Keeping Cat Box Smell Down

[waverider1987]

This has probably been posted but just to refresh...how do you keep the cat box smell down?  I personally clean up after my cat every day on the road, and right after she goes #2.  But maybe someone has found a product that helps with the smell?  Sometimes if it's 3am and she goes #2, I just lie there and suffer instead of getting up out of my warm sleeping bag to clean it until the morning...but it kinda sucks lol.

 

[Almost There]

Try the Arm and Hammer product made for cat litter boxes.

 

[Weight]

I use Fresh Step, unscented. no problem with smell. Their dry food smells, litter box does not.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Also, maybe you can figure out when is the best time for feeding her a heavy meal. A large meal in the morning might mean she will do her bidness in the early evening when you are still up. The rest of the day, smaller portions or maybe just snacks or dry food. We don't want to starve her, that's not my point. But maybe figuring out her schedule will help.

Or maybe the large meal in the late evening will mean she will more likely have to 'go' the next morning. 

Of course, cats are not machines, but they do process meals pretty fast. Plus, some foods will pass faster, or smell worse when eliminated. Milk, if it's part of her diet, will do this too. 

I had cats for decades. Now I'm figuring out a small dog. WHOLE NEW WORLD!



Good luck with it.

 

[VanKitten]

Arm and hammer make a litter that is lighter and odor control. I use it....It works.

Of course...clean it daily.....but, use one of those that list "odor control" on the box.

 

[Mei Jade]

We use Worlds Best Litter in a tiny apartment with three cats. It's not clay, I think it is corn or wheat based, and it makes a world of difference compared to when we were using clay. It's also flushable and weighs much less. There are other varieties of clay-free litter. Might be worth researching.

Sent from my SM-G386W using Tapatalk

 

[tripper]

I use the expensive clumping ones. Use a very large litter box and a lot of litter and scoop it twice a day. Arm and Hammer and Fresh Step both work well. The clumping ones take care of most odors. The cat box needs to be in a very well ventilated area to dry out easily. Stir the box up well after scooping it to help aerate it. I would not use the powder additive deodorizers as the fine dust really messes with the kitties lungs.

I travel with 2-4 cats (long story, too many but ya) and by using a very large well ventilated clumping litter the smell is very minimal/gone. I also locate the box under the vent fan and run it on low.

I have also used the blue silica stuff, MUCH easier to clean up after, decent odor control but urine will overpower it in a week.

 

[dawnann7]

I recently adopted two rescue kittens and tried a few different brands of litter before I landed on one - Blue Buffalo Naturally Fresh Walnut Based Litter for Cats. It clumps really well and is easy to clean, plus it seems to control odor the best of all of the ones I tried.

 

[Headache]

If I read your post correctly you want to do something about the odor from a fresh drop.   Unfortunately the only way to deal with that is changing what you are feeding them.  Commercial pet food especially if it's kibble will cause feces to smell.  Cats are obligate carnivores and anything other than a meat dominate diet will promote stool smell.  

When I was able to feed my cat a homemade raw diet there was no odor at all.  Since I'm out on the road I'm feeding a high quality cooked diet from cans.  I get a little odor from a freshy but it doesn't last long.

 

[CatCaretaker]

This has probably been posted but just to refresh...how do you keep the cat box smell down?  I personally clean up after my cat every day on the road, and right after she goes #2.  But maybe someone has found a product that helps with the smell?  Sometimes if it's 3am and she goes #2, I just lie there and suffer instead of getting up out of my warm sleeping bag to clean it until the morning...but it kinda sucks lol.

I like to use Tidy Cats clumping litter with Glade, has a very fresh scent. Used to use Fresh Step but doesn't seem to work as well as it used to. 

Sometimes one of mine doesn't cover his poop at night. I have a can of Febreze right next to my bed so a brief spray and the smell is covered

 

[heavner]

I have my cat box 2 feet from my bed. I use Arm and Hammer Double Duty and I never smell it. (Except one of my cats doesn't always cover his poop, the little ass hole-Ha!

 

[maki2]

Cats are like dogs, they can do just fine for many hours waiting to do their business. Try training your cat to wait until morning to poop and pee. Just put them on a schedule of not having the litter box constantly available. You begin by gradually increasing the time between allowed litter box access.

Cats are just about as easy to train as dogs. You will be amazed what they can be trained to do. Using the facility right before bedtime and then waiting until wake up time is one of those things that can be trained. Right now your cat is litter box trained but you have not added scheduling into that training. They don't need constant access but they do need regular access intervals during the day.

 

[omatrisha]

I use sWheat Scoop litter. Lenny is allergic to clay litter (odd cat, I know -- he's also gluten and grain intolerant & can only eat chicken based food or his poop smells like someone died). It's flushable, lasts quite a while, and has no odor at all. I have MCS so the lack of odor is important for me. I did use the Blue Buffalo Walnut litter for quite a bit but developed a sensitivity to it, and the smell started to get to me -- yep, it does have one, though not anywhere near like clay litter.

I scoop as soon as he poops to minimize odor. I'm still living in a stick & brick so I just flush it right away; when we move into the van, I'll keep some freezer bags on hand to put it in at nighttime so I don't have to go outdoors to dispose of it, or I'll put it in my homemade 5-gallon bucket commode and close it up tight. You might try using doggie poop bags like people carry when they walk their pets (or at least responsible ones do). You can put it in something that seals like a specific Tupperware/Rubbermaid container till it's daytime and you can go out to do what needs to be done. I remember seeing someone mention once they track out their own waste when boondocking by putting the bags in a bullet/ammo box secured to their back bumper or up on the luggage rack....you could even do that.

 

[Headache]

Cats are like dogs, they can do just fine for many hours waiting to do their business.  Try training your cat to wait until morning to poop and pee.

I must respectfully disagree.  I'm order to keep felines at top condition it's very important to mimic nature as much as possible.   Cats are also much more susceptible(especially males) to chronic kidney disease and delaying voiding urination could be disastrous. 

Cats are nothing close to dogs.  Cats are obligate carnivores while dogs are mostly carnivore making them entirely different from what they can eat to how they digest.  Please do not give generalized advice like this.

 

[maki2]

I must respectfully disagree.  I'm order to keep felines at top condition it's very important to mimic nature as much as possible.   Cats are also much more susceptible(especially males) to chronic kidney disease and delaying voiding urination could be disastrous. 

Cats are nothing close to dogs.  Cats are obligate carnivores while dogs are mostly carnivore making them entirely different from what they can eat to how they digest.  Please do not give generalized advice like this.

I respectfully disagree back. A normally healthy cat urinates 2 to 4 times per day. An 7 or 8 hour stretch between peeing does a healthy cat no harm. It absolutely does not lead to chronic kidney disease, I do not know where you got the idea that if they don't pee something during the middle of the night it would lead to chronic kidney disease. But it is simply not a true fact for a cat anymore than it is a fact for a dog.

If a cat was not given regular opportunity to void it would potentially create issues but we are not talking about not giving regular opportunity here, this is the opposite of that, it is about putting a cat on a regular schedule of bathroom visitation. 

Obviously young kittens need more frequent trips and geriatric cats may or may not need more frequent trips.  If a cat seems in distress and needs fairly frequent trips to a liter box for urination then that is something that should be addressed immediately with a health checkup because a need for frequent urination is an indication of a urinary tract problem.

I will i continue to give advice based on sound animal behavior science such as being able to train your cats for bathroom break behavior. I am not dispensing unsound medical advice, I am talking about behavioral training which is something few people ever attempt with cats but which cats are quite adaptable to when trained with patience, kindness and of course rewards.

 

[Seminole Wind]

man if only we could get unicorn gold ( ) for litterboxes. it would even be sweet for composters and buckets

 

[maki2]

I must respectfully disagree.  I'm order to keep felines at top condition it's very important to mimic nature as much as possible.   Cats are also much more susceptible(especially males) to chronic kidney disease and delaying voiding urination could be disastrous. 

Cats are nothing close to dogs.  Cats are obligate carnivores while dogs are mostly carnivore making them entirely different from what they can eat to how they digest.  Please do not give generalized advice like this.

You have a statement at the bottom of your postings saying you have trouble understanding technical discussions. That is unfortunately involved in this discussion situation. Yes cats are obligate carnivores, for those who don't want to read the research articles Headache is quoting from it means that cats must ingest animal protiens....meat.... in order to survive. The failure to do so will among other consequences lead to kidney failure. Here is a link to an article about that if any of you wish to do further reading on the subject https://feline-nutrition.org/answers/answers-what-exactly-is-an-obligate-carnivore

I can see where you might assume that because they can get kidney failure issues from their diet that if they don't pee often then will also get kidney damage. But that is not the case. The kidney is upstream of the cat's organ that is the one of importance here. The important organ in this situation of litter box training is the bladder and its ability to retain the fluid. The bladder has a built in safety feature, an output valve. Now if that valve was disfunctional and it overfilled what would happen is a burst bladder but it would not cause the kidneys to fail if the bladder got ovefilled. But of course that would be a very rare thing to happen. With an overfilled bladder the valve will do its job and release the urine to protect the bladder from bursting. The size of the bladder and the strength of the valve to retain fluids can vary from animal to animal and of course the valves can become weaker with age as many older human women can affirm. So while most cats can comfortably adjust to a schedule of waiting through the night to pee some of them won't be able to do so.

But in conclusion litter box training to put a cat on a schedule of not using a box during the night is not going to cause kidney failure in a cat.  I don't know if your brain will be able to uncouple your thinking about what a cat eats causing kidney failure from a situation that is about bladder control but perhaps you will manage to do so. Just remember the bladder is the organ that is downstream of the kidneys, it is the one that stores the renal output and it has a built in safety valve that will release the contents if it gets too full. No harm is going to happen to the kidneys from training a cat to wait until morning to use a litter box.

 

[Dingfelder]

I must respectfully disagree.  I'm order to keep felines at top condition it's very important to mimic nature as much as possible.   Cats are also much more susceptible(especially males) to chronic kidney disease and delaying voiding urination could be disastrous. 

Cats are nothing close to dogs.  Cats are obligate carnivores while dogs are mostly carnivore making them entirely different from what they can eat to how they digest.  Please do not give generalized advice like this.

I strongly agree and am confident vets will back you up on this.

Cats very commonly have urinary problems from a multitude of sources, including tiny urethras and incredible susceptibility to having even miniscule amounts of ash (you'd never see it in cooked food at that level) effectively narrow their urethras even more.  It goes well beyond that, and it's worth reading up on what a big deal it is for cats.  Extremely unlike dogs in multiple ways.

Lack of opportunity or willingness to pee can make it worse, and can train them to make it worse by, well ... not peeing enough ... which is already the problem ... you see how that vicious circle reinforces itself.

I'm really not trying to argue here and don't want to offend, but it's legitimately important to say the above.

By the way, cats' problems with peeing can be initiated by having less than pristine litter boxes. By all means, everyone, keep them scrupulously clean. Humans don't have the sense of smell that cats do by far, and a human half a dozen feet away from a litter box isn't getting nearly the intense blast of odor as does a hypersensitive cat who is trudging around in his litter at ground level. Even if the top is clean, the problem is often the bottom, where the pee goes that didn't have a chance to get soaked up earlier. Some people think they are cleaning their cat litter by scooping out the top, but that doesn't work for very long. Once there is a layer of compacted stink beneath the top fresh layer, the cat can smell it.

Just a reminder to all that our nose, even less from the height of a person's head, just isn't good enough. Think of what it's like for your pet!

 

[maki2]

I strongly agree and am confident vets will back you up on this.

Cats very commonly have urinary problems from a multitude of sources, including tiny urethras and incredible susceptibility to having even miniscule amounts of ash (you'd never see it in cooked food at that level) effectively narrow their urethras even more.  It goes well beyond that, and it's worth reading up on what a big deal it is for cats.  Extremely unlike dogs in multiple ways.

Lack of opportunity to pee can make it worse, and can train them to make it worse by, well ... not peeing enough ... which is already the problem ... you see how that vicious circle reinforces itself.

I'm really not trying to argue here and don't want to offend, but it's legitimately important to say the above.

It you read the articles on uretheral obstruction in cats you will find that they state that it is not a common condition. Kidney failure is also not a common condition. Reacting to the extremes is what many people who read internet articles do. You will find that every vet or human doctor you talk is very tired of having people coming into their office with over reactions to the internet articles about these things.

 

[maki2]

By the way you are reading old articles on the theory of ash creating unrinary tract problems. The manufactures of cat food lowered the ash and the magnesium some time ago. However that did not solve the issues of urinary tract problems. It is now currently thought to be an issue of the ph levels in the urine so pet food companies are now including additives to raise that ph level to an acidic one versus the former forumals of cat food that created an alkaline ph in the urine. The cat food industry is very responsive to changes in the research and they do adapt their forumuals based on current research.

The current recommendation for avoiding the urinary tract issues is to feed a high protein diet that includes canned cat food to add more moisture. That more closely mimics the natural diet of cats in the wild who obtain most moisture in their diet from eating raw meat versus having a constant supply of available water. The cat food companies are now adapting by offering higher protein cat foods as more meat also increase the level of acidity. This has been effective and the number of veterinarians reporting instances of urinary tract problems is dropping.


If you are going to bring up scientific articles with me then realize I have no problems reading and understanding them. If you are going to bring them into the conversation please be sure that they are current information and that you take the time to note things like what percentage of the cat population does the condition relate to and how common is the occurrence of the condition found and is it a congenital condition that other cats are not typically born with. Reading research reports requires both skill and paying attention to details. I started at a very young age being interested in animal husbandry science. I was taking advanced biology in high school writing my term papers on things like the instances and treatment of heart worms in dogs. Also on laser eye surgery in humans and of course animals that it was being tested on. At the age of 18 while a freshman at University I was involved in the lab and in the field with a research project on the retention of the pesticide DDT in the organs of wild fish, research which contributed to getting the use of DDT banned. Perhaps you are not used to engaging in discussions with someone who will take the time to followup on your comments on a subject they are writing about by going back and verifying what you are responding to them with?