About Perch & Purr

Who writes this

Everything on Perch & Purr is written by Sawyer V.

An enthusiast who is genuinely into this stuff. I read the manuals, compile the published specs, and do the math. No lab coat.

That is the whole bio, and it is deliberately short, because the honest version is short. There is no team of reviewers, no expert panel and no veterinary advisory board. There is one person, a lot of manufacturer PDFs, and a spreadsheet.

Who publishes it

Perch & Purr is owned and operated by Fathom & Foundry. It is an affiliate site: we earn a commission when a reader buys through our links, at no extra cost to them. The full detail of how that works, and what it does not buy, is on the affiliate disclosure page.

What we do not do

This section comes before the one about what we do, on purpose. The most useful thing we can tell you about this site is what is not in it.

• We do not test products. Everyone in this category says they tested twenty litter boxes. We have not tested any, and we say so on every page that recommends something.
• We have no veterinarians. Nothing here is medically reviewed. Where a question is medical, we point at the Cornell Feline Health Center or the Ohio State Indoor Pet Initiative and stop.
• We accept no free products and no sponsored placements. No brand has paid to appear here or to rank in a particular position, and none has been offered the opportunity.
• We do not invent numbers. Where a manufacturer does not publish a figure, our tables say so. There are visible blanks all over this site and every one of them is deliberate.
• We do not print prices we cannot verify. Buy buttons show a live price where we have one and say “check price” where we do not.

Those zeros are the point rather than an apology. They are claims we refuse to make, in categories where zero is the good number, and the sentence that answers “then why trust you?” is the next section.

What we do instead

We compile the published specifications, read the manuals, and do the arithmetic the testing sites leave out. Concretely, that means:

• Running costs, computed and shown. What an automatic litter box or a water fountain actually costs over a year, from manufacturers’ own listed prices and published power ratings, with every sum written out so you can redo it with your own numbers.
• Capacity comparisons. Which makers publish a litter volume, a waste volume, a weight rating — and which do not. In a category with no independent testing, a manufacturer who commits to a number is the one you can hold to account.
• Numbers of our own, clearly labeled. The cat tree stability index is ours, computed from three published figures. We say so every time it appears rather than letting it sound like an industry standard.
• An honest “skip this” on every roundup. A list where everything is good is a list that is selling.

The full method, step by step, is on how we pick.

Why multi-cat

Because that is where this gear is actually tested, and because every competitor treats it as a sub-heading inside a product review rather than as the starting condition.

A litter box that copes with one cat and a litter box that copes with four are different products, and the difference is a number the manufacturer usually will not tell you. A feeder with one bowl does not feed multiple cats; it feeds the fastest cat, twice. A fountain with a single drinking spout means the shy cat waits, and the shy cat is always the same cat.

Writing everything through that lens changes the recommendations, sometimes sharply. It is the reason the multi-cat guide is the pillar this whole site hangs off rather than a section at the back.

When we get something wrong

We will. Specifications change, products get revised, and a figure that was right in September is not necessarily right in March.

If you spot an error, email info@perchandpurr.com. Corrections are made in the page itself with the modification date updated, and the process is described on the editorial policy page. We would much rather be corrected than be quietly wrong.