The Future: A Cat Litter Box and DRM

I love cats, I really do. They're soft, cuddly, smell oddly sweet, and for the most part, need very little maintenance. That being said, cat litter is the most repulsive thing ever. It’s acidic to such an extreme level that, not sure how, but you can taste it. It’s quite the polar opposite of the pleasantness a cat brings.

Six months ago I moved into a new apartment (BUSHWICK REPRESENT) that happened to have a washer/dryer closet. A normal person would be looking forward to installing a convenient washer/dryer in there, but not I.

I've always wanted an automatic cat litter box but never had the hookups and now was my chance. After a quick Googling, I found that pretty much only one exists, and it’s the CatGenie.

An example of how to trap a cat using the CatGenie

The CatGenie was everything I could imagine, it’s the Rolls Royce of cat litter boxes, a hefty device that scoops, cleans, and disposes of the waste all on it’s own. It’s completely automated, even senses when a cat poops and cleans up afterwards. I finally felt like I made it in my career and I could finally seek approval from my parents.

The CatGenie is not without it’s consumables. It requires these the CatGenie Washable Granules, which are little pieces of hard plastic designed to be washed and not taken up by the cleaning mechanism. There’s also the SaniSolution SmartCartridge, which is a cartridge of fresh smelling cleaning solution needed to wash the granules.

The Honeymoon

It took a few days to get the cats using the new machine, but once they did, the honeymoon began. Gone were the days of coming home and immediately having to clean the box.

See the granules all over the floor. Also, I decorated the closet to make the cats more comfortable.

Life with the CatGenie was great, but not quite perfect. Every once in a while, when the scoop misses a giant cat poop, the drying cycle cooks it. It gets dried out like a little raunchy piece of beef jerky. It ends up stinking the apartment up worse than one could imagine. It’s rare, happening maybe once every week or two and the smell goes away relatively quickly. Curiously, it happens pretty much everytime we have guests over.

Besides the delicious odor, the granules are very sticky and attach to the soft paws of my precious cats, spreading all over the apartment. I was able to reduce the impact by getting a few SSSCAT Cat Training Aids and placing them on dining and food prep areas, since it was super gross to find litter on cutting boards. I also ordered a portable vacuum cleaner to pick up the mess when needed.

Still, this was all better than having to carry home 40 lbs of cat litter from the store, scoop poop, bag it, have the bag break on the way to the garbage. Still totally worth it.

The Turning Point

I'm usually very good about ordering a bunch of granules and cleaning solution. But one Friday evening, I found the CatGenie beeping, asking for more SaniSolution brand cleaning solution in SmartCartridge form. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have any new ones, it seems I accidentally put a used one up on the shelf and I thought it was full.

I took the SmartCartridge and realized I could just open it up, and fill it myself. Great, I'll order new ones and get it by Tuesday and I'll just fill this one up with water for now. So I filled it up with water, and put it into the machine….

It didn't stop beeping, it knew this wasn't it’s SaniSolution. Somehow it knew. I wasn’t able to even force it to run without the solution. I did some Googling, and I found that the “Smart” in SmartCartridge is that it has an RFID chip inside of it to keep track of how much solution it has, and once it runs out, well, you can't refill it. I honestly did not believe this and tore one of the cartridges apart, and there it was, looking back at me, a tiny chip holding up it’s little metal finger.

Seriously CatGenie, you added fairly sophisticated DRM to a litter box? I’m a tad hurt you spent my money on building in a restriction instead of figuring out how to avoid constantly cooking poop.

This made me realize that I don't actually own a CatGenie, I'm renting it. Though I paid for it, I have to pay per use yet I’m still responsible for all repairs until it craps out and I have to get another one. A tad disheartening.

Thankfully, some amazing people are helping the CatGenie community.(Yeah, there’s a CatGenie community). They’ve released products like the custom firmware CatGenius and CartridgeGenius which allows you to use whatever solution you want.

I’m glad there are people dedicating their lives to improving the lives of robot cat litter box parents.

But the worst part of all is that people report the machine runs fine with no solution at all. Supposedly when run without the solution, the granules are no longer sticky and aren’t tracked as much.

Now that I know I would be better off running this thing with water and no longer having to spend about $350 a year on SaniSolution (this is a real number, I went through 6 months of Amazon purchases), I’m going to try my best to get a CartridgeGenius.

The cost savings is great, but isn't the biggest driver for me, it’s mainly the principle that I don't own the device I paid for, and I'm really tired of having cat litter on everything in my home.

Edit: Welp, this is getting more popular than I figured it would so I did some quick edits.