Flushing~$469CatGenie
The Whoosh swaps the A.I.'s reusable granules for a flushable litter made from soybean pulp, and sends everything down the drain. CatGenie's own usage figures make it the one flushing box whose running cost can be worked out: about $43 a month for two cats, litter plus cartridge. It carries an 18-month warranty, extendable to three years for $89.
Approx. price
~$469
maker's store, not a live price
Best for: Two or three cats in a home with a drain nearby, where nobody wants a waste drawer
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CatGenie publishes no detection weight, only a minimum age of 6 months. Run it by hand before then. Below the threshold, a kitten may not register at all, and the box could start a cycle with it inside.
Detection: sensor type not published. The maker does not state any anti-pinch protection.
How minimum weights work, and what to do below themNo drawer: waste goes down a drain.
The two lists above are drawn from the maker’s own pages, manuals and prices, not from owner reports. Where owner discussion has been read it appears in its own section below, so the two are never mistaken for each other.
The Whoosh is CatGenie's newer, simpler take on the flushing box: instead of washing and drying reusable granules, it uses a flushable plant-based litter and sends waste down the drain. One household coming from the A.I. likes the result, with less litter tracked around the house and none of the baked-waste smell the heated dry could cause, and two newer owners have had no complaints so far.
The drawbacks are partly the brand's and partly the design's. The litter is proprietary and costs more than supermarket litter, delivery can take a week, and one owner on their fourth CatGenie saw the water intake fail again after six months. The scoop also breaks up clumps it misses, which the four-month owner deals with by replacing all the litter every two weeks. Owner reports on the Whoosh are still few.
The natural buyer is an existing CatGenie household with the plumbing already in place, or someone who wants waste gone entirely and accepts buying CatGenie's litter indefinitely. Two CatGenie owners burned by repeat failures and repair costs moved to other automatic boxes.
The A.I. washes and dries reusable granules; the Whoosh uses a flushable clumping litter and flushes it away, with no wash-and-dry cycle. The one owner who switched says the litter tracks much less and the dryer smell is gone, but another long-time owner points out it does not wash the spot where the cat went.
CatGenie sells its own Whoosh litter and lists a few litters it has tested; it advises against poorly clumping wheat and corn litters. One owner uses a tofu litter when they run out, while another found pet-store substitutes did not dissolve and clogged the machine.
It is too new for long-term owner data. One owner's water intake leaked internally after about six months, the same failure they had seen on earlier CatGenie machines, while two others report no problems so far.
Flushing
Best for: A home with a spare spot beside a toilet or laundry drain and no wish to handle waste
Check price on AmazonRotating drum
Best for: Multi-cat homes that want a camera on the box without a monthly fee
Check price on Amazon
Open-top
Best for: Cats that avoid enclosed boxes, in a home that wants a big drawer