Lies. They’re very reliable. You can rely on them to be wrong.

Exact same situation here, two 3rd gens.

We did the same type of research you did OP, and honestly you have three options:

• get a low cost ‘automatic rake’ box, which will break in a month if your pet has a bad day on the potty. Or worse, everything will get stuck to the rake and it’ll be worse to clean than scooping the box.

• you go with something proprietary like the crystal litter solutions.

• or you get an expensive box like the litter machine.

Its certainly unfortunate that there aren’t better options for cheaper, but I do think that it’s the right choice in most cases. I have 4 cats and 2 litter boxes, and I empty them about once a week with a deep clean every 3 months or so. We do have one non automated box because sometimes they prefer that, but overwhelmingly they prefer the litter machines.

I think that the issue is that everyone here is saying “everyone should do X”, and that just doesn’t make sense. Maybe everyone should just pick one thing on the chart and do that to improve the world as a whole? “People will have kids anyway, so that’s not a good measure” could easily be reframed as “People will have meat anyway, so that’s not a good measure”.

We all have a sacrifice we’re willing to make to be better, and we don’t mind doing. Some people don’t want to have kids, so they contribute that way. Some people don’t want to eat meat anyway, so they contribute that way. If you want to do better, pick one thing and start doing it, even if it’s not perfect.