The curved edges are extremely difficult to scrape, you’ll end up with clumping litter stuck to the rounded edges that you have to scrape off piece by piece.

Cleaning out the entire box is a nightmare – the curved edges and huge size mean you have to hug it to pour litter into a bag, and it’s too large to pour easily into a large garbage bag.

The stairs are useless unless you build your own wall inside the box, since the cat will jump right over them to get to the litter. As expensive as this box is, we shouldn’t have to tinker with the box to get it to work.

The stairs don’t release litter easily, and don’t catch litter from cats paws the way you’d want them to. Our cats kick the litter right onto the stairs, where it sits there, wasted. You have to scrape the curved steps with a cup, or vacuum them, which is more trouble than just sweeping the floor in front of a regular box. I also have noticed the same amount of litter outside of it as with a regular box.

We often have to pull the whole thing away from the wall and sweep up all the litter that fell out the back. Since there are no square corners, lining up the lid of the box up with the bottom is difficult, and I often have to check and double check to make sure both the front and the back of the box are fitted properly. The box can easily look like the lid is on snug in front when it’s misaligned in the back, which gives the cats a huge hole to kick litter out of.

And as mentioned by previous reviews, don’t even bother with the liners, they don’t stand up to scratching.

I suppose the box doesn’t smell after one or two days, but I attribute that to using the correct litter and cleaning the box out often enough. After three days with two cats and high quality litter, you’ll smell it. It does have a charcoal filter for the top, but it also has a huge gaping door, so the charcoal doesn’t catch all of the fumes.

It did, for a while.

Like the other reviewers, however, I do notice that the box needs another wall at the entrance. The box itself is also far too small for two cats and needs to be scooped on a daily basis; even with the odor control panel, it stinks up my apartment (sometimes even when it’s scooped daily!). The top of the box does not latch on to the bottom, meaning that with enthusiastic diggers, it gets nudged off the bottom…leading to cat waste outside the box thanks to them backing up against the walls. Even with the litter liners, this thing is a pain.

I’m on my way to get a new box today to replace this one. It’s a shame, I had such hope for it!

Frustrated, we went to the local pet store to look for a closed litter box to reduce the potential for kicked litter mess and to lessen the inevitable smell. I put no price on products that ease litter box maintenance, so we didn’t hesitate to spend three times as much as the typical shallow litter pan on this ’specialty’ box.

The design, at first, seemed flawless. The litter stayed in the box, very few granules found their way onto the floor, and the mat in front of the stair case was able to keep up with those that did. I noticed very little odor control improvement, even with the supplied filter, but we were happy with the litter control. Five months later, however, it wasn’t “working” as described; Buddy, the messy cat, had begun to kick litter down onto the stairs, which would then inevitably spill out and make a mess. It became part of the daily routine to completely clean out the stairs due to all the litter accumulation.

Last week was when we started finding pee in the stair case. Trust me, we keep the thing as clean as possible – I even completely washed out the box thinking that if I removed the odor from the stairs with cleaner they’d quit doing it. Nope. Then they began peeing in the stairs first, then scooping litter out to soak it up. Talk about a mess. I’m fine with scooping daily – but not with that nasty chore.

Another terrible design flaw is the two corners of the litter area are impossible to scoop – and of course, our kitties loved using the corners. Even our narrow scoop didn’t fit the contours of the corner, resulting in broken clumps and more frustration.

A typical box-design enclosed litter box works far better and provides more litter space as well. I’d have to refrain from recommending this product.