About this site

Litter Box Guide is an independent comparison site for Australian cat owners. It exists because the information that decides whether you keep an automatic litter box, what it costs to feed each year, whether your cat fits it, and who fixes it, is almost never on the product page.

What we do and do not claim

We want to be plain about this. We are a research and reference site, not a testing lab. We have not run every model in a house full of cats. When you read a specification here it has been compiled from the manufacturer, the manual or an Australian retailer listing, and the source and date are recorded so you can check it.

Where we add something you cannot easily get elsewhere, it is in the compiling: totalling the real annual cost of bags, cartridges and litter, putting every model's stated cat weight limit in one table, recording which litters void which warranty, and documenting which brands have an Australian entity behind them and which do not.

Where the numbers come from

• Prices are in AUD including GST, taken from the brand's Australian storefront or distributor where one exists, and from an Australian retailer where it does not. Every price carries the date it was checked. Discounting is heavy around November, so treat anything older than a month as a guide.
• Specifications come from the manufacturer's published material, and where that is silent, from the product manual. If we could not source a figure, the table says "not published" rather than guessing.
• Running costs are built from published consumable prices and stated consumption, with the source shown. Where a brand does not publish what a replacement cartridge costs, we say so, because that silence is itself useful information.
• Warranty and servicing come from the Australian distributor's terms where they exist. This is where the gaps are widest, and the gaps matter: a unit with no Australian service path is a different purchase from one with a local distributor, even at the same price.

How we make money

Some brands run affiliate programs, so we may earn a commission if you buy after following a link from this site. It costs you nothing extra. Several brands and every major retailer we cover run no such program, and we cover them anyway, because leaving out what most people actually buy would make the comparisons useless.

Every page tells you which brands on it we can earn from and which we cannot. One detail worth stating outright: the commissions here are not proportional to price. The most expensive recommendation is not the best-paying one, so there is no incentive to push you up the range, and the comparison tables are built to recommend on fit.

On the health pages

A few pages touch on cat health, particularly the one about a cat urinating outside the box. Those pages lead with the medical causes to rule out and say plainly when to see a vet. A cat straining to urinate can be a genuine emergency. We are not veterinarians and nothing here is veterinary advice.

Corrections

If a price, specification or warranty detail here is wrong, we want to know, and we will fix it and update the checked date. Getting a number wrong on a page whose whole purpose is accurate numbers is the worst thing this site could do.