Three kittens is amazing. They are sweet and lovable and hilarious and affectionate and my life has been 200% happier in the couple of months since I got them.
But man, three kittens stink like hell.
I used to have three full-grown cats and the litter box situation wasn’t bad. That’s because I had a basement too, and a basement can hide all manner of awfulness. Now I live in a basement-free townhouse. The only out-of-the-way place for the litter box is in the laundry closet:

That’s where the regular cat litter box was. When it was just George it was totally fine. He was an old fart who didn’t use it that much and if I scooped it every couple of days and kept the door mostly shut, you’d never even know a cat box was in there.
Rosie, Scully and Lucy, however, poop approximately 357 times a day. And when they’re not pooping they’re digging around in there because, wow, everything is a TOTAL BLAST when you’re a kitten, even digging in your own crap. Either Anna or I have been scooping every day, sometimes twice, in order to maintain some semblance of olfactory sanity.
I used to have one of those automatic boxes back in the three-cat days. It was a Litter Maid. It was worse than useless. The rake would get stuck. Or crap would stick to the rake. And you had to buy overpriced plastic containers especially for it. Changing out the containers was a fairly messy proposition and of itself. It would also dump litter all over the floor, causing me to have to sweep more than I do with the current box. Eventually, I just unplugged them and used them as overpriced conventional litter boxes. Biggest waste of money ever.
But after a month and change of dealing with these stinky kitties, I decided to dip my toe in the automatic litter box world once again. Metaphorically speaking because, eww. Behold, the Litter Robot:
It’s sort of scary looking and it’s pretty expensive. But when I realized that a stinky, overflowing box is more scary looking, that it will save on litter costs and doesn’t require special cleaning receptacles, I decided to bite the bullet.
OH, MAN! IT CAME TODAY:

Out of the box!

Set up!

Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!

At least I hope so. No one has used it yet. They’re all asleep on the couch. I’m praying like hell that they use it. But knowing how these cats go, they’ll have freighters create a diversion while they access a vent shaft to the main reactor and blow the thing up.
Fingers crossed.