Cats don't get Technology, need Encouragement

This saturday our cats were given a late Christmas gift.  The gift was actually technically for me but it's something I've wanted for the cats for a while.  An automatic cat box!

It's not hard to imagine how things things work.  The mechanics are only a step above what I could make with my Lego Mindstorm set.  A sensor is activated by a cat presence within the box, a motor turns on 15 minutes after the area is clear, pushing a rake across the sand and flipping up any waste into a basket held above the rake.

When the device is first plugged in it comes to life for an initial test run, and this is the point where I knew there could be problems.  Both cats came running over to stare as the motor made a loud whirring sound and it began its slow crawl over an initially empty plastic box.  Then the rake, which could just as easily have been a long row of teeth swung up from the box and a plastic lid flipped open.  Then the teeth came down, the lid (aka cat digestion box) flapped shut, and the monster made its slow crawl back to the starting position.

It didn't matter that later the box was filled with the same cat little the cats have used most of their lives.  That could just be a trap, the light hanging from the end of an angler fish, just waiting for them to step inside.  I moved the box so that it was in the same place as one of their old boxes, so they'd get the picture.  When you first turn it on it lurches into action and they both ran over and just watched.  When it was done moving one brave cat poked around it just long enough to start another cycle.  15 minutes of peace later and it was back in action, and both cats ran over to watch again.  I had to go to work but for all I know this could have gone on all day.

I saw paw prints in the sand on day 2 but I guess they weren't ready yet and had decided to just pass on through.  Three days into this little experiment I was starting to dread that my cats were indeed technophobes.    We had let their other two boxes go uncleaned so that they may be encouraged to use the brand new clean litter, yet still they were hesitant.  I resorted to drastic measures, removed one of the old fashioned cat boxes and took a clump from one box and placed it into the automatic cat box.  Two hours later I get a call that some brave cat soul risked life and limb to use the new box.  Hopefully this is the beginning of the end of manual cat box scooping as we know it!