Advice on good deodorant cat litter

In My Humble Opinion
1

My two Bengal cats are now 14. Ever since they were kittens, we have used Tidy Cat litter, and it has worked fine.

Lately no matter how often we clean it, it has been smelling worse. I don’t know if they have changed the composition of the litter, or if it is something else. The cats’ stools are still firm and shaped. There has been no change in their diet.

Does anybody know whether there is a cat litter that is more effective? Or, if there is any other way to cut down on the odor?,

Other than changing all the litter every day, which would be pretty expensive, don’t know what else to try. We have used room deodorant in the utility room where we keep the litter box, but that only helps for a short time.

2

Is Tidy Cat a clumping litter? I find clumping litter dries out the solid waste very quickly and reduces smell.

Are they covering their waste? A couple of years ago our then-12-year-old cat decided he was too busy (too important?) to cover anymore.

3

How long has it been since you’ve changed the litter box? Not the litter, but the box itself. Most litter boxes are made of plastic, which will eventually absorb odors, especially when scratched for many years with kitty claws. It may be the box which is smelly, not the litter.

Having said that, I’m super fond of the crystal only cat litter (Fresh Step makes one), but they’re beginning to be harder to find, so apparently I’m in the minority. As long as I really do clean out the boxes every day or two, it really doesn’t smell. I remove the poop only - urine is absorbed by what are essentially oversized gardening water superabsorbent crystals. As long as you stir it every day or two to make sure all the urine is getting soaked up, the litter can be used for a whole month before the crystals have absorbed their max and start to have an odor.

4

We were having similar problems. We would clean both boxes every second day and wash the litter box once a week but there was still a lingering ‘kitty litter’ smell in the house.

We recently switched to Fresh4Life Odour control. Link below has the ony internet pic I could find of it. It’s the yellow one.

http://www.bosleys.com/food_supplies_care/cats/featured-products/featured-products_fresh4life.aspx

It has a subtle lemon scent that seems to counteract the ammonia smell of cat pee better than any other clumping litter we have tried.

I don’t know where they would sell it near you but up in Ontario, Canada it can be found only at Pet Valu.

5

I use this stuff. There are plenty of people who don’t like using silica gel-based litter and some cats apparently dislike it for textural reasons. But it is unscented and IMHO nothing I have ever used controls odor better.

6

I have had the same problem. It seems that they might have decreased the amount of blue crystals in the mix. You can now buy the crystals all alone and they are $15.00 to $20.00 a bag, depending on the store.

I find I’m having to mix two litters together to get a consistency that works for my two indoor cats. I use a clumping litter and a strong odor killing litter mixed about half and half and then I throw in a handful of those blue crystals. That’s the only way I can tolerate the boxes. I can barely afford these cats anymore!

7

I’ve had pretty good luck with the Fresh Step multi-cat clumping litter. It’s not cheap, but seems to keep the smell to a minimum.

8

I had the best luck with the corn-based litter. It clumps well enough to pick up, and it weighed less than the crystal stuff. And for some reason, less of it would end up outside the box. It has a fresh clean scent, even when you’re scooping. We didn’t start using it until the cats were older (late teens) and they had no adjustment issues. Another advantage is that it weighs less than the crystal litter, even after it’s been used.

9

I’ve been surprised by Maxx Scoop Small Spaces - we used to use the Multi-cat one (with 2 cats) and it was alright but not great. Then just shortly after we got the third cat, we picked up the Small Spaces one because the store was out of Multi-cat, and it has made a big difference in reducing the odour (except for when the new boy goes…it’s getting better, but he’s still somewhat of a stinky cat, as he’s recently been neutered. Even then, I find the odour doesn’t stick around as long as it did with Multi-cat).

10

Another vote for Fresh Step multi-cat. 3 cats, 4 boxes, cleaned twice a week (sometimes only once a week, as I am a lazy cat mommy) and there’s very little smell.

We DO top it off with Arm and Hammer Cat Litter Deodorizer each time we scoop (it’s basically baking soda with a small dose of a perfume that both the humans and the cats tolerate fairly well). We’ve used regular baking soda before when we were phenomenally broke instead of just brokeish, and it worked almost as well, but not quite.

What’s nice about adding it is that the baking soda helps clump the pee a lot faster, and it sort of re-solidifies around the wet sections. Not only does this make them nearly odorless, it also clumps them a whole lot tighter and more “solid” so they aren’t as likely to break up when scooping them. This means we have to throw out the left-over litter a lot less - only every third month now, because there aren’t broken-off bits of used litter, and the baking soda helps neutralize the remaining loose litter. Saves us a decent amount in litter costs, so it’s worth it to us.

We do wash the boxes out with vinegar each time we dump the old litter, so they stay pretty fresh themselves. Haven’t replaced the boxes themselves, but again - broke. If money wasn’t as tight, we’d replace them once a year like I used to do, but for now just cleaning them really well seems to work ok.

11

I switched to the Tidy Cat Breeze system about 2 months ago (full disclosure: a friend who works for the company gave it to us as a gift because they liked it so much for their cat) and I could not be happier with it. The urine smell is totally gone, and while poop still smells like poop, that is fast and easy to take care of.

The only downside is that I have to buy refills on amazon because local stores don’t stock anything other than the full systems because of lack of demand in our area. But my friend tells me it is growing in popularity. I REALLY like it.

12

I got one of those Breeze systems from a Bzz Agent campaign a year or two ago. I thought it worked decently, but I couldn’t justify the cost of the refills, especially since no local stores seemed to carry them anyway. I need to get rid of it now, if anyone wants it I’d only ask for shipping costs. (pm please)

13

Yeah, OP, you might have some experimenting ahead of you. Some cats tolerate total litter changes with no problems, and some need gradual changes to “take” to it - just so you know why, if you try changing and suddenly there are accidents on the floor. It’s a pretty clear “me no likey.”

I’ve experimented with a lot of different litters. I know a lot of people with cats (I work at a feline rescue, so the cats at the shelter, plus all of the employees and volunteers with cats at home. It’s quite a large pool), and you will get a different answer from just about everyone.

I have four cats at home, use four litter boxes, and largely use World’s Best. It’s a corn litter, much nicer to the land than the strip-mining to get silica litter, clumps very hard, better than silica, tracks little, and has a vaguely sweetish grain smell that is pleasant. It passes the finicky “mom sniff test” - if there was a smell, believe me, my mom would say so whenever she visits! If I decide to throw some scent in there, because I get paranoid and self-conscious, I’ll get either a sprinkle litter treatment from Nature’s Miracle, or a bag of Arm and Hammer natural corn litter, which I add just a small amount to each box and mix because I find the scent objectionably strong when using the litter alone. It’s really lightweight and I think it tracks more than the World’s Best.

Hmm. What else. Oh - there’s also Swheat Scoop, I know a few people who really like it. It clumps harder than anything out there. I don’t like it because though it clumps great and smells a nice grainy smell too, it tends to stick to the litter box and has to be scraped off. The stuff I use just kinda pops off the plastic in one piece.

Also - you can spray down the boxes when you clean them with an enzymatic cleaner, like Nature’s Miracle or Anti-Icky-Poo. Just clean them as normal, dry them off, then douse with the spray and let dry before refilling. I have two boxes that are at least 4 years old the the other two are about two years old. No problems so far, and they’re high-sided, very large, pearl-white and hard to find, so I’m hanging on to them as long as I can!

Please do scoop your boxes daily. This is directed at everyone reading this, not just the OP. Some feces-borne diseases are more likely to be transmitted *after * the stool has been sitting around over 24 hours. That’s why our shelter does complete litter changes and bleach-downs of all the litter boxes in the shelter every day. It’s a lot of cleaning, but the best protocol to keep the cats and the humans healthy. I admit I sometimes go an extra half-day before cleaning (so 36 hours sometimes) the boxes at home, but I feel they get a bit whiffy if I wait longer than that, no matter what litter is in there!

(TL, DR)
After all that, what I’m thinking is you might want to just try that Arm and Hammer Natural stuff and try just doing what I do with it and add a little to the litter you already use. It clumps, so no worry about it not mixing well with the clumping stuff you already have. It’s a pleasant but quite strong scent, so it might just do what you need to do without having to go through too much experimenting.

Good luck!

14

KlondikeGeoff, where the hell do you get off starting a cat-related thread without pics? Especially since the cats in question are Bengals! Sheesh!

Other than that, I got nuttin’ to contribute.

15

I didn’t change litters, I just started putting a couple of these air freshener thingies near the box. I used the regular ones until they came out with pet-odor-specific ones. They are a solid that gradually disappears and have almost no scent of their own, but truly do absorb odor.

16

Sorry, freckafree, I know the strict rule of the Dope about posting cat pics. I’ve been around here for years, and several times in the past have posted a link to Flicker with pics of Zubin and Mehta. However, I closed my account there some time ago, and haven’t had time to re-upload. So, you will just have to use your imagination, or do a search for some old threads i started.

Anyhoo, thanks to all for a wealth of good information. I did go to Petsmart and got a new litter box. It is very difficult to find one large enough for our cats (Zubin is 15 pounds), but eventually got one that seems to work. It even has a door flap, so that should help keep the odors in.

After reviewing the above suggestions, and looking elsewhere, it seemed to me that one of the best litters is Precious Cat Ultra Premium Clumping Cat Litter. It is expensive, but if it works, it will be worth it. I also decided that using litter box liners might be a good idea, and then can dispose of the old litter when it gets too bad. I never did this before, just kept adding litter when needed until lately. As somebody posted, Tidy Cats may well have changed the composition of the stuff i’ve been using, hence the sudden problem.

If this does not work, I will buy a gallon jug of Chanel No. 5 and spray that around. :smiley:

17

When the SO moved in she needed to get some litter for her cat. We were at Trader Joe’s, and they have cat litter in the form of pine formed into pellets. It was cheap, she needed litter, so she bought it. She was surprised at how well it kept the odour down. The pellets break down as the litter box is used, and when they are all broken down she dumps it and puts in fresh litter. (Note: she only puts a small amount of litter in the cat’s box. Certainly not like what you see in commercials. It works well.)

Fred Meyer has the same kind of litter in bigger bags, and it’s even cheaper than TJ’s. We’re buying it there now. We’ve found that the pine-pellet litter is inexpensive, cost-effective since you don’t have to fill the box with it, keeps the smell down (I honestly haven’t smelled the cat’s waste but once over the past 15 months), and the cat likes it. It’s worth a try, and even if you don’t like it you’re not spending much.

18

The plastic bins marketed as litter boxes cost about twice as much as plastic bins marketed as storage. The storage bins are larger and have higher sides too.

19

I love my cats, but dealing with their waste is one of the most unpleasant parts of my day. And when Max poops, it smells the house up for a good ten minutes. I’m trying to come up with a good plan to present to my husband since he’d have to do the work.

I want him to install a pet door in one of the walls that is on the side of the house. Then attach a large box to the outside opening. That way, the box can be accessed by me from outside. I’m thinking the bottom would have to be raised off the ground and made of mesh so that the urine could flow to the ground. Maybe a slide in bottom for removal of the solid waste and for cleaning.

What ya think? Too much?

20

We are planning to do something like this in our garage: cat door through the closet wall into the garage, large screened enclosure with box in garage. As soon as all the junk (aka tools) is moved to the newly built workshop! Soon!