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.
