Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Okay, here we go - honest report for all you cat lovers. We got this unit a weeks back. We researched ALL the different ones out there, agonized over which one to decide to purchase and finally settled on this one. Other automatic units were higher priced, all having quite a maintenance expense whether the litter itself or other supplies, mechanical/electric components that could/would fail, mechanisms that would need maintenance fairly often. Not good! We decided to purchase this one because the price was right, not many moving parts to fail over the long run, could use the normal clumping litter, and bags if used seemed reasonably priced. So now we have used this for some weeks now and the evaluation is this: It is a rather large unit so be prepared for that. I sprayed the unit completely including sifting grill within the unit with "never wet" or whatever they call it from Rust-oleum which works like a charm. You can use bags on the upper section and lower drawer and once we have used it for awhile decided that we only needed the drawer bag. Doing that made it is so easy to clean up and we were willing to pay for them because of that and they are not that expensive if you buy them in bulk. You will not want to overfill with kitty litter but if you do, no harm since first time cleaning, the extra litter just gets dumped into the drawer and you learn your lesson. Always move the cleaning handle very slowly and you will have no issues. The only issue we ran into in dumping the waste into the bottom drawer was if the waste is a narrow strip, it sometimes sticks between the grill sifter vanes - don't do anything, just let it sit there and it gets put back into the kitty litter after cleaning cycle. Most the time after a few cleanings, it gets dumped eventually anyhow. If you try to dislodge it (and if you don't mess with it, it always returns to the recycled litter after cleaning cycle), sometimes you inadvertently push it into the holding bin for the litter during the cleaning cycle and that is a pain in the a** to clean. Just leave it to recycle and it eventually will get dumped into the waste drawer. We have two cats, one about 10LB and the other 18lbs. It is small for the big cat but the 10lb cat has plenty of space. We have not trained the cats to use the swinging door so we left it off. Your cat may be different. However, so easy to clean that most of the time we just walk by it and use the cleaning cycle since it is so easy and therefore smell is not any issue. The cats love the clean litter all the time, too. Both my cats are diggers so I have no issues with urine on the sides though I believe the "never wet" would take care of that pretty easily but can't attest to leaking down in the unit of the urine since that doesn't happen. The one issue I have found is after a while using the cleaning cycle multiple times and if the cats go in the same place all the time, the waste occasionally gets dumped in the drawer on top of each other and while there is space still left in the drawer, a hill forms that must be spread around to empty spaces in the drawer. I have a wooden stick basically next to the unit to push the waste to an empty spot in the drawer so I can finish the cleaning cycle. To me: Big Deal!! small price to pay for a unit that does what it is suppose to do, fairly inexpensive and supplies fairly inexpensive, very easy to clean using the drawer bag, cuts down on the smells, the cats love it, no electronic parts or motors to fail in the future, no special litter or hook up - What more could you ask for except having someone else to do it for you. Hope this helps you to make the decision. Durability is yet to be determined since we have had it only a few weeks but the only thing I could see going bad is the cleaning handle breaking and using it slowly (which you should do anyhow to clean properly) is going to take care of that possible issue as far as I am concerned