LitterMaid LM900 Mega Self-Cleaning Litter Box

A few tips from an experienced owner:
-The litter receptacles are disposable, but only if you're a millionaire. And it's really nasty to clean them. I reccomend lining the litter receptacles with plastic grocery store bags. Remove the plastic bag, tie it up & throw it in the trash. This way you can re-use the disposable recepticles many, many times, without cleaning them.
-Yes, it's noisy, but not any noisier than 2 cats playing tag in the middle of the night! Mine's in the kitchen, just down a short hall from my bedroom, but I sleep with my door closed & it's not a problem for me.
-Yes, the cats track the litter, but no worse than a "regular" litter box using the same (premium clumping) litter.

Until I can train the cats to use the same toilet I do (fat chance, I can't even get them to answer to their names), this is as good a solution as I think I'm going to find.


Thoughts/Response to other reviews   November 10, 2003
Renee E. Dorsey (Wheeling, WV Area)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

I recently purchased a remanufactured LM900 from ebay, but before doing so I read a lot of the reviews on here. Needless to say I was a bit apprehensive! However, since 1) The price was right ($ 90.00 INCL. shipping vs. 150.00) and 2) I am pregnant and cannot change the litter and hubby is doing it, I was willing to try it. I checked and verified the ebay seller's return policy. The unit arrived and we hooked it up. Immediately I noticed that TOO MUCH LITTER is bad - it does slow the machine down and it seemed to be working too hard; I removed 3 cups of litter for later use and it worked fine. I also think you have to follow Littermaid's guideline and buy premium litter - sorry, but the cheap stuff just doesn't clump as well, so the rake doesn't get all the waste. I also was worried because it didn't seem to be raking after the "10 minute" window everyone talks about. To be honest, I don't know how long mine takes, but it does work. We have emptied our waste bin once/week since we got it, and so far so good. Don't knock this thing until you make sure you are following all the instructions. It is a complex machine and needs to be treated kindly. If after this you still have problems, then maybe yours is defective and you need to return it. We are happy so far - I hope this doesn't jinx us!


Just... Follow... These... Instructions...   April 1, 2004
19 out of 20 found this review helpful

Okay, I just wasted an hour of my life reading complaints from disgruntled owners. Box gets dirty, large cats poop too much and gum up the works, litter doesn't clump, yada yada yada.

I've had three cats use my (one) Littermaid. One is eight pounds, one is ten pounds, the other was 23 pounds (Maine Coon). The last cat was as large as a small dog (medium one if you count the fur) and pooped like one, albeit into the cat box. I've had my Littermaid for 4 years now and have had no problems.

I don't use any special cat litter (Tidy Cats at the moment; clumping of course) and I check the box every second or third day. When the disposal container fills I remove it, dump it and replace it. Yes, I'm stingy. Occasionally it gets grungy and I dump them, but in 4 years I've only bought one extra set of the cannisters.

The rakes on my box don't get clogged up, and I've never had to clean them. I've emptied the box completely and cleaned it thoroughly a few times (when I've relocated) but other than that no other effort expended.

There are no odors. Literally. I've had the cat box in my own room, next to my computer workstation, in the kitchen one time, etc. There simply is no noticable odor.

There is some litter spray on the floor next to the box (the ramp helps a lot actually; never tried the tent -- looked stupid to me) but that happens with any cat box. Keep a small broom next to it and as you go by in the morning or night brush it up, as you would with any cat box.

One of my cats does its business in one spot every time and its just not a problem. Every other day or so take a second and peer into the recepticle and if its filling unevenly use a traditional cat scoop tool and even it out. (...) Enjoy!


Littermaid means you're the maid of the litter   February 6, 2004
Farheen Raza (Shrewsbury, MA United States)
18 out of 23 found this review helpful

I recieved this product as a gift and now feel like smacking the giver upside the head.
First off, the unit jammed almost constantly, requiring me to fix it every 2-3 days.
Second, the motor is annoyingly loud and scary to ats. My 6 month old baby was so frightened she hid under my bed for 5 days and went to her regular litterbox (I had to keep it out else I would find surprises under my bed).
Third, it's really no fun when you have to clean the thing out, unscrew it open and clean out a nasty plastic rake full of old dryed out gunk stuck to it. really, it's no fun!
After about two weeks, the unit gave up and wouldn't move, so I went to Petco and got a brand new one. Same situation, and to spare you the repetition if you really want to know what happened with Littermaid #2, start reading from the beginning.
Again, I made my trip back to Petco with the intention of buying a new scoop and a box. But the manager recommended the Petmate Purrforma, she said of the 12 units sold since December, not any have come back. Whereas they recieve a return on littermaid at least twice a week!! So now I have the Purrforma, and it's still going strong after one month of ownership!! I bought the jumbo hooded unit with extra features, and I do have a review of it in the actual units review section.
As for my kitty who fears littermaid, she and my other cat fight for the right to sleep on top of the Purrforma. Since it's much quiter motor sounds to them like purring.
So forget littermaid, get the Purrforma (and read my review of it in the Purrforma Jumbo Hooded Litter Appliance category of Amazon.)
I do hope that helped!!!


Underpowered, underdesigned, messy   July 31, 2004
Aimee Yermish (Stow, MA, USA)
18 out of 18 found this review helpful

We've had this product for a few years now. It's definitely better than manual scooping, but has tons of its own hassles -- enough so that now that our unit has died, we're going to replace it with a Litter Robot.

1. You must fill the litter level to EXACTLY the right level. Too much, and the underpowered motor just can't push through it. Too little, and there's not enough to clump, so you get gunk all over the bottom of the box. Of course, since the cats are *using* the litter, that means that there's frequently not enough, unless you add a little bit every day. Also, cats don't usually respect the device's need to have the perfect amount of litter spread evenly over the whole bottom of the unit. They dig, and then the litter is too deep in one area, and again, you're stuck.

2. You must use expensive cat litter. Cheap stuff doesn't clump well enough.

3. Even the expensive cat litter clumps have a tendency to get, er, broken up and all gooey over the rake, clogging it. Major pain in the butt to clean, and it happens frequently. A clogged rake also dumps all the clean litter into the receptacle.

4. It's loud. Even hidden away in our laundry room, it tends to freak out visitors. The cats, however, got used to it quite quickly.

5. Proprietary waste receptacles are expensive. We solved this problem by simply reusing them many times (taking them out and dumping them into a garbage bag).

6. It's difficult to remove the waste receptacle to empty or dispose of it (whether you reuse them or not, you have to take them out) without getting gunk all over your hands and all over the floor. It's held in place by lots of little flanges, and there's not really a neat way to get it out. The plastic is pretty flimsy -- a full container is not very structurally sound. It's just very hard to pick up and move this thing without spilling, and we've had lots of practice trying.

7. The receptacle is small and fills up rapidly, especially if you have two cats. Worse, since many cats like to use a particular area of the box, it fills up unevenly (all on one side). Again, this makes it extremely difficult to clean without a big mess.

8. The dumping mechanism isn't particularly neat about how it dumps the litter into the receptacle. There is always litter (often bits of broken pee clumps! ewwww) all over the floor around the receptacle. It's really a pain to clean.

9. The overall quality of the engineering is poor. Our unit did not work right out of the box, and after getting absolutely no help from customer service, I ended up fixing the problems myself. We were *never* able to use it under battery power -- combining the underpowered motor with anything other than completely fresh batteries was a complete failure. Plugged in, it works some of the time, but the motor just isn't powerful enough to move the litter and clumps, nor is it powerful enough to reliably climb back up into its hangar.

Basically, this is a moderately useful product. It's better than manual scooping... but not by much. It does not solve the problem for pregnant women who need to avoid contact with the cat litter, nor does it solve the problem for people who want to not have to deal with the litter box all the time.