Dear Littermaid

I'm breaking up with you.

Two and a half years ago, after feeling emotionally blackmailed into dragging home a gorgeous little kitten and because I didn't want to get the "Shitty Parent of the Year" award, I pretended that I was happy about the event. This, in spite of the fact that I knew I was going to have to deal with kitty poop and kitty pee, which was a serious challenge to my refined gag reflex.

Imagine my delight when I happened upon you, sitting sexily right there on the shelf, promising automatic waste removal. You said YOU would take care of everything and that I would have minimal involvement. Golly, I fell hard for you right there in the aisle. I couldn't get you home fast enough.

Remember how it was back then? You were so strong and competent. I used to poke my head into the laundry room just to marvel at your technological genius. I told everyone I knew about you. I was absolutely smitten.

After a couple of months though, the honeymoon was over and you began to change. You became moody and uncontrollable. Several times a day, I could hear you in there, scraping your rake back and forth across the litter, obsessively, until I was forced to walk in there and shut you off while I tried to diagnose the issue. You became hugely temperamental. If there was slightly too much litter added, you'd wheeze and huff and stop doing your job or you would make this sound like a door in a haunted house repeatedly opening. But like most couples, we found a way to work it out, didn't we? For the next year or so, we managed, even though the flame of infatuation had clearly been extinguished. I'd seen your filthy underside and it wasn't pretty.

And then came "THE INCIDENT". Remember the night you rudely jolted us out of sleep with what sounded like machine gun fire? It was like being in a war zone. Turns out you were having a temper tantrum with your rake. I might have thrown you around a bit that night but I'm not entirely sure because things get kind of murky at 3am. All I do know is that after "the incident" you were never the same.

Finally, you just up and quit. I was so angry but the prospect of having to get even more up close and personal with the cat scat sent me running back to the store.

And we bought another, new and improved you and your really fancy, $150 brother, just to be safe. Turns out, your entire family is worthless.

I guess there must have been some residual hard feelings because this time, you walked off the job after only a few months. We called your parents, Mr. and Mrs. Customer Service, but they kept us on hold for twenty five minutes and then sent us to a general mailbox to leave a message, which made my head explode. And your brother? Well, he might have appeared beautiful coming out of the box, what with his air filtration and timers but as it turned out, he was a pig, flinging litter all over the laundry room floor. Worse, he refused to completely close his receptacle thus treating us to the gagalicious odour of waste, twenty four hours a day.

So I'm done with you, Littermaid. You remind me of too much of my ex husband: lazy, unreasonable and ridiculously expensive. I'd rather shovel caca the old fashioned way than give you another chance.