Keeping Cats Clean

I love our kittens. They are absolutely the delight of our lives. However I have to say that having cats has its drawbacks. Animals in general just seem to generate dirt. Who hasn't had the unpleasant experience of walking into someone' house and immediately knowing they had animals? Well my husband and I are determined that our house will not smell like cat, ever!

So to achieve this goal we have experimented with many different litters and moving the box to different places in the house. We sound the most successful place was the garage and we added a cat door to the interior door for the garage so that our kittens could get to their box. We also came up with a really great idea of putting the cat boxes on the lowest shelf of the wire shelves that we use to organize the. The reason that this works so well is that litter falls though to the catcher mats below. After you clean the box then you can give the mats a quick shake out onto the floor and then easily sweep everything up from under the boxes without having to lift them up or move them. Also we keep the litter, the broom, and a set of grocery sacks close by so that everything to clean the boxes is easily available. The Fresh Step Unscented and Undyed litter is absolutely the best we have found. We tried corn litters, wheat litters, paper litters, pine litters and other clay litters and the Fresh Step absolutely has the least odor and clumps the best.

Now for inside the house. The other thing that bothers me from a cleanliness standpoint is that our boys scatter their food outside their bowl. So you end up with little cat crunchy bits all over the kitchen floor. We managed to fix this problem with plastic mat that keeps the bits contained. Then my fantastic husband bought me a little inexpensive brush and dustpan that I keep with the food in the cabinet just above where I feed them. That way every time I feed them, I just sweep up the old crunchies. It is like preventative cleaning. Hooray!

And then of course there are those days when the kittens have a little problem with personal hygiene. For that we found some great cat wipes at the local pet smart. They don't have a lot of scent or too many bad ingredients and they work like a charm. The boys tolerate them pretty well, and they don't seem to irritate sensitive places.

Now for the breath, well we haven't found a solution to the cat breath problem yet except not to ever feed them fish.