Pine litter fail

I was recently gifted a free coupon for an Arm & Hammer product thanks to the Kitty Krew community.

The coupon was for a free natural litter product from Arm & Hammer. So I set about searching for the products. This included looking online to see what products were available near me.

Well after I finally found a product near me I figured I’d use my free coupon. I ended up buying the Feline Pine pellet litter.

The litter

The litter was pellets. I’d used similar style litter in the past but they were made of paper. They were compressed and didn’t have any real scent to them.

The bag is durable and was pretty easy to cut open. I sealed it with a rubber band.

However, this feline pine had an odd scent to it. I could smell it through the bag. It smelled like paste and wood dust. I assumed it was the pine and whatever they used to bind it with.

According to the bag you are supposed to introduce the litter slowly to your cat. Basically, mix an inch of it in to their regular litter. This allows your cat to get used to the change. I however didn’t do this. I just opted to use the litter in one of our 3 litter boxes.

Granted that was probably my first mistake. The second was the fact that the litter smelled as it did. I placed our air purifier in the room where it was located due to the fact it was so strong.

The scent mellowed after a few hours to about a day. But even then it was slightly noticeable when I entered the room the liter box is in.

It’s safe to say this was very off-putting for the cats. Leo just looked at the litter and didn’t even set a paw in the litter box. He didn’t like the smell.

On the upside the product didn’t have any dust.

A few days later

So it’s been a few days since I introduced the pine litter. The litter hasn’t been touched or even moved around.

Today I tired to put Bear in the litter box so he could get the feel of it. But he didn’t care for it on his paws.

After he jumped out he shook his paw and a pellet flew off of it.

So for now we have gone back to using clay litter.

I

Why was this a fail?

It could have been my fault for not introducing the litter to them a little at a time. It could have also been the overall smell they didn’t like. I don’t usually buy them scented litter because over the years the fragrances have been so strong that they make them sneeze.

Some of the scents even gave me a headache.

I also think that they are used to clay litter that the overall texture change didn’t work for them either.

Am I mad it failed? Not really since I didn’t lose money on the litter it was worth a try.

What will you do with the litter now?

I think we’ll use it outside. Since it’s clean we can use it in the garden. I left a litter box outside to see if the feral neighborhood cats might use it.

You can check out Arm& Hammer for more info on the product. It’s also sold on amazon and various retailers.

share your thoughts on natural litters in the comments below.