I settled on this after a few years trying different litters
I wanted to give a very detailed review because I tried using reviews to choose litter, but it was very hard to do because often the reviews vary wildly in describing the same qualities of the same litter. I’ll start by saying I’ve tried Fresh Step, Tidy Cats, Arm & Hammer, Pretty Litter, and various other silicone litters before settling on this one. I have one short haired, older female kitty who has one litter box. For a long time, I used Arm & Hammer clump and seal litter. I didn’t hate it, but felt like it didn’t clump as well as it could and I wanted to try something else. So I switched to Pretty Litter for a while because I liked the color changing aspect. However, I started to notice that it wasn’t lasting as long as it was supposed to and I didn’t want to keep paying that much for something that wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. I liked the no-clump aspect, but it seemed to irritate my kitty’s toes. She was constantly picking stuff off the hair on her feet (and she doesn’t have long hair at all) and I felt like it tracked a lot. I then tried a few different silicone litters, but the more affordable ones were too hard to find regularly (ie often out of stock). So after all that experimentation, I had a few qualities I was looking for: - low dust - low tracking (I live in a very small apartment where there aren’t many steps between the litter box and the couch or the bed) - low odor - hopefully non-clumping I ended up compromising on the non-clumping part, because this litter meets my other wish list items so well. - Dust: I haven’t tried some of the “natural” litters like the ones made from corn, wheat, etc. so I can’t speak for those. But otherwise I have used many of the popular litters and I have concluded that there probably isn’t a 100% dust free litter. I think it’s just the nature of such a product. However, this has less dust than any other litter I can think of and I love that. - Tracking: again, not sure if there exists a 100% no track litter. But in my experience, this tracks the least. I did notice after I was sick for a couple weeks (still scooping ofc but not as worried about cleaning up the litter on the floor) it did start to get a little spread out and ground into the carpet. But as long as I was vacuuming regularly I barely noticed any tracking. - Odor: this and the low tracking were probably the main selling points for me. I’ve honestly forgotten to scoop the box a couple times because I. NEVER. SMELL IT! Even when scooping it, it hardly smells. Only towards the end of its life cycle does it tend to stink much, but again, that’s only when scooping. And I use the scent free one! I hate the smell of scented cat litter (it gets too strong for me and in my head it’s a “cover up” smell, like spraying perfume on a dirty shirt or pants lol) I think this is the best quality of this litter. If odor is your sticking point, I’d definitely recommend trying this. - Clumping: as I said above, this was what I compromised on. **This IS a clumping litter.** But it clumps EXTREMELY well. Honestly sometimes it’s a bit like scooping a rock. If it’s a larger clump sometimes I have to put in some effort to break it in half. So because of that and how great the other qualities are, I was fine with switching back to a clumping litter. I have a Litter Genie so it’s not too much of an inconvenience. Actually, my only (very minor) complaint would be that the clumps get too heavy to fill the Litter Genie bag as full as I’d like, but it doesn’t bother me that much. - Price: I haven’t sat down and figured out how this one compares to the others in terms of price, but it’s at least comparable and I think very reasonable for the quality of what you get. The 18lb bag is a little more than enough to fill up the litter box, and has been lasting about a month. So glad I decided to try Dr. Elsey’s! I hope this review is helpful to anyone else shopping around for litter like I was. Read more
