The people who market the Luuup say that it is the last litter box you will ever have to buy. Almost 2 million original units were sold but then the product fizzled out. This Kickstarter1 program is intended to jumpstart the product again. The product has been refined and improved. Judging by the $1,178,504 that has been pledged on the Kickstarter website it is clearly extremely popular particularly so because the original goal was a mere $50,000. This is a great vote of confidence by the public so how good is the product?
I’d like you to tell me what you think in a comment. In the meantime I’d like to provide my views which you may well disagree with.
First I’d like to say that I have never found it a chore to do the litter. I am a very good litter box cleaner. I have an excellent method! I do the job in about 60 seconds. Yes, that is true. I don’t use clumping litter. I use wood-based litter.
The Bad Aspects of This Product
The first point leads on from my last sentence which is that I use wood-based litter because it is better at odour suppression in my view. The Luuup litter box is built around clumping litter. That is obvious because it is based upon a filtration system which retains the large clumps and lets the granules pass through. You have to be the sort of person who uses clay-based (or some other substance) clumping litter. Clay clumping litter often contains bentonite which can cause health problems in cats. I recently wrote about a lightweight cat litter which contains substances which are also hazardous to cats which gives a clue as to what people put into these products. And what about dust? Is there more dust from clumping litters than from other types?
There are, I believe, a lot of people who don’t like clumping litter but that said perhaps the majority of people do prefer it. That does not mean that they are correct. I find it more messy than wood-based litter. There is more urine lying around not fully absorbed. Wood particles are more absorbent – think sawdust.
Sometimes cats urinate at the edges of the litter box. The reason for this is obvious. Cats may position themselves in the centre which means that their behind is at the edge of the litter box. This means that you going to get some wet litter granules attached to the side walls of the litter tray. These granules will not be sifted through to be discarded as waste as shown in the video. The video is very neat and tidy but I don’t think, in truth, the process is always as neat and as tidy as presented.
The Good Aspects of This Product
Is a simple product which makes it easy to maintain. It is cheap to produce and buy. It is clever. It is easy to operate. They say the product is made out of high quality materials. There are a lot of attractive aspects to this product which make it appealing.
Obviously it removes the need to do scooping by hand which is a big plus. The fact that you sift through the litter probably means that you waste less of it. What I mean is that when you scoop it up in a shovel you are going to scoop up some unused product with the used product. You inevitably discard some unused product. When you sift as shown in the video all the unused product passes through to be reused.
Further Comment
It could be argued that it should be easier to clean this product than other litter boxes/trays but I don’t think that is true. Other than the sifting process I don’t think that this product is any different to any other straightforward litter box.
Is the Luuup more hygienic that ordinary litter trays? I don’t see why it should be. The poo and pee is still lying around the tray until removed just as in any other tray. However, it could be argued that as the sifting is so easy the cat owner will remove the used litter more often and therefore the Luuup would be more hygienic than other trays. It does depend on the diligence of the cat owner.
Conclusion
If you use efficient clumping litter and you are fed up with scooping out clumps then the Luuup must be the product for you. I say “efficient” clumping litter. What if there are some small clumps that fall through? The video presents a perfect scenario. It ain’t like this. If you are like me and you strongly prefer wood-based litter then you won’t buy it.
Your Comments
What do you think about this product? It would be nice to hear from you. I expect it to be popular but we need to think about it carefully.
Note: 1 Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website. Entrepreneurs who want to develop a product can seek financial backing from anyone including small investors who get a share in the success of the product (if it is successful).
Overall, I like this because it is easy and fast to clean most boxes if someone has 1 or 2 cats only.
However, for me, it poses the same cleaning problems that I already have. Most of my cats dig all the way to the bottom of the box and some stand backwards on the rim and go on the sides (occasionally on the outer side). Therefore, stuff is just stuck on the bottom or sides that only a chisel would loosen. So, what litter is still good has to be dumped into a new box and the first has to be scrubbed.