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A Short History of the Litterbox

Written by admin on November 8, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The first rendition of cat litter was created in 1947 when a kind neighbor, Edward Lowe, decided he would come to rescue of neighbor and friend, Deborah  Jenkins. Jenkins loved her cat so much that he didn’t want the cat, Tiger, to have to bare cold winters outside. The only problem was Miss Deborah, much like cat owners today, didn’t want her house to smell like cat excrement and feces, i.e. how to provide a reasonable and effective place for the cat to use the bathroom indoors. Lowe, a mechanic by trade, suggested Miss Deborah use the same porous clay he sold for absorbing oil at at automobile oil-change shops.

After Miss Deborah claimed that Lowe had a “miracle solution” on his hands, Lowe began bagging the clay and labeled it “Kitty Litter”. At first, Lowe had to literally give his new invention away to pet shops, because none of the owners believed his claims. After some of the customers who tried the Kitty Litter came back to the store demanding it’s effectiveness and placing orders for more bags of the mysterious substance.

Over the next several years, Lowe retired from the life of a mechanic and began selling and promoting Kitty Litter full time. By the time of his death, Lowe had become a multimillionaire and had created the foundation for the Kitty Litter industry, which now garners over $2.4 billion per year.

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Using A Blacklight To Find Cat Urine

Written by admin on November 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment

As you already know, the pungent and permeating odor of cat urine can fill a house, even if the cat has only peed in one spot on the carpet. And usually, if you’ve found that a cat has urinated inside your house once, it’s peed in several more areas. If you really want to eliminate the smell of cat urine from your house, car, or any other confined area then you need to make sure that you’re applying the same cat urine odor removal steps to each and every spot the cat has peed.

There are basically two ways to find the exact areas a cat has urinated. First, and least desirable, is to sniff around the carpet, furniture, clothes, plants, and any other upholstery in the house the cat may have used to “relieve himself”. Not only is this somewhat gross, it’s inefficient and you won’t be able to find all the spots no matter how hard you try.

You can try to get your dog to help out, but we’re not sure if he’ll take part!

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The second and strongly suggested method is to use a blacklight to detect the any spots the cat may have urinated without you knowing. You’ll know you found the “site of urination”, because cat pee turns neon yellow when you shine it with a blacklight.

spacer Types of Blacklights for Cat Pee Detection

There are two different types of black-lights sold specifically for detecting cat urine in your in home. The first is smaller and less expensive.spacer While these types of blacklights will work for finding the contaminated areas (especially on your carpet or upholstery), they can be real pain to use. Because the blacklight bulbs are so small and dim, the urine is harder to detect and thus eliminate. In fact, when using this type of blacklight in the past, I’ve found myself crawling around on cat urine infested carpets which is exactly what I was trying to prevent by purchasing a backlight to uncover those hidden spots of cat pee.

LED Blacklight flashlights, on the other hand, allow cat owners to find any areas where the cat has urinated with the slight shift of a wrist. While they are more expensive, think about it in these terms. If you don’t find every spot a cat has urinated, all the money you spend on expensive enzyme cleaners, the hours of surveying your cat pee ridden home, and everything else might all be worthless if you don’t find every spot your cat has urinated. I promise you, it will save you time, effort, and grief if you use the proper tools from the start.

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 Tips & Tricks For Using Black Lights to Detect Cat Urine

  1. Try To Do This at Night. The more light there is in the room, the less effective the blacklight will be at uncovering cat urine. The stronger, more industrial black light mentioned above should provide enough light for you to navigate in the darkness.
  2. Enzyme Cleaners Will Remove the yellow glow of cat urine under the black light, so it’s often a good idea to scribble down the soiled areas so you can go back and repeat the odor removal treatment if necessary.
  3. Like enzyme cleaners, the distinct glow of the cat urine under the blacklight will fade with time. This is another reason why it’s important to treat areas affected with cat urine as soon as possible. You should still be able to see some yellow under the black light, but it won’t be as strong.

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How to Remove Cat Urine From Hardword Floors

Written by admin on November 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Every now and then our feline friends will urinate on our hardwood floors. Of course no one wants this to happen in their home, but cats are animals after all.

When cleaning cat urine from hardwood floors, there are two main goals. First, you want to make sure there’s no urine odor in your home as a result of the cat peeing on the hardwood. Second, you want to make sure that the urine doesn’t stain the wood, creating a spot that will stick out spacer no matter what type of finish you have on your hardwood floors.

As soon as you find a spot on your wooden floors where a cat has peed, go ahead and blot it up with paper towels. (Some folks prefer to use rubber gloves while they do this.) Once the area has been completely dried, use a 1 to 3 mix of vinegar and warm water and wipe the floor thoroughly with a vinegar-water soaked sponge. Finally, use your favorite enzyme odor remover to make sure smell of cat urine is completely removed.

It’s important to always test the enzyme cleaner on a hidden part of your hardwood floor (closets work well) before using it on a more visible part of the floor. This way, you’ll know it won’t have any effect on the hard wood finish.

If worse comes to worse and you can’t get the cat urine stain removed, you can try to sand the affected area and then reseal the wood. While you need to be sure to do this with professional supervision, it might save you from having to get entirely new hardwood floors. If you decide to go this route, it’s very important that you’ve removed all of the urine from the hardwood before resealing the floor, because the sealant or finish can actually trap the odor in the floor, creating an even worse problem.

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Why is My Cat Urinating in My House?

Written by admin on November 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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There are generally two reasons why cats urinate in places other than their litter box. The first possibility is that your cat is in heat. If you’re cat is in heat, you’ll generally find that the feline sprayed a vertical area like a wall, the back of a couch or chair, or the side of a bed. If your find the cat is urinating on vertical surfaces, you know your cat is in heat and is simply reaching out to other male cats through it’s pheromone laced pee.

If your cat is spraying inside the house, you have a couple of options. First, you can get the female feline spayed. Once a female cat has been spayed, she won’t feel the need to reach out to male cats with that thick, oily urine that smells particularly bad. The second option, is to put your cat outside for the next couple of weeks while she “does her thing”. But be careful. She’s likely come back pregnant or with a litter of kittens.

If the cat is urinating or horizontal surfaces (much like they would in their litter box) on surfaces like the floor, the top of your bed or comforter, or the flat seating area of a couch or chair, then the cat is most likely stressed and upset or possibly ill.

Our cat, Bella, has been peeing all throughout the upstairs of our house, primarily urinating on the carpet. We made the mistake of getting upset with our cat, only to later find out that she had a horrible bladder infection, the cause of her inability to use the litter box.

Cat’s can also urinate on flat surfaces, like a hard wood floor or carpet, if they’re stressed or upset. For example, many people notice that their cat suddenly starts to urinate in the house when they’ve moved, added a new member to the family (whether it be a cat, dog, or child), or have guests who brought their cats along with them. The important thing to figure out is what has changed since the behavior started. In our case, Bella had gotten out of thspacer e house about 6 weeks ago, during which time the veterinarian thinks she got dehydrated, hence the bladder infection. In other cases, look for behavioral or environmental changes and you’ll likely find the reason the cat is suddenly urinating outside of its litter box.

Finally, another common reason cats begin urinating in the house, is that their litter box isn’t clean. It may seem clean to you, but if it’s not clean enough to the cat, then that’s all that really matters. Homes with several cats are more likely to have this problem than homes with only one cat. Also, believe it or not, sometimes cats will hoard the litter box. For example, if you have a cat that’s particularly dominate, it might aggressively guarding the litterbox, preventing the less dominant cats from feeling comfortable using the litter box. This is more rare, but when a cat is consistently urinating inside your home, you want to consider all of the possible causes of the cat’s behavior.

 

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