LitterMaid Cat Privacy Tent

I do disagree with those who say the tent is useless. Once you've gotten a feel for how much litter is "too much", you rarely have to actually see into the tent itself for anything other than adding litter. The only problems I've ever encountered were that our cat had decided to "prefer" one side over the other, resulting in a mountain of litter in one half of the box that the motor for the scoop just couldn't handle. After 3 or 4 retries, it just stops and waits for the next cycle. Such problems are easily resolved by taking our "old-fashoned" litter scoop and shoving the litter around, then switching the unit off and on again and seeing if the rake makes it through the cycle. None of this is impaired by the presence of the tent. Adding litter is a bit of a pain - it would help if there was a snapping flap of some sort on the top.

Meanwhile, the tent really does signifigantly improve the odor situation. But the most important thing, at least for our cat, is that without the tent she tends to ignore the ramp and jump out of the box directly, leading to litter all over the vicinity. The tent prevents this, and the carpeted ramp does a pretty good job of preventing litter from going everywhere.

We haven't found a good replacement for the tent yet, and I'm loathe to spend 30 bucks for such poor quality. But as I noted in my title, this is not a review of the actual littermaid system - We got ours almost 3 years ago and (tent issues aside) it's worked great! I'd hate to go back to scooping. One recomendation - use a plastic grocery store bag as a liner for the little plastic container, then just throw away the liner and stop buying new containers!


...don't waste your money   August 16, 2002
J. Kuo (Los Altos, CA)
56 out of 60 found this review helpful

We love the LitterMaid litterbox but the tent is beyond bad. Everything about it is of poor quality. The zipper breaks easily and is difficult to zip up because the plastic tent is slightly undersized for the tent structure formed by cheap plastic rods... Flimsy to the core, the plastic rods met their death when our average sized 10 lb cat decided to explore the universe from the top of the tent.

The concept is great -- privacy for the cats, spares us of seeing them do their thing, and it helps with the odor. ...


Poorly made product   January 13, 2004
17 out of 18 found this review helpful

I bought the littermaid tent about a month after I bought my littermaid. I've never had any problems with the littermaid and am happy with the product. The tent on the other had is very poorly made!! It's supported with a series of plastic tubes which is very easy to assemble, but I had to move last week and when I CAREFULLY took the tent apart 3 of the pegs connecting the tubes broke off. I used tape to put it the frame back in place I had to try and zip and re-zip the tent b/c the zipper kept breaking and opening. It finally came back together after about 20 minutes of zipping and rezipping.

The tent does help with keeping the litter in b/c my cat really likes to dig, but obviously this product wasn't designed very well b/c even with both flaps wide open...the waste tray doesn't come out nicely and yes refilling the litter would be easier if you could pour it in on top and see what you were doing.

I'm not very happy with the tent, but am happy with the littermaid. I just wish there was a better quality product out there.


Collapsed in three seconds   June 12, 2004
Itsy (Mtn. View, CA)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful

Excuse my French, but this is a piece of crap. Right after I assembled it, my cat jumped on top and it broke. Pfft.


Cheaply made - Frame breaks easily   December 24, 2001
15 out of 15 found this review helpful

The first time I assembled this, my cat jumped on top of it and the whole thing collapsed. I took it apart and discovered that one of the CHEAP plastic corner connectors had snapped. It's now held together with duct tape. Does Littermaid expect that cat's won't jump up on something like this that's flat on top and begs to be explored? If they do, then why is the frame made out of such fragile and flimsy plastic?