As someone who has searched high and low for a cat litter that would not end up in my bed and all over my floor, I LOVE this product (Okocat for long hair breeds). My little bundle of hyperactivity (aka a part Saimese, medium/long haired beauty named Mia) loves to dig deep into her cat litter. She also loves to leap straight out of her litter box and right onto my poor, ever suffering, bed. As someone who has to keep the box in my room (due to space requirements and a waaaaay too curious puppy dog), having a clean space is super important to me and as such, I have been struggling with maintaining a clean environment for myself and my cat since I got her 6 months ago. Every other litter has ended up everywhere, and has either had dust issues (I have allergies), an overwhelming smell/perfume issue, or is just generally unhealthy for my Mia (I'd much rather she not get lung cancer or asthma from using clay litters, but will admit that until now, clay had been the best option for us). Alas, I thought I was going to have to live with little disgusting pieces of litter in my bed and on my floors forever. Also, crystals were not an option because my last cat actually died from health problems caused by his crystal cat litter (it was horrible and I highly suggest that people research health concerns related to crystals before innocently bringing it into their homes...). Anyway, after trial and error with just about every cat litter under the sun (thank goodness I have an adventurous cat who will try anything), I ran into Okocat for long hair breeds. So, all the good things about this litter: 1. There is almost no tracking at all (just a bit around the box when an excited kitty jumps out). 2. There is no smell other than a slight wood smell right after the cat pees (if you notice a smell after your cat poops, try adding another inch or 2 of pellets as my cat just needed the extra pellets to figure out how to get everything covered), 3. It feels/seems cleaner due to Okocat claiming that it kills 99% of all bacteria (unlike other litters that only claim to kill odor causing bacteria...what about all the other nasties?!). 4 It clumps pretty well (they do break up some, but I have a solution for that issue if you read further) for a natural litter. 5. It is natural and healthier for my cat than other options. The downsides (not many, but worth considering): 1. You'll have to shop around because the prices on here can be good some days and terrible the next. Recently, I found this litter on another site for $10 less per box...so yeah...make sure you are getting the best price. 2. There is some dust. It's not horrible, but if you have allergies like me, you'll want to use a sifter of some kind to put clean litter in so you don't end up pouring sawdust in the litterbox every time you put new litter in. Also, after a couple weeks of use (even with scooping 2 times per day like I do), you'll notice some sawdust building up in the litterbox just from litter getting crumbled up with digging, etc... Even though it works up my allergies a bit when cleaning, I can accept some coughing (it's just for a few minutes anyway) if it means that I'm not exposing my cat to types of dust that can cause lung cancer down the line - I'd like to note that other types of litter made my cat cough, but this doesn't seem to do that to her as much. 3. It takes some creativity to get the scooping process to actually leave a nice and clean box if you are not used to clumping pellet litter. So, onward to my solution!!! There is no specific scoop that has been made by Okocat for scooping this litter, so you have to find something that won't scoop out too much good litter while also being able to get rid of small pieces that may break away from a main clump of pee while scooping (poop is not a problem. It just dries out and is easy to remove). While some people suggest the Catit litter scoop, this was not useful to me since I have back problems and can't bend down to get at the litter to scoop it without suffering later. So, after some trial and error, I found a great and easy option. First, I got the PURRR-FECT SCOOP (I already had it), which is basically a litter scoop that you can stand while using. The newest version of this scoop has holes at the front that are wide enough to let pellets through and small holes at the back that can capture even tiny broken pieces that might usually be missed when scooping. This is a great scoop. However, it is too small to sift through the whole box quickly and if you scoop too much at once, the whole thing clogs up and is useless. So, I use this just to get the small pieces that escape my main scooper. My main scoop basically had to be made because there are no standing scoopers that have holes big enough for pellets (as far as I could find). BUT, this was easy to do. I found a generic metal scoop in my local Walmart that had huge holes (perfect for pellets) but a tiny handle. So, I spent $2 to get a 1 inch diameter pvc pipe from my local hardware store, had a store employee cut the pipe to about 3 feel long and used waterproof (just in case!) Gorilla tape to tape everything together. I basically just stuck the handle of the metal scoop into one end of the pvc pipe and then wrapped Gorilla tape around it all to keep it strongly attached. I have now been using my 2 standing litter scoops (one bought and one made) for 3 weeks and the scooping process is MUCH easier. I can clean out all clumps, all little broken pieces, etc....and an added bonus is that since I no longer have to bend down to scoop, my face is far enough away from the box when cleaning that my allergies are barely affected by any sawdust that might be around. So, to repeat, I LOVE the litter, but the only reason that I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is because aside from the price issues, I had to do a little bit of problem solving to make it perfect for myself. Once that was done, I have found myself happier with Okocat than any other, and my Mia is happy as well.
