washer gets out the smell of cat urine!)
Now that the cats have adjusted and I've gotten used to the new sounds and smells of cleaning (the cleaning solution has a potent but not terrible smell), I'm happy with this product.
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1,170 of 1,210 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An expensive way to smell poo, September 18, 2007
Cat Genie takes the small unpleasantness of daily cleaning the litter and it saves it up and releases that unpleasantness as one big unscheduled, unpleasant inconvenience every week or two. Advanced monitors will ensure that the device failure will occur during the workday, as you prepare for your important meeting with your prospective client. Nothing like cleaning out wet cat poo in your nicest suit. Or, you may be pleasantly awoken in the middle of the night by the repeating three beeps of "there's poo and hair in the hopper." You will become more familiar with your cat's feces every day as the cat genie gently fills your home with the aroma of baking excrement. Plus, you get to pay over $300 for technology that was "designed" and built for less than $2. The "processor" unit was designed in 1967 and allows all the functionality of the most advanced microchip devices of its era. It has both on and off modes. (Note: off mode available only while unplugged.)
Actually, the real reason for the high cost of the device is to cover the costs of all the customer support that they must provide and to cover the costs of all of the returned units. The question is not IF, but WHEN you will find yourself hunched over your cat's feces floating in a pool of fetid water, picking small plastic pellets out of the opaque, pungent water with your fingers so that you can get the device put back together.
And your cats will thank you by depositing their love bundles beside the machine that's half filled with water and beeping away forlornly if you happen to be away when it fails.
We have three cats, they had no trouble adjusting to the machine over about a week. The small plastic pellets getting everywhere in the house is not really any big deal. Roomba takes care of most of them well. We've now had the machine for three months. We received a replacement base last week for a leaky drain hose. We've called their customer service line enough times that we now know the "secret" diagnostic techniques of their experts. We don't know if we're going to keep it or return it. If we keep it, we're definitely going to install an exhaust fan in the laundry room, and set it to a timer to go when the unit is on. For some reason there are little bits of poo that fall between the tines of the hopper, and they get slow baked every time the unit dries itself. The stench is really outstanding. It's hard to describe. I'm a doctor, and I've rarely ever smelled anything so bad.
My recommendation is to wait for the next generation cat sanitation solution. That device will need to be a complete redesign to solve the myriad of problems with this unfortunate device. To say something positive, the customer support line is manned by kind, well-meaning kids who really do feel badly that you're having a hard time with your mechanical poo soup maker.
If you do buy this device, get some thick rubber gloves and a couple of towels that you won't use for anything else.
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206 of 213 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must have for any cat owner, June 11, 2007
I have now owned 2 versions of a self washing cat box: a Litter Free, and now a Cat Genie. The Litter Free, while not perfect, made me appreciate how nice it is not to tend a litter box. However, that unit had plenty of flaws, and a newly formed company engineered a better unit that fixed a lot of the issues the Litter Free.
I purchased the unit in September of 2006. I am on my 10th month. Up until recently, I was not the happiest person with the unit... I had a lot of clogging issues. Had I given up on the unit a few months ago, my review would have been very mixed, with the unit failing to process its daily duties a few times a month. However, I knew the company was working on some improvements to the most common issues, and my patience was rewarded (more on this later).
If you read the other reviews, you probably have an idea how the unit works. Up to 4 times a day the unit will clean the box. First, the stool is removed by a scoop. The stool is dumped into a processing unit. The litter box is filled with water, which also fills the stool processing bin with water. There is an impeller which spins the stool around the processor, that dissolves the waste, and then the waste water is pumped out through your sewer connection. The unit is filled with water and flushed several times. During the last flushing, a sanitizing solution is dispensed into the water. Once that water is removed, the litter is dried, and the process is done. This takes about 30 minutes.
There were two big problems that affected some early purchasers of the box. Due to a packing issue with the original unit, some buyers got warped bowls that would not spin properly. This wasn't a hard fix. You either got a new bowl with their excellent customer service, or they walked you through a process to unwarp the bowl. The packing issue was resolved, and this is no longer a problem. The biggest issue was clogging of the water exhaust line from undissolved stool. Not only did it stop the show, but the unit would not drain (leaving it filled with water), but cleaning up this mess is not fun. This is the part of my Cat Genie experience which was not fun. I have a single cat that uses the litter box once a day. Her stool is small and hard. It was clogging a lot. I found a dietary solution before the mechanical solution came out. I bought her food high in fiber, which softened the stool, and the unit processed without any failures for 2 months. That seemed to do it. Then the makers of Cat Genie came out with a new impeller. It prevented the hardened small stool from making it into the water drain line before it had been properly reduced. From all the comments I am reading from owners on forums where litter boxes are discussed, this fixed just about all those problems. People that had nightmares before replaced the impeller (again, all under warranty) to have the unit operating correctly without issue.
The Cat Genie folks said that the actual number of people with the clogging issues was a small percentage, but they are very vocal group.
The biggest problem I now have with the box is the plastic granules that get tracked through my house. The company is going to have some mats that catch these granules as the cat gets out to help mitigate this, but at the time of this review, they were not available. I think the price of the supplies is reasonable, and cheaper than buying normal litter on a regular basis.
You should read other reviews for information on cat acclimation to this box. My cat was raised on plastic litter granules. That is all she knows, and has not problem using this box. So for that reason, I can't really tell you much about in this area.
One thing I want to note for people on the fence: You get a 90 day money back guarantee if you don't like it. The customer service for this unit is TOP NOTCH. They will do just about anything to make you happy. The unit has a 2 year warranty, which is better than just about any major appliance you could buy. Assuming your cat adjusts to the box, this will make a noticeable improvement to the quality of your life.
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