Right now, I have to keep Maggie, our kitten, in my room most of the time because of the dog, who’s still not two years old, and gets too rough. Thus, she’s pretty much locked in my room most of the time, and all night, too.
Because of this, I’m in a closed room with a smelly litterbox. I do change it every day, scoop whenever she poops, etc, but it still STINKS. And sometimes, because she’s little and clumsy, she gets poop stuck to her paws and tail (you haven’t experienced fun until you’ve had to give a squawling, squirming kitten a sponge bath at 2 am!).
Any advice on dealing with the stink? I turn on the ceiling fan and open the windows, but it’ll be getting cold pretty soon. I COULD put her in my sister’s room at night, but a.) I don’t want to confuse her by moving the litterbox every night and b.) I don’t have the heart to make her sleep by herself, because she likes to cuddle up on my pillow.
Would baking soda make her sick, or worse-cause her to reject the box itself?
Would some air freshener help? My cat’s litterbox is in a relatively-unoccupied area of the house, but sometimes after a particularly stinky deposit the stench will reach the next room. So we have some sweet-smelling air freshener that we spray around the litterbox. The different smell doesn’t seem to have confused him, so it might be worth giving that a shot.
The covered litter boxes really are better as far as the smell goes.
I have also found that all litter is not created equal. Back when I had my own place and cat box (before CrazyCatLady took the job over), I swore by Tidy Cats long-lasting formula. With this, I could get by for a week without a change without smelling a thing; with the Wal-Mart cheapo brand it was often apparent within two days.
Are you feeding her special “kitten formula” cat food? That stuff really makes one horrendous stink in the litter box and tends to cause softer than normal stools. Switching her to regular cat food would solve the problem. My theory was that the “kitten” food was just too rich for my kitten to process. She grew up just fine on regular cat food.
Well, as long as you don’t mind advice from a 50+year old who sounds like a five-year old…
I have found that “Feline Pine” cat litter (compressed pine sawdust) is wonderful at masking odors, absorbs kitty defecations and urinations amazingly, lasts for about a week (with daily ‘sifting’) and in those extreme cases where the odor gets out of control, there are two organic products: “Nature’s Miracle” and “Simple Solution” which amazingly, organically, eliminate waste odors at the source and make your home livable again.
These should be available at any modern petshop and/or veteranarian. Shit, we even have them in backwoods Hawai`i!
What I have found is; what you feed the cat will either make or break the smell in the litterbox. I feed our cats Science Diet and hardly notice any “poop” smell. If I change their food, then the litterboxes will start taking on a life of their own.
[phoebe voice on]
Smelly cat…
Smel-ly cat…
What are they feeding you?
Smelly cat
Smel-ly cat
It’s not your fault…
[/Phoebe Buffet]
P.S. Try Science Diet. It also contains Taurine, an element cats would get in a normal cat diet of small rodents, but is not an ingredient in most cat foods. Taurine deficiency can cause liver damage and heart failure, as the recent loss of our baby Tribble can corroborate.
You may need to get a new litter box. If the urine has soaked into the plastic there will be no getting rid of the order.
I do take the box and give it a good hoseing down every month or so and when it dries I put down a layer of baking soda and then but the litter on it. My cat, Princess Penelope Prissypants (the name fits) has never rejected the box over the baking soda. Heck, Arm and Hammer makes litter with baking soda in it.
Rinsing it with bleach solution (in a WELL VENTALATED area, unless you want to do a re-creation of life as a WWI infantryman) followed up with several water rinses should solve that problem.
Also, a company called Nature’s Miracle makes amazing litter treatment. It’s a little on the pricey side, but it actually smells good! And yeah, the litter itself can make a big difference.
You could try this product and stop the odors before they start.
I don’t know how well it works, I just noticed it when I was in PetSmart this weekend.
When I wash out my litterbox I let a mixture of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide soak in it. That seems to eliminate urine odors saturating the plastic.
Yep, kitten formula, Friskies-or just regular Fancy Feast in a pinch. We do feed the others Science Diet…but Maggie REFUSES to eat it. Flat out refuses. We tried mixing it in with her kitten food-and she ate AROUND the kibble and left it there. She will only eat the wet stuff. Maybe the Science Diet makes a wet cat food?
The litter-we don’t buy scented litter, as cats tend to react really funny to it. I think we use, oh, Tidy-Cat? Baking soda on occassion when it gets really rank. I don’t have this problem with the five other cats-just Maggie.
The covered litterbox sounds good, but our neighbors used them, and what happened was the smell concentrated in the box, so the cats would get fussy and not use it. (Gypsy is especially anal about the litter).
Last night-apparently she had some major dingleberries. She tramped them all over the carpet, and I ended up stepping in it without realizing, and it was all over the bottoms of my slippers!
I slept in my sister’s room* and we shampooed the carpet this morning. We also discovered that the sheet we had sitting under the box was causing problems, so we changed these, and today the smell is non-existant.
Poor little thing-she’s clumsy and tends to step in it. Buffy had that problem too when she was a kitten, and nowadays she’s fine.
I’ll take a look at some of the other litters. It’s not a urine smell-it’s almost distinctly a cat shit smell.
*I felt so guilty leaving her to sleep by herself in my room. I’m such a sucker.
Thanks so much, I’m gonna do some research on these products on the web.
Regarding stinkage-I know they’re expensive, did you consider a catshit zamboni litter pan? My friends bought one for their kits to avoid toxoplasmosis issues while she was pregnant.
We have two five month old Heinz-57 mutt kittens along with their five-year old brother (unrelated). We use the new-fangled absorbent cat litter, combined with a daily cleaning of the dried urine and turds, all in an enclosed litter box.
You might want to place a kitter litter rug underneath the litterbox so the little one can clean their feet.
