For a year now I have used a littermaid for my 3 cats. It worked well but it can not be - set it and forget it. With the cats once a day the bin had to be emptied.
I decided to get the car genie as the second litter box. It's working out great!
2 cats are using it and 1 still uses the littermaid some times.
It's a great backup for when the car genie is cleaning it self.
It's so nice to only have to keep an eye on the cat genie and flush the toilet after a cleaning cycle. It works really good.
I have it set on cat activate. When some litter gets on the floor, I sweep it up so it doesn't get all around the house. Truth is, all litter tracks through the house.
I have not had the baked cat poop smell. The fresh scent was strong at first, now it's much better. On cat activate it uses half as much each cleaning cycle.
As good as the cat genie is, I still wouldn't set it and forget it. All litter boxes need attention, this one just needs much less then others.

Update*
The cat genie malfunctioned, turned into an easy bake oven and I got the baked cat poop. ðŸ'€

Heres why it happened:
On Cat activate setting, complete both steps. If only 1 step is completed the Catgenie will go through the wash cycle in 22 minutes. It needs the full 37 mins each time to clean out the poo from the pump. After a few days the pump will start to fill with waste and begin to clog. Causing the baked cat poop smell during the dry cycle.

How to fix this:
Go to page 17 in the manual. Follow all the steps. Turned off Catgenie before Step G started pump. I revomoved the litter and added 16 cups of water to the bowl. Started step 3. Stopped 5 seconds after some sanisolution went in drain pump. Then let the Catgenie sit for 20 min's to desolve waste in pump.

Turned on Catgenie. Completed step G. Re-added the litter granules to the bowl and then Completed step H. All is good again! 😼🌠ðŸ¾

Waste of time, cheap internals, makes your house smell even worse. Call customer service and they'll tell you to redo everything you just did because it's expensive for them to fix. Oh boo hoo, you should've made a better product then. Congrats, you just bought a beeping swamp terrarium.

UPDATE: Spent hours cleaning and troubleshooting for error 1. Exhausted troubleshooting guide and called customer service. Blown off. Got mad and hit random sequence of buttons. Turd convection oven magically working again. Let's see how many days that lasts. What a joke.

I have been using my CatGenie for two years now. It has had some struggles along the way.

Overall, I would not recommend purchasing one to anyone, even though I am glad I bought it.

Here's the gist: It works.

I live in a smallish condo with my wife, our two cats, dog, and a ferret. We have lots of animals. On top of it, one of our cats is prone to getting urinary tract infections. She was getting them about twice a year. We kept our old cat litter boxes as clean as possible.

Previously we used an "Omega Paw Self-Cleaning Cat Litter Box" and before that a "Booda Dome Cleanstep Cat Box." I would strongly recommend the Omega Paw litter box.

Using the "Omega Paw Box," it was easy to keep the cat litter box clean. Our cat was still getting those UTIs however. We also were interested in a truly self-cleaning cat litter box, so we could take longer trips and not worry about the cats. So we took the plunge. I had done tons of research on automatic cat litter boxes and found that the CatGenie seemed to be the best. As I mentioned, it does work. When it is operating efficiently, it works very well.

The CatGenie really is quite impressive. All motors and electronics are housed together, easily removable from the rest of the unit allowing for easy cleaning. This leads to one of the major cons of this unit, the cleaning. The unit does not require a lot of maintenance, but you need to give it some attention. It is not a set it and forget it type of thing.

- About once to twice a month, it needs a brief cleaning of the water sensor. Cleaning the sensor takes only about three minutes. You remove the gear housing, pull out the clear plastic water sensor and wash it in a sink.
- About twice a year, the CatGenue requires a more extensive cleaning. If you forgo this, you will regret it (as I have). This requires some very good disposable gloves. This more thorough cleaning takes about one hour, two if it is your first time. You need to remove the GenieHand (tray that captures the solid waste, lifting it into the drop in the back). It clips into the metal arm. Then you push back the metal arm and lift the top plastic housing that goes (basically) around the entire unit. This will expose the bowl, and there is a larger plastic section in the back. The plastic unit in the back contains a simple plastic rotator with an ejector hole. The plastic motor unit is spun by the motor in the gear housing assembly to push water and waste through the drainage tube. You can pull up on the entire plastic unit, and it lifts out for cleaning. The motor section can open allowing you to remove the plastic motor itself. This motor gets filthy. It will clog eventually. Mine has clogged twice. Once due to me never having done the proper maintenance (that is why I said you would regret not doing this preemptively) and the second time due to my cats bringing some paper towels into the unit with them.
- The maintenance cartridges are useless. Completely. I tried using them, found they do nothing, and stopped buying them as they are a waste of money. I simply service it myself, see above.

Now for operating cost. It is actually relatively expensive, very similar to maintaining a conventional cat litter box.

- The cat litter does not clump. It sticks to everything. My cat's end up tracking it throughout the entire house. Literally. I find litter everywhere. This is likely the single worst thing about this cat litter box. With good clumping litter, this never happens with a conventional cat litter box. I used to use a litter trapping mat, but nothing can trap it all. You also have some litter go down the drain, so you need to replace the litter. I go through about three boxes of the CatGenie Washable Granules a year. Around $22/box, that is $66/year for litter.
- SaniSolution is the next cost consideration. This stuff sucks. The machine will complain a cartridge is empty when I can feel it is clearly 1/4-1/2 still full. I have a rack of "partially used" cartridges I have been keeping, with the intention to somehow get the rest out to be used. I go through about one box every 1.5 months, that is eight a year. Each SaniSolution cartridge is $22. Works out to be $176/year.

Previously I would buy the big totes of clumping litter, going through a tote roughly every 1.5 months as well. With clumping litters, it is a bit easier to clean up and manage, but you end up going through it. Each tote is about $25. So that would have cost around $200/year. So a shy cheaper. Not counting scoops you might need to replace, but given that I used to buy the more expensive litter and it was still less costly, if you buy some cheaper or generic litter it is far, far less expensive.

Also, consider your other costs. If you are on a septic tank, you are adding a lot of waste to it. You are going to need to clean your toilet bowl a lot more unless you are fortunate enough to someone pump the waste directly into a drain. So, don't buy this thing if you think it can save you money.

If you are of the opinion that the extra cost is worth not having to clean a cat litter box manually, I again suggest the Omega Paw Cat Litter Box. That thing was very quick to clean, saving you the time and the money.

Next item of consideration is the smell. Let us face the truth. Cat droppings smells like... well, you know. No helping or avoiding it. When a conventional cat litter box you can at least optimize the placement of it, which I tried to do. I also would use some odor eliminators and, when I had to, some Febreze. With the CatGenie, you have to place it near a drain. That means the bathroom or laundry room for most people. So, already not a great start for helping with odors. Next, you have the choice to have the CatGenie clean automatically after the cat has gone. Automatic cleaning results in cleanings about 4 to 8 times a day for my households (of two cats). That uses up a lot more SaniSolution and results in it running at any point in the day, which isn't ideal (more reasons below). I leave mine set to twice a day now. When the CatGenie is cleaning itself, it can smell up the entire place. The SaniSolution tries to cut this down, but it never smells good. I will say, on average, the smell is a lot less than having a conventional cat litter box. However, there are times it smells significantly worse than a conventional cat litter box. This is basically when the CatGenie messes up.

So, then you have the sound. The CatGenie is loud. Thunderous. Annoying loud. You-want-to-unplug-it-most-of-the-time loud. It is painfully loud. I keep this thing in my second bathroom, upstairs, with the bathroom door closed (there is a cat door in the door). At the top of the stairs is a small platform with three doors, two that go into bedrooms, and then the bathroom. At the base of the stairs is my living room. When the CatGenie is running, it is so loud I cannot watch television in my living room. Since it also tends to smell up the house a bit more while cleaning, and since it is a straight shot down the stairs to the living room, when it starts I just turn off the television and go somewhere else.

Other things to consider. How about the cats? Well, the cats like the CatGenie. When it is done cleaning the cat granules are clean, dry, and smell nice. The cats love that. It is a large cat litter box. I have the dome to enclose it a bit more, and both my larger cats have no issues getting in and out. Training them was not difficult, I did as suggested and used their regular cat litter in the bowl for a few days, without the unit being turned on. Then I replaced the litter with the washable granules, and they kept using it. Then I turned it on, and haven't had a problem with it once.

That cat that gets a lot of UTIs, well, they have not gone away or become less frequent. So the primary thing we were aiming for, the CatGenie did not help solve.

The best benefit is that my wife and I can travel. We go away for long weekends a few times a year, and longer trips once or twice a year. The CatGenie helps the cats out a lot. Before we take a trip, I make sure I service the CatGenie, refill the granules, and make sure the SaniSolution is near-full. I can trust it to work without complaint for up to six weeks after a thorough serving.

So why wouldn't I recommend it? Well, it costs too much, it is too loud, too bulky, and I need to keep it in a bathroom which isn't that big. I also don't like litter being everywhere in my house.

Why do I like it? It saves me time, keeps my cats happy, lets me travel a bit more freely.

Overall, it was not worth getting. I would stop using it if that did not mean I would be putting so much money down the drain (hah, punny). I continue to service it, and it continues to operate. If that ever changes, I will go back to a regular cat litter box without too much complaining.

This was a Christmas gift from my father 4 years ago. In the four years I owned it it worked maybe a year and a half. The first year I loved it. Worked as advertised. Except one cat wanted nothing to do with it. However, I gave it a chance. When that last cat finally started using it, it broke down the first time. It refused to dry. I called and they were super helpful and professional. After making me tinker around with a bunch of menu stuff they determined it needed to be replaced. So they sent me a refurb. The refurb was dirty, the buttons were worn, and I was unhappy but it worked.

So then another year went by but the machine only worked for three months out of that year. However due to a death in the family I was unable to call them. So when I finally did call I explained how unhappy I was with it, never seeming to work correctly, and having a refurb that was obviously well used. I was chastised by the employee. He said with tone, "Well then, why did you wait so long to call?" Well, my mother passed from cancer after a brief and difficult battle so the last thing on my mind was screwing around with an automatic litter box. When I told this to the employee he immediately changed his tune. I didn't want to mention this personal thing but I was really annoyed at his tone.

OK, so they send another refurb. This time it's a lightly used one and seems to work well, however, and this is completely my fault, I noticed it grinded a lot. I should have called right away and told them, but figured it was just a noisy unit. It finally stopped spinning. So I take the whole thing apart, clean it, go through the trouble shooting menu my dad had written down. The motor is dead. So I call and I am told that I am out of warranty. Just barely. I say, "So each time you send a refurb the warranty doesn't reset?" Nope, so each time they send another unit you are at the mercy of it. So I had the option of calling back today to talk to a supervisor and maybe, not likely he said, of having the warranty extended, "for a fee" or I could "buy a whole new unit". I opted to chuck it in the garbage. It was a gift so I am not out money, and when it worked it was great (except it sort of always smelled like moldy cat pee water faintly), and all the cats finally took to it. However, too many moving parts, and constant refurbs without warranty. This machine needs to be overhauled before I would recommend anyone buy it. We are beta testers at this point.

It was the most satisfying thing to toss that heap of junk into the garage so I can haul it to the dump. I enclosed a photo.

CatGenie is a great purchase if you have an interest in your house smelling like baked cat feces, and if you have a burning desire to take apart a filthy cat toilet and clean turd clogs and hair clogs out of it once a week.

I saw this crazy thing on TV and I was amazed. It's a robotic litter box that is really environmentally safe, diverting tonnes of toxic cat litter from dumps each year, and great for people who dread changing the litter box.

It is also great for your cats health because most people don't change the litter as much as they are supposed to.

You just press a button once or twice a day (or turn on the cat sensor function) and the CatGenie goes through a 20 minute cycle of sifting waste, flushing waste into the toilet/laundry drain, washing the litter (plastic granules) and drying the granules.

It really is an awesome piece of technology, and when I saw the CatGenie on TV, my wife and I both thought it was the cat's pajamas. We copied down the coupon code and went to their website and ordered it!

It turned out to be a lot more expensive than I'd hoped, shipping alone ended up costing me about $150, add on UPS fees and the total cost of shipping was about $200. It was almost $500 after I finally got the CatGenie shipped to my house in Canada.

But I figured it would be well worth the price and I didn't think twice about the expensive cost of this glorious piece of technology!

About a week went by with smooth operation, and then it all went down the drain from there... well at least it was supposed to, but instead it all stayed in the bowl.

I don't know how they freaking do it, but inside the machine, there's a little wizard that casts a level 10 liquify spell on the turd, then he mixes it with some special sauce, and it all gets flushed down the drain.

Not all of the nuggets were making it to the wizard, so I don't blame him.

Apparently I have a broken CatGenie, but the company won't admit any flaws.

The grates in the scoop are too wide, so some chunks fall through the scoop at least once a week when I run it, and then the machine ends up baking me a big bowl of Cat Excrement Soup.

It makes my basement smell like a crackhouse, and I end up having to change the litter by hand anyway.

So yeah in theory this thing is awesome, but in my experience it's a high tech looking box of regret.

I called customer service to complain, but the guy on the other end was not helpful at all, he was really catty to me - unsympathetic, didn't seem to care. He refused to even give me some free granules to replace the ones that got ruined in the CatGenie diarrhea bake-off.

However, he did let me know that if I'm not happy with the unit, I can send it back with a full refund, minus the $200 shipping and restocking charges of course. Thanks you're so awesome Richard.

I couldn't deal with this guy, the cat had my tongue, so I hung up. I figured there was more than one way to skin a cat, and I emailed customer service a letter, hoping I'd get some justice that way.

The same guy that was on the phone answer my email!

Months went by trying to deal with this.

The guy responded all smug like again, and nothing got resolved. I gave up. I figured I was just going to have to watch the CatGenie more closely to observe that it wasn't letting turd pieces fall through the scoop.

So at least once every 3 times it mis-scoops and I have to scoop them out by hand while it's going through the cycle. I should invest in a second scoop instead of doing it by hand...anyway thats beside the point.

3 months went by, every time I ran the machine it smelled like a homeless man's butt because once the granules get baked in a bowl of CatGenie Excrement Soup, the smell doesn't wash out, even with bleach (I tried).

I don't want to have to buy an extra bag of granules 3 times a week - it's like $20 a box.

So we just closed the basement door for a couple hours and put some air fresheners down there. We just dealt with it.

However one night, the machine stopped working. So I called customer service, and it turns out that "something" was clogged in the CatGenie, something that prevent the hopper from doing it's thing and draining.

I had to take the entire machine apart, and I saw that underneath the bowl, there were brown stains everywhere! The CatGenie is nasty.

I spent about 2 hours washing the entire thing with soap and hot water and bleach. It was horrid, I never had to deal with this when I was using a $5 plastic litterbox.

I just want to get a hold of the Fat Cat in charge of this operation and tell him that I'm not too impressed.

I called the customer service guy again to complain, got someone else this time. He said he would pass my information along, and he told me that I could buy an additional piece for the CatGenie that would prevent feces buildup under the bowl.

That's like selling a car and then afterwards offering to purchase an addon which is the gas tank.

It's not like cleaning cat poop is some BONUS FEATURE of the CatGenie. Cat poop is it's prime directive. The bonus piece which cleans under the bowl, should be included just the same as the piece that cleans the the top of the bowl.

Anyway, sorry I had to rant so long, I just had to let the cat out of the bag and get this off my chest.

I'd highly recommend buying this product (Just kidding.)