Cat Poop and Germans?

My co-worker is a German who recently married into becoming an American.  He met his high school sweetheart while on a foreign exchange program in the United States.  I am sure it is a lovely and romantic story complete with falling in love at first sight and the idea that crossing an ocean to be with someone has a currency in this fucked up world that is worth at least a dozen "awe's".

But this blog isn't about that.

This gentleman, we shall call him Chris, loves to come into my office for five minutes of laughs at least twice a day when he stretches his legs and needs to escape his cubicle shaped enclosure that doubles as a square shaped life-sucking chamber.  When he comes over, the conversation usually devolves into jokes about the German people between the years of 1941 and 1945 or about American obesity etc.

Occasionally, we discuss cats.  He knows that I have this blog and he has two new kittens that give us a bit of common ground when pontificating about the up and down roller-coaster ride of life. One thing we both agreed on is that cleaning cat litter sucks something awful.  We decided that the self-cleaning litter boxes were the way to go at some point last week.

Today he presents me with this video of the solution to all our prayers:

I nearly gasped at the genius of the Cat Genie even though I see some problems such as:

Will the cat want to kill its own litter box since the cat will assume the movement means it lives?

Will the wet litter be a problem?

Will the flushing mechanism work?

These things come to MY mind.  But Germans think differently than their American counterparts.  His first reaction is:

"If it misses the poop, and then the litter drying mechanism clicks ON, won't it heat the poop?"

He does a search of reviews and sure enough there is a review about the fact that the Cat Genie "cooked" left over poop and the smell permeated throughout the house to a nauseating level.  Gross.

I say, "That is gross."

German says, "It is.  I don't know where but I've smelt cooked poop before.  It's gross."

I say, "You've smelled cooked poop?"

German, "Of course."

Sigh.  How do you respond to that?  I will just chalk this up to either language or cultural barriers.  I, of course, will not be buying a Cat Genie anytime soon.