Feelin's fine with Feline Pine

We went to Petsmart this last weekend to get some supplies for the kitten my sister is getting in a few weeks, and we got two huge buckets of Feline Pine since the breeder uses it and it's what her kittens are used to. I also wanted to try it out on Sateycat. I filled his old litterbox with it, while keeping the one he has been using full with crystals. So far he pees in the Feline Pine but won't poo in it. In a few days I think I may switch the Feline Pine litter box to where his current box is and see if he'll use it a bit more. Satey has always been so good when I switch litters on him, he'll use anything to go in! But since F.P, is drastically different from any other litter I figured I'd take a few steps to get him used to it.

I recently swiched Muffy to Feline Pine, and much to my suprise, I like it. I haven't noticed any odor with it. I was worried that maybe Muffy wouldn't like it since it's so different, but she didn't seem to care one way or another. She's just such an accepting cat. I was amazed at how much cheaper it is than the clumpling litter I was using before. According to the directions, I just put in one inch of litter. I didn't have to replace it for 3 weeks, and it never smelled! Pretty cool!

Dawn

I put about an inch in also, but my mom suggested I try another inch to see if Satey would do #2 in it. She thought maybe there wasn't enough litter for him to feel like he could cover it up
Satey is real big litter box scratcher.
He still has yet to poo in it, though. Tonight I switch the boxes' places on him *wicked laugh*

Illusion-
I had to do this but it worked:

Whenever he poos in his other box, scoop it out and put it in the feline pine. When he goes to pee in it, he will see the poo and know it is okay to poo in there too. It worked for me.

Also, Kroger has a generic feline pine that works exactly the same and is half the price!!!

I was using clumping litter forever. I decided to give the "Love My Kitty" a try (it's the same as Feline Pine). Since I have 6 cats I was able to do 3 clumping and 3 LMC. I like it because you don't have to scrape the urine soaked litter off the box. It is absorbed into the pellets. So far so good. I've added one more box with LMK leaving 2 of the clumping litter. I'm hoping that I can totally go to the LMK because it's so much easier. You simply clean out the poo on a daily basis and let the pellets do the rest. After it becomes total sawdust (after about 3-4 weeks of whenever you get an odor of urine) you just dump it out and start over again. My friend Rene turned me onto this stuff. I tried it once before when my male Casey was with me. I thought he hated it because he peed in my bed. Come to find out he had a UTI. So, I think this time it might just work.

Ttapestry: We got 2 30-lb buckets of Feline Pine @ $10.99 each. The 20-lb bags were $9.99 each. They didn't have any other product similar to F.P. there or we'd have gone with it. I'm not sure if there's a Kroger's in Bakersfield. As it is, we drive 40 miles to Bakes to shop at PetSmart I'll try your...uhm..poo-switching...tecnique to see if it works Thanks!

Donna: it really IS so much nicer not to have urine-soaked litter stuck to the bottom of the pan. Even regular clay litter and the crystals stick to the bottom in my experience!

Speaking of, I got 3 old litter boxes out of storage and cleaned them up really well, but one litter box has what I can only describe as a clay scale, sort of like hard water stains. Can anyone offer advice on how to get that stuff out of the box? It's covering almost all of the bottom of the pan. We tried SOS pads but it got too tedious and we weren't getting very far with it.

Illusion: My vet let me borrow one of his books that he has from vet school that discusses cat behavior. In the chapter about urination the author said that it is best not to use old litter boxes, even if they are cleaned regularly. She said that over time as the plastic ages, it lets off odors that might keep a cat from using the box. I don't know if this is true...but if so, you might not want to use the old boxes.

That's really interesting Illusion!! Thanks for sharing that!

Illusion,

There is another secret to using the clumping litter that I found works. When you clean and dry the box, spray a fine mist of Pam or cooking oil in the bottom and sides. It prevents the litter from sticking.

I still have two boxes of clumping litter for Casey. I'm kind of skittish about totally turning over to LMK because I don't want him peeing on my bed again, in case it was the litter and NOT the UTI he had.

Great idea!!!! I have never thought about using Pam. I will try it!!!!

Donna: Geat idea to use Pam! Hopefully soon I won't have to worry about it once I switch to the FP completely. Right now Satey is used to using Crystals, but the pee-soaked crumbs tend to stay on the bottom, and they DO stick also! Not as bad as clumping, I am sure.

LotsOCats: That's interesing! One of the boxes I got out of storage is about 6 mos old and it was never used. The other was Satey's box that I retired a year ago when I got him an even bigger box. The last one is fairly old. In fact I think I got it when Satey was a kitten (almost 9 years ago) but when I moved out my sister kept it for her cat and I got one just like it (the one that Satey used up until a year ago). The plastic shows no sign of wear or anything, but it's got that darn clayscale junk stuck to the bottom so it's probably going to just get tossed.