Disclaimer | CatVerge

CatVerge is about equipment, routines, setup, and the daily systems that make a cat household run. That is a genuinely useful thing to write about, and it is also a limited thing. This page sets out the limits, because a site that is honest about what it cannot do is easier to trust on what it can.

CatVerge is not veterinary advice

I am not a veterinarian, and CatVerge is not a medical resource.

Nothing on this site is veterinary advice, a diagnosis, or a treatment plan, and nothing here should be used in place of professional care. I write about litter boxes, feeders, fountains, apps and the routines around them. I do not write about medicine, and I am not qualified to.

Please talk to your vet about anything involving:

Your cat's health, or any symptom that concerns you — changes in appetite, thirst, weight, energy, or litter box habits
Diet, portion sizes, prescription food, or any feeding plan for a cat with a medical condition
Urinary, kidney, digestive or dental problems, which are common in cats and frequently show up first as a change in eating or toileting
Behaviour that worries you, including sudden avoidance of the litter box
Medication, supplements, or anything you are considering giving your cat

A vet who can examine your cat knows things a website cannot. If something is wrong, or you are not sure whether something is wrong, that is a call to make today rather than a question to research.

If you think your cat is in distress or an emergency, contact your vet or your nearest emergency animal hospital immediately. Do not wait, and do not use this site — or any site — as a substitute for that call.

Why this matters for smart devices specifically

Automatic litter boxes and connected feeders sit close to your cat's health without being health tools, and it's worth being clear about the difference.

An app that tells you which cat used the box and how often is a useful signal. It is not a diagnosis. If a device's data makes you think something has changed — a cat visiting the box far more or far less, eating less, or straining — the right response is your vet, not a settings change and not a forum thread. The device noticed something. It cannot tell you what it means.

Equally, an automatic feeder is not a substitute for a feeding plan set by a vet for a cat that needs one. It is a way of executing a plan on time. Getting the schedule right is your vet's job. Getting it to run when you're not home is what the equipment is for.

Every cat and every home is different

What worked in my home may not work in yours, and I try never to pretend otherwise.

My household is three cats — Mao, Leo and Deo — in a home where I am around during the day. That shapes everything I observe. A single-cat apartment, a home nobody is in from eight until six, a nervous rescue, a cat on a strict diet, a kitten, a senior cat, a very small or very large cat — each of those changes what a device does in practice, and some of them change whether it is suitable at all.

Take what you read here as one household's experience reported carefully, not as a guarantee about yours. Your cat has not read the review.

Using automated equipment safely

Automation is why this site exists — I moved toward it after coming home from an urgent trip to a mess and a clear lesson about routines that depend on me being physically present. But automation is a system that can fail, and it usually fails when nobody is watching. That is the whole point of it, and also its whole risk.

A few things I'd ask you to keep in mind, whatever you end up buying:

Follow the manufacturer's instructions, including their guidance on cat size and weight limits, supervision during introduction, and which litter or food the unit is designed for. Where their instructions and something I've written disagree, follow theirs — they carry the liability and the testing.
Introduce a new device while you are there to watch it. The first days are when a cat decides whether the thing is acceptable, and when you find out if it does something you didn't expect.
Never rely on a single point of failure while you're away. Keep a backup litter box. Have someone who can physically check on your cats on longer trips. A power cut, a firmware update, a jam, a dropped Wi-Fi connection or an empty hopper does not care about your schedule.
Watch your cat, not the app. The dashboard is a convenience. Your cat's behaviour is the actual data.

I write about what fails partly for this reason. A device that works ninety-five percent of the time is excellent as an assistant and unacceptable as the only thing standing between your cat and an empty bowl.

Prices, costs and availability

Costs I quote — including running costs like litter, filters and replacement parts — are what I have paid, in my home, at the time of writing.

Prices change, retailers differ, currencies move, product lines get revised and discontinued, and your usage will not be identical to mine. Treat any figure here as a reference point for budgeting, not a quotation. Check the current price and the current specification before you buy anything.

Products change after I write about them

Manufacturers revise hardware, push firmware updates, change app behaviour, and alter what is in the box, sometimes without changing the product name.

I revisit older guides as products change and as my own cats put them through more use, but there will always be a gap between a page and the current state of a device. If something on this site contradicts what you're seeing from a current model, trust the manufacturer's current documentation and please tell me at contact@catverge.com so I can fix the page.

External links

Where CatVerge links out, those sites are not under my control. I'm not responsible for their content, their accuracy, or their privacy practices. A link is not an endorsement of everything on the other end of it.

In short

Use CatVerge to make better decisions about equipment and routines. Use your vet for your cat's health. Those are two different jobs, and I only do one of them.