A few years ago, we bought a Litter-Robot automated cat litter box. It’s a spherical litter box that detects when a cat has been inside and rotates itself to dump the resulting clump of cat litter into an internal compartment. It makes maintaining the box easier, and it suppresses the odor much better than regular cat boxes. Our dentist had bought one and she swore it did a great job, so we decided to try it.

But the big question was, would the cats recognize this contraption as a litter box? Our plan was to put it near their old litter box and see if they used it. If we only had one cat, this would be simple: We’d check the collection tray in a couple of days, and if we found clumps then we’d know he’s using it. But how could we make sure all three cats were using it? It’s not like we could watch it all the time.

The solution is obvious, and I’m sure most of you already figured it out: I setup a motion-detecting web camera with night vision that uploads captured frames to a server. Then we just reviewed the images to make sure that we saw all three cats in there.

Afterward, I turned about a thousand captured images into a short video for your enjoyment:

One more stress-reducing cat picture on this election day: Here are my cats Ivy and Beezle in a rare photo where they’re together and holding still.

Ivy and Beezle On the Bed

Continuing with my plan to post only stress-reducing cat pictures this election day, here are closeup pictures of my cats’ noses.

Closeup of Ivy’s Nose

Closeup of Beezle’s Nose

My wife uses that second one as the background on her computer and that giant cat nose cracks me up every time.

Instead of posting about the election, I figured you’d all rather see a picture of my Norwegian Forest Cat Ivy resting in her cat bed.

Ivy Resting In Her Cat Bed

Instead of posting about the election, I figured you’d all rather see a picture of my Ragdoll cat Beezle posing for the camera.

Beezle Posing for the Camera