SmartCat All Natural Clumping Cat Litter - Chemical and Dust Free - Alternative to Clay and Pellet Litter - Unscented and Lightweight - 5 Pounds

This litter is super lightweight and easy to scoop. Perfect for hands that are sore with arthritis! It is dust free. It clumps urine hard and dries out fecal material (poop) so well that waste is minimal - even stays together in firm clump when my one cat pees along the litterbox wall and clump comes free from wall without extra effort. This is the best of any litter I have ever used in my 30 years of owning cars and working in kennels and vet hospitals!! Truly!But there is a trade off. I wanted unscented (and used unscented scoopable clay litter too), and this litter is scent-free except for a subtle kind of woody smell when first poured into the box. The downside is that is does not absorb odors aa well so some days, I know when one of the cats has used the box because it smells. This is getting better as I find the best diet for my cats though (their poop has less smell so less smell to block). I have one covered and one uncovered litterbox and the smell is an issue with both equally I think. I am sure if I left it, the grass litter would dry the poop up great and the smell with it...but I can't stand to try it so I scoop right away when it happens, which is only occasionally. This is why I gave it 3 stars for scent. Not sure there is an answer to this without adding unnatural scents and/or dustiness to the litter - which are both worse in my opinion. Mixing some clay litter in is an option (see rest of review below) but I quit because of the negatives with this option. The clay litter just gets kind of sticky and is so heavy.They track both of the litters just as much I think. The grass litter is much easier to sweep or vacuum up even if it gets into a wet spot on the floor before I get to it. The grass litter seems to get trapped by the mats I have the litterboxes on better than the clay litter did. I included photos of my most recent set up and it is the least amount of litter tracked beyond the mats yet!My cats switched to this grass litter easily. I mixed in 1/4 or so of this new litter with their old litter. I had used Tidy Cat Clumping Unscented litter for years - all of my oldest 7 year old cat and for 12 years before that. As I scooped, I only added the new grass litter in as I needed more until the boxes were totally grass litter. On the 2nd litter box, I went from 1/2 or so straight to all grass litter with no issue (But be careful trying this - a picky cat might have balked and avoided the box because of this.) Two of my cats still prefer the Tidy Cat litter because they will use the litterbox with some of the Tidy Cat in it if I make it available (I had to experiment - pi ture 3 is a mix of litters) but all of the cats use the all grass litterbox some still even with Tidy Cat in their other box. Most importantly, they are perfectly willing to use the litterboxes fully and without issue with just grass litter in them both.As for brand, I tried this brand, one other grass litter brand (Both chosen for first trial by cost and good reviews.) and a crushed walnut shell litter. The other grass litter was more dusty - not good for my cats or my allergies - and I think I may be allergic to walnuts. The walnut shell litter had a noticeable nutty smell (not bad, just noticeable) and minimal dust despite better odor control...but my eyes itched and watered and my skin started itching after changing and scooping the boxes. This stopped again once all the walnut litter was gone. So this grass litter is all I buy now.I am going to order a couple of round, from the top litterboxes made by a start up company that are designed to work best with this kind of litter. Maybe the litterbox design will help with the occasional "stinky poop" issue. Just the lack of dust and ease of scooping due to superior clumping and lightweightness of the litter seal the deal for me. I am 6 months or so in to the switch and not planning to ever go back. I have 3 cats and two litterboxes. I try to scoop daily but have gone a week a couple of times and all of the above still held true. That was never the case with the scoopable clay litter. (Note: One litterbox per cat is the ideal but seems to be ok for us. I will post again if and when I get new litterboxes.)Quick additional note - The two bags for my subscribe & save order arrived this time with holes in them! The outside box was fine so don't think it was a delivery issue. One bag's hole was a slice and had a red heavy sticker over it so damage clearly occurred pre-shipment. The sticker had come mostly unstuck though so litter was spilled out in the box. I am in contact with Amazon and expect they will make it right. This is the 1st time I had issues with a litter shipment. Not an issue with litter itself but I am honestly not sure if this brand of litter is available elsewhere, such as through Chewy or local pet stores, so if Amazon handling becomes a recurring issue and they are the only source, this could be a negative.)

Before I ever used Smart Cat, I pet sat for some beautiful rescue cats whose owner was a committed user of this product. It was highly recommended to me that if I ever got cats, this was the product I wanted to use. A few years later, I did just that and didn't hesitate to order the same product I'd used pet sitting. Several years later, the product quality was the same high quality as when I'd tried it the first time.I used it for a couple of years before Covid. Unfortunately, there came a point when we couldn't readily get it, so I shopped where I could and picked up a popular brand name clay version in a local grocery store. Bad news! I hadn't even considered the harm it could have done. In not too much time, my cat started wheezing and sneezing. I had never heard him sneeze previously and hadn't considered that it could have been the litter. After all, it's made for cat boxes! I'd also kept him as an indoor cat from the first day I found him.It wasn't too long before I also started coughing and feeling a dry scratchiness in my lungs and throat. One day, I went into the bathroom and saw a noticeable layer of what I thought was dust on the top of the tank and bathroom shelf. I'm generally very clean, so I got out my rags and started dusting.It wasn't dust. As I looked around the house, that "dust" wasn't anywhere else to be found - only in the bathroom where I kept the cat's litter box. I realized it was clay silt from the Covid kitty litter we'd picked up when we couldn't get Smart Cat. I'd picked up several jugs of it at the time, not knowing how long Covid would last. Cat litter is one of those things that you want to keep a good supply of on-hand!By that time I was able to order Smart Cat again, so I did right away and dumped the rest of the clay litter I'd picked up as soon as Smart Cat arrived. We had no more "dust" after that, and in less than a week, we were both back to normal.I will not use any other brand or type of cat litter except Pioneer Pet Smart Cat grass seed litter. It's a great product that keeps the cat's box odor-free. I clean the box after my cat's every use. I've been in people's homes before where you can smell "cat" as soon as you enter the door, but not with Smart Cat!I order the large value-sized bag. I pour it into a smaller pourable jug (using a funnel so it doesn't fly away) and keep it by his box. I pour the rest out of the bag into a 5-gallon bucket and with a snap-on lid on until we need to fill the jug again. So easy! When he goes potty, I scoop it right away into a small bag and tie it shut. At the end of the day, the bags go into the trash can outside. You would never know I have a cat!I will say that it does track a bit, but I keep a small, hand-sized brush and dustpan near the litter box. When I'm scooping, I just give the surrounding area a quick sweep. I also have one of those rubber litter-catching mats on the floor as he comes out of the box. It all helps to keep the tracking down. I also find that if I keep the box clean each time he goes, that I actually don’t use as much litter because I rarely need to empty the whole box. Consistent cleanliness saves on the cost!Pioneer Pet recently changed their packaging. I was concerned that I'd gotten the wrong product and called the company. They were very kind and explained the packaging change was for visual consistency when you see all of their products side-by-side. They guaranteed me that no changes had been made to the product. Peace of mind!I would highly recommend Smart Cat. I use about 2 - 4 bags/year depending on if I'm traveling or not. If so, then I'll take a larger jug and use that with a disposable litter box, covered with a plastic kitchen bag when not in use. I pull it in and out of hotel bathrooms without a fuss, and we've always left a clean room behind. No complaints!I would highly recommend Pioneer Pet Smart Cat grass seed cat litter!