When we first got a kitten, there were all sorts of promises made. Who would feed her, who would give her water, who would play with her every day to ensure she was getting enough exercise and stimulation when she was an indoor cat. There were plenty of volunteers for those jobs; they all dropped off though when the least favourite job was mentioned: cleaning out the litter tray.
That job, inevitably, fell to the adults in the house, usually me. And it is my least favourite job, although failure to keep on top of it will lead to the aforementioned cat finding somewhere else to relieve herself, and no one wants to deal with that scenario.
There are things that make it a bit easier. Decent cat litter, for a start – odour absorbing (a must), easy to clean up, and one that the cat won’t suddenly take against and refuse to use (easier said than done), and potentially a way to prevent inhaling whatever noxious odour that cat has produced, along with particles of litter.
If only there was someone to do it for you. Or something. As tech has proven in the past, if you can’t afford staff to clear up after your pet, the next best thing is a robot.
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The Neakasa M1 takes this particular challenge and reduces it to a one-step job: remove a single, tied-shut plastic bag. Auto mode means you don’t even have to remember to hit a button to clean it out.
Sounds simple? It is – more or less.
The Neakasa M1 looks more like it will be whisking your feline friend away on a space journey rather than carrying out a mundane but very important domestic job. It is on the large side, with a soft, silicon base on the litter box itself, and a flexible waste tray that goes underneath.
Inside the box you get the litter box itself, a mat to trap any stray litter that the cat might track out of the box, and two rolls of plastic liners
The M1 requires minimal assembly: attach the four legs, slide in the waste bin, fill it with litter and plug it in. There is an app that needs to be set up too, which allows you to set the cleaning settings – the automatic mode set to clean a few minutes after the cat leaves the tray is a particularly useful one – assign profile for cats based on their weight if there is more than one in your house and keep an eye on how many times the litter box has been used each day.
It’s a level of detail I never thought I needed, with my one cat. I’m still not sure I need it.
After some false starts, the cat really takes to the whole process, although she does eye it warily when cleaning is in full swing
Here is how it is supposed to work. Cat needs to go. Cat gets into the litter box. Cat does what it needs to, and exits. The litter box, in automatic mode, waits five minutes, then gradually rotates, moving the unused litter into a grate and tipping the waste into the bin underneath.
How it actually went for us: cat needs to go. Cat sniffs at litter box suspiciously. Cat gingerly puts a paw in for 30 seconds (the litter box app registers this as the world’s lightest cat). Cat takes paw out, sniffs it. Cat gets two paws in the tray (litter box app registers this again as a small cat) for 20 seconds. Cat continues this dance for the next 10 minutes, before deigning to use the tray. Before the auto mode can kick in, she uses it again, because apparently the first one was just a test run. Finally, the auto cleaning cycle runs.
First: the bin is positioned in such a way that odours generally didn’t escape. It’s not odour-proof, but it does trap a lot in when it is fitted properly. It has a decent-sized bin too, at more than 11 litres – but it is unlikely that you will wait for that to reach even half capacity before emptying the tray. I generally emptied the bag every three days, not willing to take the chance.
Second: as the bin goes through the cleaning cycle, you can set it to cover any waste in the box in litter so it mimics what a cat should do. I say should because it turns out that ours makes a minimal effort to cover anything and just hot-foots it out of the tray as quickly as possible.
This works best with finer litter – paper pellets would probably get stuck, and silica gel litter that usually is in the cat’s tray worked, but occasionally it got a bit trapped in the grate. A nudge on the back of the tray usually dislodged it though.
You will also need to calibrate the tray through the app to let it know how much litter is in there – there are small markings on the bottom of it that let you know what percentage of the box is full, and you simply enter that in the app.
After some false starts, the cat really takes to the whole process, although she does eye it warily when cleaning is in full swing. The best thing is when it is time to replace all the litter: a push (and hold) of a button is all it takes, and the litter tray empties all the litter into the bin underneath. I pull the handle on the plastic bag and out pops the sealed bag of cat litter.
Good
This automatic litter tray eliminates one of the worst tasks of pet ownership. You don’t have to remember to do anything except change the litter on your regular schedule and empty the waste bin. No litter tray refusal, and a happy cat.
The tray won’t empty with a cat inside either; it only runs when it senses that the cat has departed, and leaves a good interval before it starts the process.
Bad
It’s big. Bigger than the average litter tray, so you need a good bit of space for this. Also it works best with certain types of litter, preferably small enough to fit through the holes in the grate so the litter shifts back into the tray since it has cleaned out all the waste material.
It also needs to be placed where it has access to power. That rules out bathrooms in Ireland, which is where the traditional litter tray has lived since we brought the cat home.
And finally, it’s not cheap – €500 for the EU version on Neakasa’s website and just over €600 with a voucher on Amazon. Even the fancier traditional litter trays cost a fraction of that.
Everything else
There is an app but you don’t need to use it. You can push a button on the front of the litter box to put it into cleaning mode, and the control to empty the tray completely is also on the front. There is a kitten mode, too, to make sure the tray doesn’t try to clean itself with your small cat inside.
Verdict
After initially being unsure about automatic litter boxes, the Neakasa M1 has converted me. But you will need a decent amount of space for it.
