The inside story of the dirty side of cat ownership!
We have always had cats in my family. And being an older generation of Australian, I grew up with inside/outside cats.
Now that cat ownership has evolved and cats are resuming their rightful place as part of the family (ref: Egyptian Worship Level), our family is in made up of, in part, our inside only cat Shadow, a foreign Black Oriental.
We were lucky enough to have Shadow join our family early in 2016, after being catless for about 18 months, as a beautiful 2 year old. However, it was quite an adjustment to inside challenges with litter trays and scooping, pooping, digging, tracking, and long days at the office with the joy of Shadow, and his litter box, to greet the first one home. Especially potent in a Perth Summer.
As our family has also joined the inner-urban migration and downsizing movement, and currently occupies a 2 bedroom apartment, ground floor, we have no avenue for building an outdoor enclosure at this time.
So we needed a solution to living inside with a cat, and litter tray, in a closed apartment, urgently!
We did the research, no doubt familiar to all, google-fu skills put to the test as surely, in a modern age of convenience, there had to be a solution available for dealing with the litter box beyond the open tray, and human-slave scenario!
There was not much to choose from in Australia, so we broadened the search to global. CatGenie, Scoop Free, SmartScoop, Petsafe, LitterMaid; of all the litter-box appliances available to do the deed of scooping, only one stood out. Rated the #1 Best self cleaning litter box, the Automatic Litter-Robot III Open Air was well ahead of the competition, with 4.6 out of 5 stars (catfooddispensersreviews.com, best self cleaning litter box comparison 2016). Not just a new invention, but developed from over 10 years in the market, Litter-Robot is proven, and the Open Air, as a third revision, rating higher than the earlier model. SUCCESS!
But hang on a minute here, not so fast…….
The complication of living so far from lots of places suddenly kicked in, with the cost to ship one of these amazing machines to Western Australia being more than the cost to purchase it. All the reviews in the world didn’t stack up so very well against roughly $1500 AU outlay, plus no real return options for the 90 day money back guarantee plus 18 month warranty, both back to USA, at same expense again to ship.
We were astounded, and went direct to the manufacturers to open a conversation about getting one of these asap, but reasonably. The only option was to import, and Cat Evolution started the journey.
We committed, and had one shipped (yes, at great cost), as we couldn’t not have one.
EXCITEMENT, anticipation, unboxing – the joy of every new Litter-Robot owner when that huge box arrives, and the spaceship launches into your life!
YES, it was better than we expected. And we expected a lot for the price!
NO, we don’t regret the cost.
YES, we LOVE it! no more scooping.
YES, Shadow LOVES it! A freshly re-set litter tray each and every time he uses it.
YES, we had to have it for Aussie and Kiwi cats and owners.
VIVA the Cat Evolution!