Review: Fresh Step Cat Litter

I have shared my life with two cats for many years. Living in a small house where the litter box has no place to go too far off the beaten path, keeping the cat box clean as a whistle sometimes seems like a never ending chore. The last thing anyone wants is for guests to show up and find that the house "smells like cat" or even worse - smells like cat urine and feces! Talk about embarrassing!

When you go to the store, there are so many choices - crystals, clumping, non-clumping, multi-cat, recycled, big buckets, little bags, the choices go on and on and the prices vary a lot too. I've tried a lot of different litters over the year. The gravel, the clumping, stuff like "Tidy Cat Multiple Cat" all hoping that each litter would be the miracle answer - something that would make the litterbox not smell so bad so quickly, not track litter all over the house, not be so dusty that it made me sneeze non-stop, AND that the cats would still be willing to use.

The last litter I was using was the Sam's Club brand litter - it came in a 35 pound pail, clumped nicely, didn't bother my allergies, didn't track all over the house, and made the litterbox fairly simple to clean. It didn't , however, do much for the smell. Every now and then, open the door to the room where the cat litter box is after a warm night and the smell was overwhelming. It was getting to the point where once the weather got hot, the litterbox needed to be cleaned twice a day to try to keep the "Yes, we most definitely have cats" smell from penetrating the house. It was time for a change.

The next time we went to Sam's Club, we noticed they offered 40 lb buckets of Fresh Step Scoopable Litter. One of the sites online that I frequent has given this litter rave reviews and I figured that if she had success with it with her SIX cats, I should try it out for my two.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the bucket was that the cat litter smelled GOOD. Now that might be a very strange statement, but think about it. Most cat litters either really have no odor or just smell dusty. This cat litter smelled a little bit like baking powder, but mostly just like something that was freshly cleaned. As I filled the litterbox with the new litter, the "fresh" scent literally filled the room. Instead of choking in a cloud of litter dust, I was actually inhaling deeper in total disbelief. Good smelling cat litter? Wow.

Later that day, my boyfriend came home from work and the first words out of his mouth were "Have you been cleaning??" I smiled and told him "Nope, that's that new cat litter!" He didn't believe me until he went into the litterbox room and took a sniff for himself.

I was certain that something had to go wrong by this point. Was the scent going to be too strong and the cats were going to shun the litterbox? Was that fresh scent going to be gone by the next day and it was just going to be the same old thing every other cat litter was? I was worried.

But alas, I shouldn't have been because the next morning, I opened the door to the room the litterbox was in and smelled... nothing. Scooping the litter, it was obvious the cats had been using the box, but there was no scent at all. No nasty urine smell, no dusty cat litter smell, nothing at all.

We've now been using this cat litter for a week and have decided it's definitely worth the money. When litter is added to the box, it smells so fresh. When the litterbox is used, the litter takes away the smell. The cats are using it without any complaints or mishaps and I'm still a bit in disbelief that the claim of "granules containing odor-eliminating carbon, to continuously neutralize odors and keep your house fresh" is not just a claim at all, it's total reality!!

Each litter purchase also comes with "Paw Points" - coded labels that can be saved up and turned in for merchandise ranging from cat first aid kits, books, cat food, more kitty litter, cat beds, and more. The 40 lb bucket yielded me 50 "Paw Points" and the cheapest items can be redeemed for 90 points. I am planning on saving up 200 "Paw Points" for a fleece blanket for them. I normally don't pay any attention to the various points programs products offer, but considering cat litter is something that we buy like clockwork year round, it's not like I'll be wasting money or making impulse purchases just to get more points! And plus, I don't think my cats would really like the thousand point rolling pet carrier anyway!

It's definitely not a few cat fanatics who have found this litter to be among the best. Good Housekeeping awarded one of the nine "2007 Good Housekeeping Good Buy" awards to Fresh Step Scoopable Litter!! The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is one of the most relied on product reviews and they passed all of the Good Housekeeping tests with flying colors.

Another reason to feel good about Fresh Step is they have teamed up with the ASPCA and help provide financial grants to animal welfare organizations to help homeless cats through a program called "Safe Steps Home". Since 2000, Fresh Step Litter and the company that makes it has donated more than $1.25 million to this program. So not only are you purchasing a good product, you're also helping out worthwhile animal charities. More about this program can be found here

The 40 lb bucket of Fresh Step ran about $13 (at Sam's Club) and retails for around $10 for 21 pounds in the pet store. It was definitely worth the extra cost compared to the Sam's Brand litter I was previously getting. I am very happy with the smell and dust level of the litter itself, the ease of use in scooping, and it's excellent odor covering abilities. My cat's have not hesitated to use their box and I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who has cats. Two thumbs and eight paws up here!