Ecopine Natural Cat Litter, Original Formula, 1 Month Supply, 5 lb

I'm really bummed that the company is no longer producing it. We've had 3-4 cats for the past 17ish years and tried more litter brands than I can count. This was hands down the best.There are crucial three factors that I look for in cat litter: 1) odor control, 2) convenience, and 3) whether the cats will use it. Ecopine fulfilled all three of those easily, plus supplemental factors like price and length of use before replacing.Odor control was top notch. It's the thing that bugs me the most about litters because I try my best to make sure that the boxes don't smell. It's especially important because the location of our boxes are in the just right spot that the air currents funnel the box smells into the living room and entry, which is not what you want, especially when having guests. Ecopine eliminated all cat odor, save the occasional smelly poop that a cat didn't cover because sometimes they're jerks.Ecopine's original formula is unscented, which in itself is great. That it's unscented AND has such excellent odor control is fantastic! I mostly purchased the unscented original litter, but I did also try the activated carbon version. It was just as good as the original, though I didn't see really a difference in odor control.Convenience is outstanding! Ecopine doesn't clump, but it's not supposed to. The pellets expand into fluffy sawdust as cats use the litter and it comes into contact with liquid, so we just scoop the poop and stir around the rest. That means less time dealing with the litter boxes, which is important when you have 3-4 cats. When first pouring it in, it doesn't look like a 5lb would be enough. Thanks to the expansion, it fills the boxes the rest of the way.I know cats can be cats, so I'm sure not all cats will like Ecopine. We were lucky that our cats did. We had to abandon pellet-style litter because the cats refused to use it. Ecopine has small enough pieces that they didn't reject it. I was worried about some of the pieces being too pointy on their paws, but it expanded quickly enough that it wasn't an issue.Ecopine is very economical. We use large under-bed plastic storage totes for litter boxes because our cats are messy little demons. A 5lb box of Ecopine fills one litter box for three weeks to a month before needing to change. We have five boxes total, so we buy 5-10 5lb boxes at a time. They later switched to 10lb boxes, which was slightly annoying and required changing our litter storage system, but it all still worked out fine. I should point out that while I initially purchased from Amazon, the length of time it took for an order to be fulfilled was a problem, so I purchased directly from the company's website and received it promptly. They also offered free shipping and the prices were great. I think we spent about $50/month for 5 5lb boxes to fill five large litter boxes.I'm sad that this company is no longer offering its product. It really was the best cat litter I've ever used in almost two decades of cats and I raved about it to everyone I knew. I hope it comes back some day. Though we have a replacement litter now, it's not quite as good. Odor control isn't as good, convenience isn't as good, price isn't as good, and it doesn't last as long.I understand if others gave it negative reviews for things like long shipping time from Amazon, cats not liking it, storage issues, etc. Everyone has different situations and different cats. There's a couple litter brands everyone loves that I found to be extremely problematic in one or two ways. So (assuming Ecopine is ever put back into production), I say try it out first and if it doesn't work for you, that's okay. But if it works for you, then I'm sure you'll love it too!

This litter is about as good as it gets as far as having poop in your house.There is no good place in our house for a litter box, we settled on having it in a nook between our kitchen and dining room. When I say between those rooms, don't imagine this spacious HGTV nook with a cute little cat shape cut out of a wall leading to the cat paradise of a giant poop room. No, it's legit a 2x2ft square hallway that has in-wall cabinets for linens and we walk through there 20+ times a day. The poop is in great proximity to my life.But this litter is chill, though. The pees don't smell at all, the pine and smelly crystals eat those smells I guess. I'm not a scientist.You will smell those poops, though. Oh how you will smell them. Our cat is pretty stinky, though. That might just be her problem. She also is just getting good at burying her impressively sized kitten poops. Before this week there was a lot of awesomely stinky unburied poops. This week, though, she's very good at burying them (and not stepping in them!), and Monday I went to scoop her nighttime poop and THERE WAS A WHOLE OTHER SECRET POOP IN THERE. So I guess the smell dissipates after it chills for awhile. I'm not a scientist.I started out by putting about half of the litter that came in the box in the...box. Then added the last halves quarter by quarter one week after another to kind of freshen up the box. We haven't done a big change-out of litter for 3 weeks though and things are smelling fine (or so I've been told, I don't know what my house smells like, I live there. But I do have mean friends and I believe they would have told me if my place smelled like cat butts).I reordered and I'll change this junk in a week or something.The cat is 10 weeks old and does not seem to care that this isn't clay litter. She doesn't care about most things, though. So she might not be the best judge. She never helps figure out what we should have for dinner. She's that guy.

We've had cats for many years and I've always used the name brand clumping litter. Two things I hate about that litter - it tracks outside of the litter box and makes a mess, and it's HEAVY to throw out. We have one cat (and one litter box). Here's what I like about this litter:1. very little gets tracked out of the box and it doesn't go far (I guess it's not sticking to feet?).2. It's good at keeping odor down until day 5 (for me, it was day 7 when a complete change was required).3. It's SO light weight. I haven't actually weighed the litter pans to compare. But it seems like a litter pan full of ecopine is about 1/4 as heavy. So much easier to dispose of. And my vacuum was able to easily pick up the tiny amount that had tracked out of the box.4. It just seems a lot cleaner to me. I hate the perfumy, soapy smell of the clumping cat litters. This one has no perfumy smell and no dust.Now the cons:1. Not quite as good as clumping litter at odor control (but I like this litter so much more that I'm willing to accept that trade off).2. You will need to scoop bowel movements as they happen to really keep odor down. I have plastic bags set up right next to the box so it's quick and easy to do.3. I used 1/2 box to fill a litter pan and that lasted one week. So one box really only lasts 2 weeks unless you're going to try and scoop out the soiled litter and keep adding new litter (something I don't think you can do with this litter).So, realistically, I'm looking at about $23 per month for Ecopine. That's probably about double the cost of clumping litter. If you're really happy with clumping litter, then this might not be for you. But if you find the same things annoying that I do, then you should definitely give this a try.