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It’s the Scoop: Review and Giveaway

Ashton: Did you know that you should replace your litter boxes once a year? It’s true.

Ashton: While I was waiting for treats, I asked around, and there doesn’t seem to be a guideline like that for replacing the scoop you use to clean the litter every day. I know this because our litter scoop was pretty old. Older than me. Older even than Pierre, and he’s old!

Pierre: I heard that!

Ashton: Well, it’s true. Our litter scoop was really old. So when the head peep met the the folks from K-Kat Innovative Pet Products earlier this year and they insisted that she try their It’s the Scoop, she thought she might as well. She didn’t really think that it would be any better than the plastic one she has been using for more than ten years, but at least it would be new. It looked durable, too.

She was also surprised that it was six inches wide. Our previous litter box scoop was over an inch narrower. That meant that she was covering more of the litterbox every time she scooped.

The thing she really liked was how fast the It’s the Scoop sifted litter. We made a little movie so you can see the difference. If you are eating your dinner at the computer, don’t watch it, because it has real mancat litterbox stuff in it. (You can click to watch if it doesn’t display below for you.)

Pierre: How did you know that was mancat litterbox stuff?

Ashton: Because ladycats don’t let their business end up on YouTube. Seriously, Pierre. Anyhow, the head peep loves how much faster she can clean our litter, and I love it, too, because she can be done with scooping the litterbox and get back to giving me treats.

Pierre: Do you remember what she said about the people who invented it?

Ashton: She said that they have lots of cats, too!

Pierre: The inventors of the It’s a Scoop should know about scooping litterboxes. They aren’t just pet products people. They also run Tabby Town USA, a non-profit, no-kill rescue in Wisconsin, so they scoop a lot of litter. We like that this scoop started out as the idea of people who do cat rescue!

FTC Disclosure: We received a litter scoop free of charge for review, but our opinions are our own.

Who is going to Be Forever Furless?

Pierre: Hey, what is thing this that the head peep got in the mail to review?

Newton: It says Be Forever Furless on it. I don’t think I want to be furless for even a little while, much less forever.

Pierre: If you are, I hope someone gets a picture of it.

Newton: Hey, wait, where is the head peep taking that brush? That’s the bottom corner of the bed that I spent a long time putting my fur on just so. See the beautiful decorator orange tint I gave it?

Newton: With only a few scrubs of that damp, little red brush, the head peep took off a bunch of my hairs. Do you have any idea how long it took me to put all that fur on there?

Pierre: Did you hear the head peep say that she had forgotten that was what color the comforter actually was under there? I think she likes the un-furred color better.

Newton: It’s like in one spot where she rubbed that brush, the fur has just vanished. I’m going to have to shed extra- hard to try to put it back, now.

Pierre: Look at that on the brush. Such a waste of good decorator fur!

Newton: Do you think I could somehow take this fur off of the brush and put it back on the bed?

Pierre: I don’t think so, Newt. Start power shedding.

Pierre: It doesn’t look like Newton is a big fan of the Be Forever Furless brush from Lilly Brush, but the head peep sure is! And if it picks up fur without having to run the loud sucking monster, I am, too.

FTC Disclosure: We received this brush for free to review, but all opinions expressed in this blog are our own.

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains an affiliate link, which means we get a small commission for our cat treat fund if you purchase after clicking the link on this page.

Try-it Tuesday: Nature’s Variety

We recently had the opportunity to try some of the new products from Nature’s Variety.

Pride by Instinct

The first one we sampled was the new Pride by Instinct line of grain free canned foods. These are in colorful cans, and each flavor has a whimsical character assigned to it. This seems kind of silly at first, but if you happen to have a member of your household who gets sent to the store for cat food and has a hard time remembering which one to purchase, the silly characters like the glasses-wearing diva cat on the Diva’s Duck flavor probably would help ensure the correct flavor comes home. These are the four flavors we tried:

Two of the flavors, rabbit and chicken, are “flaked” while rabbit and duck are “minced.” (All flavors come in both textures, and there are a few more available too. You can check out the full line at their site, if you’re curious.) These seemed to be similar consistency in the sense that both of them allowed pate-loving cats to eat the sauce first and then decide whether or not they were actually going to eat the bulk of the meal.

Newton!

The flaked texture seemed to be slightly larger pieces, as pictured below.

NEWTON! He is ready to give the food his seal of approval before it is even served.

Since Ashton’s calorie intake is still limited, we had the boys vote on these cans:

Starlet’s Salmon Recipe – Pierre: Paws up! Newton: Paws up! Pierre loves fishy foods and doesn’t get them often. It was clear that he thought this one, especially, was a real treat.

Champ’s Chicken Recipe – Pierre: Paws up! Newton: Paws up!

Diva’s Duck Recipe – Pierre: Paws down. Newton: Paws up! Pierre is a picky eater, so this isn’t surprising.

Ritzy’s Rabbit Recipe – Pierre: Paws down. Newton: Paws down. We haven’t ever had rabbit before, and at first we thought that was the cause. Looking more closely at the label, it turns out that this is really a pork-based food with some rabbit in it (top ingredients pork broth, rabbit, pork, pork liver). Pork isn’t a food that the boys are familiar with at all, so it’s understandable that they would have approached it with caution. .

We like that the recipes are grain free, and are happy that there is no carrageenan anywhere on the ingredient list, too. Although the foods are grain-free, they do have peas and spinach listed high enough on the ingredient lists to be less than ideal. Still, Pierre’s enthusiasm for the Starlet’s Salmon recipe when he hasn’t been eating very well recently is something we are pleased to discover.

Instinct Raw Freeze Dried Meal or Mixer

One of the new Nature’s Vareity products is a freeze-dried raw. We were really excited to try this because we are hoping that now that the transition from kibble to canned is complete to eventually make the transition from canned to raw.

The pieces of this freeze-dried food are roughly the same size and shape as kibble, so cats who are accustomed to kibble might be more likely to accept it than they would other raw. All three of us still think that kibble is addictive, and we took to this just like it was kibble.

It can be fed as a complete meal, or sprinkled on top of other food as an enhancer. Or, as Pierre quickly determined, it could be a tasty mid-day snack.

Pierre dove so enthusiastically into the bag of Instinct Raw that he actually got it stuck on his head and had to shake it off. Do not try this at home! Considering he hasn’t been eating well recently and has had us worried, this was exciting to see.

Also, since this food is so well-accepted all around, it seems like a really good gateway into raw feeding. This is an exciting discovery for the cats who mostly didn’t recognize a raw diet as real food the last time we tried it, and we hope it helps us work on the transition to a species-approriate raw diet.

FTC Disclosure: We received this sample food free from Nature’s Variety. All opinions expressed in this review and on this site are our own.

Simple Solution Litter Review and Giveaway

Newton: When the head peep was at Global Pet Expo, she got to hear about Simple Solution cat litter. It sounded different from anything we have tried before. It is supposed to last for 30 days without your having to do anything but scoop out solid waste. It’s made of attapulgite instead of clay or corn like other litters, which lets it absorb liquids. That sounded too good to be true, so she decided we would give it a try.

You’ve seen our sunroom plenty of times, but we haven’t ever invited you back here. This is where we keep our litterbox.

We got a new litterbox just for this review so that there was no left over smell from previous litter.

Pierre: Something’s missing here.

Newton: I think that’s why she’s taking pictures of us in here. She never did that before.

Newton: We were worried that the Simple Solution litter wasn’t going to fill the box well enough when we saw the box of litter in there.

It was a little shallower than we keep our corn litter, which was still in the rear litterbox.

Whoa, this stuff has a strong smell! We have heard other people describe it as an herbal scent. Our house is small and poorly ventilated (does anyone know a ventilation contractor who will actually return phone calls?), and one litterbox full of the Simple Solution litter filled the house with a scent the way that one of those scented plug-ins do. The head peep could smell it as soon as she opened the door from the garage, three rooms away. It’s not a bad smell, but it was a little overpowering for the first few days, so it’s probably best to use it in a room with better ventilation than our sunroom, especially if you are sensitive to perfumes or scents.

I know what you really want to know about this litter is whether you can really go for 30 days without scooping urine from it and have it control odor. The answer is a qualified yes. It didn’t last 30 days at our house, but three cats using two litterboxes mean that it was seeing roughly 1.5 cats worth of use. Also, we all prefer the front left corner of that litterbox. Don’t ask. But that means that we were really giving that part of the litter a thorough test.

The head peep thought that would be the part of the litter most likely to fail first, so after about a week or so,she would get down on all fours and give the litter a sniff whenever she noticed that spot looked dark (which meant it was wet). If a cat ever wished for a camera, it was me watching her do that. On day 21, it didn’t pass the sniff test. One thing we learned was that when the attapulgite material is done soaking the urine in, it’s done, so it’s not a good time to need to go to the store for more litter. You don’t get a lot of warning, so stock up on litter for that next litterbox change!

Other things I noticed during our test:

Tracking – The litter does track. Our old corn-based liter tracked a lot more when our paws exited the box, but this litter seems to track noticeably farther. It’s hard to tell whether this is subjective, though, since the pink grains of the litter are so noticeable. Our previous corn-based litter had much smaller grains, so it wasn’t as easy to notice when we tracked it into the house from the sunroom.
Dust – If someone invents dust-free litter, they are going to win the Nobel prize. This is about as dusty as our corn-based litter, and the dust was more noticeable on the first few days of sifting it for waste, then it wasn’t as noticeable,

Overall, we gave the litter paws up, and we would continue to use it. The head peep is sensitive to fragrances, and she had enough trouble with the strong scent the first few days that we might not get to have it again any time soon. Still, she admits that it was really nice not having to sift for clumps in the litter multiple times a day for 21 days!

Would you like to try this new litter yourself?

We’re giving away a month’s supply of litter to three readers in the US or Canada using the Rafflecopter widget below.

FTC Disclosure: We received litter free of charge to review. All opinions expressed on this site are our own.

It’s the Scoop: Review and Giveaway

Who is going to Be Forever Furless?

Try-it Tuesday: Nature’s Variety

Pride by Instinct

Instinct Raw Freeze Dried Meal or Mixer

Simple Solution Litter Review and Giveaway

Would you like to try this new litter yourself?

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