Saturday, April 22, 2017

Saturday Caturday: Cat Litter Review

Cats mean litter boxes. We love our cats, and hate their litter boxes. For years I've been using natural compressed wood pellets in the litter box rather than more conventional litters, but when I was given the chance to review a new scent of Fresh Step from Chewy.com, I decided to give it a try. I figured it would give me a chance to see if I switching back to conventional litter is a good idea, or if I should stick with what we've been doing.

We were sent this cat litter in exchange for our honest review. We were not compensated in any other way.

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Theodore Trex is open to modeling gigs in the future

The litter we tried out is Fresh Step extreme odor control with Febreze freshness in the Hawaiian Aloha scent. When I first opened our Chewy box I could actually smell the litter. The scent is light and flowery without being heavy or overwhelming. The scent is a little too much when first pouring the litter into the box, and for the first hour or two. After that it starts to dissipate a bit. My cat explored the new litter pretty much immediately and ended up smelling like Hawaiian Aloha for a few hours, but that only happens with new litter. Each time I add a little more to his box, again, the scent is strong for a few hours, but mellows out after that.

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This litter clumps really well and is super easy to clean the litter box. Something that I don't like about the pellets we've been using for years is that while you can scoop out solids, the liquids stay in the box until you clean it out (liquids cause the pellets to come apart into shavings, so you can scoop it out a little, but not much), making you need to dump the entire box more regularly. I have not smelled a single gross smell from this litter box the entire time we've been using the Fresh Step, even when cleaning. This litter is more dusty than the compressed pellets, but not as dusty as I remember from other classic cat litters.

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The big downside for me of the Fresh Step is that it must be thrown in the trash. We recently moved and don't have traditional trash pick up at our new place. Things like dog poop and the cat litter box (when using the pellets made out of compressed wood shavings) can go into a large barrel for a specific kind of compost such as used when making humanure (look it up, it is fascinating and gross all at once, and probably the way of the future). Clumping litters can't be used with this kind of set up, though, so while we have been testing out this litter for review I have been needing to throw away the scoopings and the litter and bring it into town for disposal. Because of this, I think we'll be sticking with the pellets we have been using long term. However, I am absolutely saving the rest of the box of this litter to use while traveling, because I think it is a better choice for when in smaller spaces together or in hotel rooms.


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