Littermaid Elite Automatic Cleaning Litter Box Review

We bought the Littermaid Elite to help out our Littermaid LM700 which was several years old and was having some difficulty keeping up with our 5 cats.  It proved to be a good addition. 

The BEST thing about any littermaid is that it makes keeping the potties clean a lot easier.  Yes, there is still work and cost involved, but less than to keep a regular potty clean and changed.

One downside is you have to use a premium litter.  We tried using a different, cheaper scoop brand, but it eventually got into the gears of our first electric potty and killed it after year or so.  Now we use Tidy cat, which is pricier, but it does go further, and replacing a potty is a pricey undertaking too, if we kept killing it with cheaper litter.

The rake on the Elite is metal and is easy to clean, and the rake comes off the system for easier cleaning, unlike our older model.  This model also pushes the refuse into the basket rather than going to the end and lifting it up and then dumping it into the basket like our older model.  The Elite is also a bit bigger than our older model.  Both have ac adaptors.

The rake catches most clumps, but not all.  We don't worry about the little ones as they will usually get caught sooner or later, and the pricier litter usually has deodorizers.

It's best to have one automatic litterbox for every two cats.  That beats one regular potty per cat, unless they are good sized boxes, and then you throw out the good litter with the bad when you change the boxes, especially when you are giving them a total cleaning.

Neither the newer Elite model, nor the LM700 are that quiet; ours sit in the laundry room outside the spare bedroom, and a guest told us that she thought a neighbor was using a power saw all throughout the night, off and on.  In reality, it was the whine and growl of the potties emptying automatically throughout the night.

If you have multiple cats, you do need to scrape the litter so it doesn't get hard and stuck to the bottom of the potties, and the more cats you have require more frequent emptying of the refuse basket, of course.  The Elite is supposed to help with the odor, and it does in a way, but if you don't empty it often enough the lid doesn't close, and it doesn't keep the odor in.

We visit family most weekends, and it's nice to come home to a house that doesn't smell like cat potties.  The potties are not as totally smell free as they advertise, but we use a bleach spray to clean them every one to two weeks, and we have an air freshener in the laundry room, and that takes care of it almost completely.