Pets

Just what your cat wants – its own flush-toilet

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The Catolet may just be the cat's pyjamas
Two views of the Catolet
The Catolet may just be the cat's pyjamas

If you have a cat, chances are that you don't like cleaning out its litter box. Well, that's why the Catolet was created. It's basically a conveyor belt-equipped automatically-flushing toilet that's made for cats – or tiny litter-trained dogs.

Here's how the Catolet works …

Whenever the cat steps onto it, motion sensors detect its presence. The cat then proceeds to relieve itself. Urine passes right through the porous conveyor belt and into a water-filled collection basin below, while solid waste is left on top of the belt.

Once the cat finishes up and leaves, the motion sensors detect that it's no longer there. After a preset amount of time has passed, the belt then moves forward, carrying the feces into the basin below. They're then chopped up by a shredder, after which they, the urine and the water are pumped out into the sewer.

The belt also gets cleaned after it's dropped off the feces, so that it can present a relatively unpoopy surface when it gets back to the top.

Two views of the Catolet

Ideally, the Catolet will be installed in the bathroom, permanently connected to the water supply and sewage system via included hoses. That said, it can also simply be hooked up to an adjacent faucet, with its output hose running into the toilet bowl. One charge of its battery should be good for about three months of use.

And yes, it does come with a system of trays that are initially placed over the belt, for training cats to use it instead of a litter box.

The Catolet is currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign, where a pledge of US$299 will get you one – if all goes according to plans.

Source: Kickstarter

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4 comments
perry
Interesting idea but it is very expensive and looks complicated. I’m on the fence whether or not to try this out. I’m pretty happy right now with my Cat-illac Cat Toilet which is also easy to use and less expensive.
Wombat56
I think a flushing cat toilet makes sense from a hygiene viewpoint if you've got the money, but this seems complicated and unnecessary (and how do you clean out the poo grinder?)
Note that there a a lot of cheap kits which train your cat to use human toilets, but you still have to flush them yourself.
Do a search for "cat toilet training".
BanisterJH
While the water bill part of the story was bogus ( https://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/catflush.asp ) people will wonder if a fascinated cat can run this thing all the time. Also, I see it has a wifi connection and a smartphone app. What does the app do? It occurs to me that a scale might be useful for this device. It could track the weight of your cat, tell the weight it excreted, tell when the cat left the box, and tell whether water was flooding the device. Of course, it would need to not measure the weight of objects placed on top of the shelter.
ljaques
I foresee a lot of cat pee and poop around lots of houses as a direct result of this thing. How do you train a cat to step onto a smooth surface to pee or poop? They've been finding dirt/sand/pebbles and covering their wastes since early kittenhood. Train + Cat = does not compute.