Screenshots courtesy of Molly Higgins
Seeing Is Believing
When the box is first set up, you get a free trial of Premium Petkit Care+, which essentially lets you watch the entirety of playback when your cat uses it (without it, you can only see stills of the times your pet appears). The free trial of the premium plan lasts 30 days from setup, and has three tiers of subscription plans, starting at $4 a month for Basic and going up to $12 a month for Premium+. With the Premium version playback, you can literally watch how the metaphorical sausage is made inside of the box, as it records your cat using the litter box in all their glory, followed by a recording of the litter tumbling as the stool is separated from the clean litter and dispensed into the airtight bag below. After it shows the stool, there’s a chart where it has an illustration showing normal versus abnormal stool so you can identify any changes or abnormalities (one of the most effective ways to monitor your cat’s health). Although this is a good idea in theory, the video aren’t hi-def and were always in black-and-white, which made actually observing anything very difficult (I often found myself saying, “Yep, that’s a small gray image of a tiny cat turd”).
One of my cats is a massive 20-pound gray tabby and the other is a super fluffy 12-pound calico. When I had the trial of Petkit Care+, it correctly identified the cats about 75 percent of the time, but once it expired, which cat was which was never identified automatically, despite them looking completely different.
Pack it Up
The litter box can use multiple types of litter, including clay and tofu, but has different grates for litter sifting to ensure it’s getting separated properly. The 10L waste bin lasts up to 20 days with a single cat, and is located in the very back of the device. Like other Petkit litter boxes I’ve tested, it smells great because of the proprietary odor eliminator ($20 for three refills) and sealed waste bag. When the litter waste bin is full, you open the trunk lid, take out the soiled bag, replace it with a clean bag, and clip in the refill ring cover to ensure it stays in place properly. Part of the reason the back trunk end is so massive is because of the auto-packing system. It lifts up during operation, and when the bag is full, it has auto-packing, auto-sealing, and auto-bagging. Then, when the sealed trash bag is ready, the user just needs to remove it (you need to do so manually with the buttons on the device, and be present to get it out and refill it). Because of this packing system, you’ll need Petkit’s special refill rings and trash bags (three for $35). Although the smart box shows images of the stool, they aren’t super detailed, so I’d still recommend checking the stool yourself to make sure there’s nothing wrong.
Screenshots courtesy of Molly Higgins