Any Advice on Getting Cat to use Pine Litter?

[jb68711]

A friend of mine has been using pine litter for her cat, it's less expensive and less messy. I've been using Arm and Hammer for the longest time, and also wanted to change to something more natural for my two cats. I went to buy a new litter box, when I came across this Breeze Litter System http://www.breezeforcats.com/products/totalLitterSystem.html... I looked up reviews real quick and felt it was a smart buy (I'm not using the breeze pellets, I bought a bag from an animal feed store... 40# for $9, the breeze pellets are 3.5# for $7). The system came with a transition  guide. First step was to add 1 or 2 cups of pellets to the current litter, did that for about 3 or 4 days. The cats did fine for the most part, (one has semi-frequent accidents). I put out the new box two days ago, and they're not using it. The guide says not to clean the old box once you introduce the new one. One of my cats has always had a problem with going in the box if there's a moderate amount of waste in it (I have to scoop twice a day). I tried putting a little waste from the old box into the new one, and came home to find that my cat had peed on the carpet. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[momofmany]

Every last one of my cats refused to use the litter box with pine pellets. Some cats simply don't like that type of litter. Test this out for yourself. Put the new litter box with pine next to a litter box with the old formula and see which one they chose to use. When I did this for myself, they never once used the one with pine. Since I was having some problems with litter avoidance at the time, I decided that it was a bad idea to try to give them a litter they didn't like. It's cheaper to spend the extra money on a litter they like rather than replace the carpet.

If you really want to make this work, you will probably need to do a mixture of your old and new litter. Gradually add the pine into the old litter (start with maybe 25% pine), and gradually work out the old litter. The test I suggested will tell you if they don't like the litter your chose for them.