Litter boxes, cozy spaces, and Bean!

It has been way too long since my last post, sorry about that! Sometimes life gets in the way of the fun stuff! I hope you can bear with me on this post as there is lots of different stuff I want to cover.

First of all, Bean is just over 5 months old! He’s getting really big, but he is still really clumsy. I’ve dubbed him Captain Crash.  This cat is not graceful, and not light on his feet! I’m guessing/hoping that once he finishes growing, he will figure out his body and get a bit more athletic.

A neighbor had a sheepskin she didn’t want anymore, so I claimed it, and Bean and the other cats are really happy about it.  We’ve got two sheepskins now, so there is less fighting. Puck is currently curled up on one, while Bean enjoys the other.

We also bought another treat for the cats. Puck used to love to sleep on top of the lizard tank where it was warm from the lights. He was smart enough to sleep on the bar light, so his weight wasn’t on the screen top. Bean isn’t that intelligent. He insisted on sleeping on the screen, and it was just a matter of time before the screen would have been destroyed.  My boys rigged up a top that gives the lights air space so they don’t over heat, but it is a bit crinkly and wiggly so the cats don’t like to climb on it. Sadly for Puck, he lost his warm spot to sleep, but I had to keep the Dragon safe.

My son was sad that Puck lost his warm spot, so he found a solution, a heating pad for pets! We bought the K&H PET PRODUCTS Thermo-Kitty Mat Heated Pet Bed, and it is pretty great! The pad stays plugged in all the time, but it has a pressure sensor, so it heats up when there is weight on it. The cover is removable, so it is super easy to wash.

Although it was purchased with the cats in mind, Cali definitely enjoys it as well! I wish it was a bit wider, but overall it is working out really well.

I added it to the open dog crate that all the pets love to sleep in. The sheepskin that was in the dog crate moved onto the top, so the cats have a new cozy spot that even allows them to look out the window.

Another new addition to the house is a giant cat tree. All the cats seem to be enjoying it, but Bean really loves it! Bean gets into crazy kitty mode every now and then and he tears around the house at top speed. This usually ends with him jumping onto a table, couch, or the cat tree. He loves landing on the cat tree and bouncing his way all the way up to the top-most perch.

Sorry for the not-so-great picture. It’s hard to get a good photo of a dark brown cat tree in a dark red room! But at least you get the idea, that this thing is big!

In other Bean-news, I started looking into getting him neutered. I called my regular vet and they told me the surgery would be about $400! I mentioned to a friend that I thought it was a bit expensive, and she suggested I look into a spay/neuter clinic at the local SPCA. She also sent me a link to an SPCA group that got a grant and is offering FREE spay and neuters. My local SPCA does reduced cost spay and neuters based on income, so I didn’t qualify for their program. The other group that got the grant doesn’t have any financial restrictions, the pet just has to be within certain age, weight, etc.

I sent in an application for Bean to be neutered, and I waited about a week. He was accepted! Good news! Since I want him to have a microchip, that will cost me $25, but the neuter surgery is totally free! Then I found out the clinic is about an hour and a half away. I think my daughter and I are going to make a day of it.  We will drop Bean off in the morning, and do some exploring, have lunch, whatever, and pick him up for the ride home that afternoon. I get bonus time with my daughter, AND a free neuter, sounds like a win-win!

If you are still reading, thank you! just a couple of updates left for today, first follow up on the Breeze litter box has been in our house for about a month now. I’m actually really liking it. I don’t have a desire to change all four of our boxes to the Breeze system, but this one is working out well.  As a reminder, I have three regular litter boxes under the stairs on the first floor of our house. I added an upstairs litter box when Bean was tiny and we were keeping him confined. Since Logan sometimes gets in weird moods and hides upstairs, she was also using the “extra” litter box, so I didn’t want to take it away when Bean got run of the house.

The problem with the extra litter box I started out with was the clumping litter scattering all over the place. The box is in our laundry room, and I hated stepping in litter every time I walked in there. The Breeze box uses pellet litter and pads to trap the urine. I was hoping the big pellets wouldn’t get all over the place like the other litter did.

It’s working! The pellets mostly stay in the box, and the one or two that come out are easily cleaned up from the mat I have in front of the box. I’m amazed that there isn’t any odor from the box. The pads do an amazing job of trapping the urine and the smell. About once a week I change out the pad which is in a slide out drawer in the bottom of the box.  It takes less than 30 seconds to change out the pad, and even when I lift the pad to remove it, there isn’t any mess.  The pad contains it all. Another cool feature is that the drawer for the pads can be put in either way, so if the urine is mostly on one end of the pad, I can flip the drawer to put the clean end of the pad where the cats are using it most.

The pellets are supposed to be changed out about once a month, but at this point I don’t see a need to change them yet. They seem clean, and there isn’t any odor. I was worried about the cost of the pads and pellets, but Amazon sells generic versions of the pads that are very reasonably priced.

The one problem I’m having with the box is that my cats simply refuse to poop in it! I tried putting poop from another box in there to give them the idea, they just buried it. When there was a regular litter box in the same spot, the cats definitely pooped in that one, so it has to be something about this Breeze box. Honestly, I’m not worried about it. The cats go to the other three boxes to poop and only use this one to pee. It keeps the smell out of our upstairs area which is great. If I needed to use this as my only box, I’d definitely have a problem, but as a spare box, this thing is working out much better than I could have expected.

Hopefully I’ll have another post sooner, rather than later, but it’s time for me to see what Hector is chirping, chattering, whistling, and burping about before I get on with my work day.