Thursday, August 13, 2015

A few new to me products that I tried



I have had quite a few products stack up at the house that I wanted to blog about, today we have non-sponsored right-off-the-shelf items I thought looked interesting that I wanted to talk about.

First up is Simply Nourish Casserole cat food. Simply Nourish is a PetSmart brand of food.


I am not 100% sure where this product came from. It might have been a giveaway at BlogPaws or it might have been something I found donated to the shelter. Either way I am not sure why I brought it home, as something that lists 'pasta' as a selling point for cat food.. well lets just say I had a skeptical even before I went to open up the container.


This is what the food looks like in the bowl. Something to point out about this food is that each can comes with its own plastic cover. You can see it in that first photo. Nice that it comes with a cover, but kind of wasteful if this is all you feed.. or even if you use it regularly.


Yes, I have been sitting on this for a while. I took the photos and they sat on my phone since the end of June.  That is Katie eating it and Mimi trying to figure out what mom is doing.


Three minutes of eating later, and this is the end result. All of the pasta was left behind - well I am assuming that was all of it. The peas were as well - except that half pea in the middle there.. but I'm sure that was on accident.

It really does boggle the mind that people see an obligate carnivore and think "yes, this needs peas and pasta!!" Yes, I know there are cats out there who love peas and who love pasta, but they are weird* and we shouldn't indulge their eccentricities any more than they force us to.

I had three cans of this, and the other two went to the shelter so someone else could pick up the pasta that the cats will spit out and throw it away (or maybe someone who has a weird* cat found it and they ate the whole thing)

*I mean that in the best possible way, cause what makes you different makes you special!

Yes, Mimi is bit bigger now.

The second product is Cat's Pride Fresh & Light 100% Recycled Paper scoopable litter. I found this one at my local store that was going out of business so I bought it at a discount.  I am always looking for alternatives to the plain unscented scoopable litters I favor for the simple fact that clay for the litter is generally strip mined. I don't buy into biodegradable litters because most litter goes into a landfill where most things don't degrade no matter how degradable they are, and sadly because of the fear of toxoplasmosis most litter isn't compostable. Yes, you can compost litter and yes, you can get litter to biodegrade, but in general these things aren't going to happen.

I was kind of excited to try this litter because unlike other alternative litters, this one actually looked like the litter we are all used to. The pellets were small and sand like, which feeds into the cat's natural instincts of digging and burying their waste in sand - being desert creatures and all that.


However, what got me was the smell. This is a scented product, and at first I couldn't figure out what the smell reminded me of. My husband said industrial cleaner, but after hanging out with the scent for a while (once I poured it into the litter box there was no getting away from it) I came up with almond extract. I went and read reviews on Amazon to see what other people were saying and a couple of people mentioned it being cherry scented. Regardless of what the scent actually was, it was overpowering. My foster litter boxes are contained with in a larger constructed box so generally the scent doesn't waft up from in there despite there being a lot of air flow options (the back is wide open) but this stuff filled the room.

I assumed the scent would dissipate and left it down for the kittens. The next morning the smell hit me as I walked in the room. When I went to scoop I found that box just as I had left it and the deposits of all five kittens were all left in the box that contained the unscented litter. That night, same thing. On the third day I gave up and covered the litter with some of the unscented stuff hoping to cut the smell. That was the trick and they started using the box, but still for the most part avoided it. It was pretty obvious since one box had two to three times the action. At that point I gave up on the litter. I can mix lower quality litter in the tub I keep in the kitten room to house litter (when I bring it home I dump it all in there, makes for easier refill of the boxes) and use it up that way, but this stuff I decided to bring to the shelter and let someone else have a go at it.

It has a lot going for it. The look and feel of the particles, it clumped impressively compared to other alternative litters, and the fact that it is made out of paper and is flushable, but that smell is a great big ol no thanks from me and the kittens.

So sadly two fails for us, but I won't stop looking for new products that will work for us. Your mileage may vary.. your cat might like pasta and/or you might like the scent of the litter..

10 comments:

  1. My human can't believe a company would actually put pasta in cat food! Yeah, I'd probably eat it, and the peas too (I am one of those weird cats), but I'd really much rather have all meat. My human doesn't even give me pasta as a treat when she is eating it (more's the pity).

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  2. They'll put just about anything in cat food that humans recognize as food to try to convince them it's nutritious, won't they? Ashton is one of those weird cats who loves pasta. She'll eat peas, but she'd rather have chicken. We haven't had good luck with smelly litter, either, and the head peep gets migraines from it, so we wouldn't like that, either.

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  3. Thanks for the heads up about the food. We haven't tried that one and now, probably won't. We're not fans of scented litters either. We scent it up just fin ourselves. ;)

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  4. Pasta in cat food sure sounds weird! Maybe in a small quantity as a very special treat if kitties like..but can't be a regular diet.

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  5. we suspect someone here would happily do clean up duty on the cat food. but no one here is a fan of weird smelling cat litter....

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  6. We have never tried pasta and we have no intentions of doing so.

    Emma and Buster

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  7. I have been wondering...have your kitties played with the toys they won on our blog? Hoping they are enjoying them. I am a World's Best Cat Litter fan all the way! That is the only litter I use.

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  8. Mommy doesn't like perfumey litter. She says it makes the litter box smell like perfumey poop!

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  9. Me and my cats hate scented litters. Period. I love (and 97% of the time use) Feline Pine Non-Clumping Pellet cat litter. I throw the 'saw dust' from the pine outside (out of view) and it composes it's self with a breeze. I do not put the cat poop out with the pee saw dust though. This litter is all natural and very low tracking, what my cats do track out I just throw back in the litter boxes. I get 20lbs of this litter for $8 dollars at target, one bag lasts my 4 cats about 2 months. The litter dosen't need to be changed until 1-3 weeks, it takes forever to break down (which is a good thing) I just scoop out the poop daily and scoop out the urine saw dust.

    Zayd eats Simply Nourish kitten food (dry food) mixed with Blue Buffalo Wilderness (dry) and either Blue Buffalo Freedom canned kitten food or Blue Buffalo Wilderness canned chicken. Anything with salmon makes Zayd sick.

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  10. My cat would love all of those.

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