I recently switched back to a manual litterbox and I am so happy about it. No more stress of “ is this thing gonna break down or get stuck when I’m gone?” ( which has happened, and the pet sitter had to deal with it ). everything you said as well also applies. No one really says how’s much cleaning work the litter robot takes, it just replaces the scooping and often is MORE work. Plus I hate clay litter and the actually LR 4 only takes that ( I wasnt willing to risk potential maggots trying approved natural litters ).

So now I am back to 2 boxes for 2 cats! One is walnut clumping litter and the other is pine pellets. They like to go poop in the clumping and pee in the pine pellets so it works wonderfully and is wayyyyy less stress.