Forgive me if this is not appropriate discussion here, but the description says discussion is allowed so here goes:
After some research and online discussion we decided to upgrade our cat’s bathroom equipment from a regular litter box to a fancy expensive FurryTail automatic litter box. I am happy to report that generally we are very happy with it, the cats seem to love it, and overall it works great.
The only problem we’re trying to figure out, is that it stinks worse than the regular cat box we used to have. I’m talking about right after use, not really “ambient” odor, but when the one cat uses it, the entire first floor of our home is eye-wateringly stinky. We never noticed this happen before. With the old analog cat box we almost never had odor problems. I suspect it has something to do with the cats burrying it before and now the machine “unburies” it while it’s “fresh” and puts it in a bag that does not contain the evil… that’s the only thing I can think of. The situation also puzzles us. This is a tiny monster, pooing in a nearly completely enclosed barrel, that is closed INSIDE an unused shower, in a tiny side bathroom. There are multiple layers of containment and it still manages to permeate the whole house. On top of that, while it seems like it’s really just right after they use it, we’re assuming we’re getting nose blind and probably the whole house stinks more than we think, all the time.
I’ve been using activated charcoal in the receptacle and shower area. We also use the Arm and Hammer deodorizing powder in the litter itself. I’m wondering what else I can do? (besides go back to the old cat box.)
here’s a cat tax photo of the poo poo monster just because:
Your entire house is now under the control of toxoplasma gondii. Just accept it.
closes wikipedia thank you for the nightmare. Sigh.
Eh it could be worse… We’re all already mind controlled by cats anyway. Let’s be real…
I wonder if you could fit a curtain made of strips of hanging plastic/cloth over the door into it so that works as a containment barrier for the “perfumed air” until it gets picked up by the machine.
Even in this digital age, there’s no escaping anal log conversion.
Did you expect the digital age to repress conversations about Sewer Snickers?
TIHI
I took a brief peek at those machines, does your model have adjustable settings? A review I saw said they could set how long the machine waits after it has been used to clean itself. Maybe increase that time to give the litter more time to absorb the waste?
This one, the machines that wait like 15-20 minutes don’t have this problem
I have it set to 15 minutes currently. Now that I think l about the that and that we normally have to evacuate right after the cat does… It can’t really be the robots fault. It hadn’t done any excavation yet. Hmm. That being said, I might experiment with a daily cycle instead of per use…
Have you tried to check whether the cat burries the product as efficiently as it used to in the analog toilet?
Actually, your question made me debunk my theory. It can’t be the disturbance of the poo. He’s never buried it in the first place. LOL We have a camera enabled in there to keep track of their habits and found he’s not a very bright cat… after he makes his dump he will spend 10 minutes scratching the ceiling of the litter box, the sides of the shower, the floor outside the litterbox but he never scratches the litter or successfully buries anything. So it can’t be that he buried it before lol.
This made me laugh, thanks for the description! Say hi to the little guy for me.
I have two Litter Robots. They default to 7 minute waits. I don’t have the same smell issues you describe.
Makes sense. There’s barely any litter in these things so the cat can’t cover waste very well from what I can tell in their promo vids.
IMO Zeolite pellet cat litter + absorbent pad tray beneath setup can’t be beat. I despise clumping litter especially clay, so dusty.
Get a smart switch and put it in the fan. Run Home Assistant on a RaspPi. Use the fancy box’s api to create an automation that turns the fan on for ten minutes any time the box is used.
Worked for me.
If you want, you can even make a light flash red as a warning.
*Technical equipment and setup may be prohibitive.
I’m mostly kidding, but yes, this is my solution.
This is incredible lol
How do you check for air quality?
Airthings quality monitor. Mostly working as a rigged up radon mitigation for now.
Wow, didn’t know that exists. Can it detect poop smell? I got an exhaust fan rigged to a smart relay and only use it as a timer, and sometime the outside air can be pretty bad so i can’t switch on sometime.
I’m sure VOCs spike. My “air quality good” is just checking radon and CO2. It’s not directly related to this.
https://a.co/d/559c5eD for the airthings quality monitor.
https://www.home-assistant.io/getting-started/ for the HA stuff. Everything you need for HA is about $160 if you go with their packaged stuff, a Home Assistant Green and a ZBT-1 USB stick. You can do it cheaper if you want to set up your own RaspPi and MicroSD and format it yourself (though their case and heatsink and whatnot seems nice.)
I can talk more about Home Assistant. Everything is going to Matter and Thread likely in the next year. You probably already have a Thread router in your house. Hue just came out with their thread bulbs. IKEA will release their matter/thread lineup between now and January.
Then there’s my whole solar setup, which I have a post about here somewhere.
Thanks! Right now i don’t have any hub or router, i just use the thing that connect to my wifi, one is Tapo light bulb from TPLink, and another is Sonoff relay which I connected to an exhaust fan, both on different app and i checked tapo isn’t on HA list(i use tapo robot vacuum). I’m still figuring out what’s this thread and matter and zigbee thing though, it’s a bit confusing to me so i’m just gonna take thing slowly.
Solar post: https://lemmy.world/post/32326227
Air quality sensor in the same smarthome setup, I would assume.
It probably is due to your fancy robot liter box literally being a shit disturber.
Your inkling is almost certainly correct; cats instinctively bury their shit because they are by nature solo stealth hunters… having a very pungent smell reveals your location to prey, and predators.
The process of totally covering the surface area of the poo pile in litter is what makes it work… if it gets flipped over or unburied in a way that now a surface of the poo is… uncovered, just exposed?
Yep, gonna smell real bad.
Cat pee and poo odor often has a strong component of ammonia.
… You are almost certainly going noseblind to this smell, as a smoker does with cigarrettes.
Somewhat like cigarette smoke, though probably less rapidly/intensely… enough gaseous ammonia, regularly released in a confined space, with poor ventilation, will slowly begin to just… seep into everything porous enough to absorb it…fabrics, carpets, possibly even wall paint.
…
Without trying to figure out how to fix your robot shit box that cant do its job right…
…Consider a coffee ground based cat liter, or just make your own out of used, decaf coffee grounds, or augment your existing litter with a layer of used decaf coffee grounds.
Introduce in progressively larger amounts over time, to familiarize kitty kat.
Used coffee grounds + a bit of baking soda is better than traditional cat litter at absorbing smells, full stop.
There is potentially a danger of a cat ingesting too much caffiene and poisoning themself, should they lick their paws or just eat the litter … this is why you use decaf.
But, other than that:
Coffee ground based or inclusive litter clumps better than normal litter, it adheres to the poo and itself better, when wet.
It absorbs and neutralizes smells much better, because of its chemical composition and porous nature.
It does not have the problem of making clouds of particulate dust when the cat kicks about to try to bury the poo, which can irritate both cats and people.
It isn’t tiny rocks that you can step on like lego pieces after your cat flings them around, and is also thus less likely to damage a vaccuum cleaner.
It doesn’t contribute to …digging rocks and clay out of the ground and then throwing them back into landfills.
It also does not have any artificial masking smells which can be irritating to both cats and people.
Also, you can use it in compost, post poo saturation.
…
Pidan, Eticat and Dofu make cat safe, decaf coffee ground based litter, or if you want to make your own out of decaf grounds or beans, here’s a pretty decent guide on how to do it safely:
https://recommendedproductsreviewed.com/coffee-grounds-cat-litter/
Is your cat wearing a body cam?
I’m about to pull the trigger on one of the electric litter boxes and this is something I haven’t really though about. But I should, 'cause I swear my big boy is rotten inside. At one place I lived, there was an unused water heater closet with a vent running out the roof. I attached a PC case fan to the vent and put the litter box in there. Zero smell. Trying to figure out something similar at my current place.
We looked at the fancy expensive one that everyone uses (litter robot I think?) but a friend said it’s not great. We got a popur and it’s pretty great. It dumps into a container with a lid so there’s no smell after it runs and mechanically it’s impossible for it to harm a cat because it just tilts. It’s a decent price too. Wifi enabled for some fucking reason, and a downside is it’s pretty large, but other than that we love it.
Yeah I was recently cat sitting for friends who have two normal litter boxes and two Litter Robots. The Litter Robots weren’t functioning correctly and they didn’t know why yet so they were basically just normal litter boxes at the time, but gigantic lol.
Anyway I wasn’t very impressed if both their very expensive automated litter boxes weren’t working.
So I haven’t been left with a great impression of Litter Robot’s reliability.
From our condo days (really nowhere to put it that wasn’t out in the open) I modified a cabinet with a partition in the middle. Cut holes in the outside and the partition for the cat to pass through. In the first chamber open to the outside, I placed a small HEPA/charcoal filter, then placed the litter box in the next chamber.
Don’t know if it’s helpful or even compatible with your device, but about 8 months ago I switched our (non-automated) litter boxes over to using a new litter, “Naturally Fresh”. It’s made out of crushed walnut shells, and they market it as having natural odor-control properties. It’s also significantly cheaper than the “World’s Best” cat litter we were using previously. For my part, I attest that the marketing is not just hype. We keep a litter box in our downstairs powder room which guests typically use. Several people who have visited with us since the change have commented on how little odor there is and wanted to know what litter we’re using (mostly other cat owners). Alternatively, you can buy odor-control litter additives at the pet store. I’ve used one made out of (I think?) wheat bran that works pretty well.
this, there’s much better litter these days. My mom uses something made of sawdust i think and not only is that obviously great for the environment, it’s more effective and less smelly
Thanks for the tips! I had been considering changing the litter too. We currently use Worlds Best because it is flushable and having them been in the bathroom this whole time before that was very helpful with the toilet right there but now we don’t need that. I’ll look into it. 🙂
I still flush the Naturally Fresh. It’s biodegradable and shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re on a septic system or something.
I bet I could clog the toilet if I dump the whole bag from the robot in there… 🤔
Well don’t do that then
i’m with sp3ctr4l in changing the litter. i know it’s hard to find one the cats like. we got the multicat clumping one from the big box store and it works well enough.
option 2, we keep ours out in the garage.we’ve got a cat flap in the wall between the garage and the rest of the house. it’s like a double cat flap |__| kinda thing with magnets and shit. if you can patch drywall, you can install one and it’s easier than fixing a hole in a door or hanging a new door. just make sure to look for electrical and water before you start drilling.
you could also potentially change their food, i wouldn’t do that if they’re healthy
one last option is to build a small… i don’t know, hutch? desk? container? to go around the poop box like a shell. we built one of these for a different kind of electric scooper because the cat liked playing with litter and we wanted to contain it. when the catbox was in the hutch, it didn’t smell as much. i’m sure there’s a reason beyond us really wanting it not to smell as much.
also, gorgeous kitty.
I don’t know how helpful it is to suggest a different product, but the Litter Robot has been pretty great for me. I got it a couple years ago and it does a good job of keeping smells contained. They have special bags for the waste tray, but standard trash bags work perfectly fine.
The only automatic litter box we’ve ever owned that was worth anything is the Litter Robot. Every other option has been terrible.
Respect the Cat!
Manually clean their shit… there is no short cuts.
There are so many short cuts. Automatic feeder, automatic scooper, pumpless fountains, automatic vacuum to clean up the massive amount of fur in the carpet.
These are game changers. All I have to do is treats and pets.
I wondered how long it would be before you showed up…
Hmm, should I be insulted? 🤔
What are you feeding them? A friend of mine was complaining about extra stinky poops a while back, and some dietary changes made a huge difference in the smell. Doesn’t explain why this box is smellier, but could be an alternative solution to your problem.
ive had a few of these kinds of boxes… i also liked them… but i think youre right… being buried and surrounded by some absorbent material while it desiccates is far more efficient than trying to contain the smell in a box which gets opened regularly.
maybe if they had a mechanism that does what those diaper pails do with diapers to keep the stench down…
They do. And they’re cheap. And then they lock you in buying their very specific, usuriously expensive bags. Plus the are difficult to use, more difficult to clean and replace bags, and more trouble than they are worth.
Is that a cat tracker? If so, what is that?
