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 rather than two years.
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
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. Owners coming from the A.I. like the result, with less litter tracked around the house and none of the baked-waste smell the heated dry could cause.
The drawbacks are the ones owners associate with the brand rather than the new design. The litter is proprietary and costs noticeably more than supermarket litter, delivery can take a week, and at least one owner on their fourth CatGenie saw the water intake fail again after six months. Owner discussion of the Whoosh is still thin compared with the A.I.
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. Buyers who have been burned by out-of-warranty repairs on older CatGenies tend to recommend a drawer-based box instead.
The A.I. washes and dries reusable granules; the Whoosh uses a flushable clumping litter and flushes it away. Owners switching say the litter tracks much less and the dryer smell is gone.
CatGenie sells its own Whoosh litter and has named a small number of approved alternatives; owners outside the US report those can be hard to find. Poorly clumping wheat and corn litters are the ones CatGenie advises against.
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 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
Open-top
Best for: Cats that avoid enclosed boxes, in a home that wants a big drawer
Rotating drum
Best for: One or two average cats where a big drawer and layered sensing matter more than a camera