[roommate stuff] As you may know I do a fair bit of house sitting. Which means I notice things when I come home you don't notice when you're here. And I'm noticing strongly that we have three cats now.
How do I bring up the the roomie that I can smell the pee when I walk in?
What kind of litter is being used? Clay can be awful at letting odour build up if there are multiple cats unless you're doing complete changes way too often
Yeah, that's probably the issue there, then. If she's really set on clay (and hey, some cats are divas about what they pee on) you can put an air purifier near the box and that should help a lot
If she's worried about too may changes too soon, which is also legit, I really do recommend a try with an air purifier first, and then if that doesn't bring it down to a workable level, you've at least tried the option first.
I use Pretty Litter. It is expensive but Nora was allergic to clay and clumping litter, I am bothered by wheat, so I did skoon and it worked really well, but Nora kicked it out of the box even with the big pebbles. The pretty litter neither she nor I are allergic and she doesn't kick it out of the box.
I also liked it when I tried it, but the expense was too much for us, so we're actually using chick starter from a feed store now. Which admittedly felt a little odd, but $20 for a 25 kg bag...
I don't love that I'm going to have to bring this up, but it's the sort of thing I would want to know if she had been out of the house for 5 days and noticed.
Using a diaper genie (or similar waste bin made for diapers) can also help keep odors contained if you can't take trash out right away, or want to try to spot clean more frequently without taking out the used litter every time.
So I do a lot of drop in visits, and one house had the wheat litter/litter genie combo and I immediately texted the owner and was like TELL ME YOUR SETUP I NEED THIS
But that was my only suggestion that hasn't already been said. You could try walking around the dark apartment with a blacklight just to check that no one is sneaky peeing somewhere that hasn't been noticed, but my guess is it's the clay litter too.
And it's reasonable to be reluctant to change a cat's litter! But I'd want to know if there was a pee odor that might be related to my litter choice, because it's probably not good for the cat on top of being a bit gross. I like the air purifyer suggestion if changing litter isn't feasible.
yeah I'd let her know for sure and suggest maybe making sure they're not peeing anywhere inappropriate so she doesn't feel like it's her choices that are being criticized?
How do I bring up the the roomie that I can smell the pee when I walk in?