Dr. Elsey’s Premium Clumping Cat Litter – Ultra

Ok, guys. I have 6 cats. 6 OF THEM. Not fosters. They are all mine and I love them. So listen up to this crazy cat lady. I’m talking practicality here.

This has been my go to litter for 6+ months so I’m pretty familiar with it.

The price is right. Very cost conscious, even at half a dozen furrballs. I get the 40 lb. bags and go through 5-7 bags a month and I have massive litter boxes to accommodate a 20 lb. cat. I haven’t quite worked out auto ship for my actual usage yet. Obviously, normal people will need far less.

For anyone worried about the 20 lb.cat, he is not overweight. He is just a large cat. Veterinarian confirmed, said he had a healthy weight for his size. I just happened to pick out gorgeous Norwegian Forest cat mix at an adoption event. Try googling the breed if you like big, beautiful cats 🙂

I love that this is unscented. Had heard scents can bother cats but I recall one time when I changed a litter box and then went to sit near it and was overwhelmed by the litter scent. This cannot be pleasant for kitty. I always go for unscented now. The odor control is still great when used correctly.

For new cat owners, in particular, a quick note. If your cat likes to take big stinky kitty poos and does not like to cover them, there is no litter in the world that can save you. Pro tip: If you are so inclined, go bury it yourself real quick to lessen the damage.

If you scoop more often a few thing happen. 1) you are going to get better day to day odor control from any litter doing this. 2) the litter will last longer. That smell that gets into the actual litter box is, from my experience, when the litter becomes too saturated and cannot clump and just ends up half soaking up urine and falling apart. This litter mudpie cannot be scooped. Then you have to clean out the entire litter to get rid of the smell. This litter clumps extremely well if you keep up with it. These things mean you use less litter, save more money, and have a fresher smelling house.

Now, I was going to rate it a 4 star for tracking. And then I checked the description and it say LOW tracking. Ah! They got me! And, I have to say the very slight tracking I get with this is nothing compared to other litters. I get an occasional pawprint on my couch. Totally acceptable.

There is a little poof of dust when you quickly drop litter from a 40lb bag. Its clay, I don’t know how much you can do about that. But it does not get litter particles EVERYWHERE like other litters. I tried one litter where my hardwood floors literally had a whitish cast after a few days. I do not worry about my cats lungs with this litter. Not perfect, but I’m giving credit where credit is due.

I have tried some of the new kinds of fancy litters that have come out in the last few years and my cats have literally opted to go to the bathroom directly next to the box in protest until I went back to my normal litter. Beware. (Had no issue with this litter when I switched.)

Pro tip: They aren’t joking about the # of cats +1 litter box rule. If you have 2 cats, you need 3 boxes. Yes, I have the suggested 7 litter boxes. Doing this allows them more access, can help cats with litter box noncompliance, and it keeps the contents more spread out which means less over saturation and ruin of the entire box. Even if you scoop a wee bit less than you normally would.

A lot of issues I hear about seem to be caused by people not understanding how to use litter and how it works. This lack of knowledge leads to doing things that sabotage your efforts.

So, this litter is cost effective and, like it claims, low tracking, infinitely lower on dust than normal litters, clumps extremely well, comes in kitty nose friendly unscented, last a respectable amount of time if you scoop properly, and you don’t have to worry about a cat boycott of the litter box. So I went with the 5 stars. It does its job and it does it well.

Just make sure you are doing your part for kitty waste management and this litter is a dream.

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I wanted to give a very detailed review because I tried using reviews to choose litter, but it was very hard to do because often the reviews vary wildly in describing the same qualities of the same litter. I’ll start by saying I’ve tried Fresh Step, Tidy Cats, Arm & Hammer, Pretty Litter, and various other silicone litters before settling on this one. I have one short haired, older female kitty who has one litter box.

For a long time, I used Arm & Hammer clump and seal litter. I didn’t hate it, but felt like it didn’t clump as well as it could and I wanted to try something else. So I switched to Pretty Litter for a while because I liked the color changing aspect. However, I started to notice that it wasn’t lasting as long as it was supposed to and I didn’t want to keep paying that much for something that wasn’t doing what it was supposed to. I liked the no-clump aspect, but it seemed to irritate my kitty’s toes. She was constantly picking stuff off the hair on her feet (and she doesn’t have long hair at all) and I felt like it tracked a lot. I then tried a few different silicone litters, but the more affordable ones were too hard to find regularly (ie often out of stock).

So after all that experimentation, I had a few qualities I was looking for:
– low dust
– low tracking (I live in a very small apartment where there aren’t many steps between the litter box and the couch or the bed)
– low odor
– hopefully non-clumping

I ended up compromising on the non-clumping part, because this litter meets my other wish list items so well.

– Dust: I haven’t tried some of the “natural” litters like the ones made from corn, wheat, etc. so I can’t speak for those. But otherwise I have used many of the popular litters and I have concluded that there probably isn’t a 100% dust free litter. I think it’s just the nature of such a product. However, this has less dust than any other litter I can think of and I love that.

– Tracking: again, not sure if there exists a 100% no track litter. But in my experience, this tracks the least. I did notice after I was sick for a couple weeks (still scooping ofc but not as worried about cleaning up the litter on the floor) it did start to get a little spread out and ground into the carpet. But as long as I was vacuuming regularly I barely noticed any tracking.

– Odor: this and the low tracking were probably the main selling points for me. I’ve honestly forgotten to scoop the box a couple times because I. NEVER. SMELL IT! Even when scooping it, it hardly smells. Only towards the end of its life cycle does it tend to stink much, but again, that’s only when scooping. And I use the scent free one! I hate the smell of scented cat litter (it gets too strong for me and in my head it’s a “cover up” smell, like spraying perfume on a dirty shirt or pants lol) I think this is the best quality of this litter. If odor is your sticking point, I’d definitely recommend trying this.

– Clumping: as I said above, this was what I compromised on. **This IS a clumping litter.** But it clumps EXTREMELY well. Honestly sometimes it’s a bit like scooping a rock. If it’s a larger clump sometimes I have to put in some effort to break it in half. So because of that and how great the other qualities are, I was fine with switching back to a clumping litter. I have a Litter Genie so it’s not too much of an inconvenience. Actually, my only (very minor) complaint would be that the clumps get too heavy to fill the Litter Genie bag as full as I’d like, but it doesn’t bother me that much.

– Price: I haven’t sat down and figured out how this one compares to the others in terms of price, but it’s at least comparable and I think very reasonable for the quality of what you get. The 18lb bag is a little more than enough to fill up the litter box, and has been lasting about a month.

So glad I decided to try Dr. Elsey’s! I hope this review is helpful to anyone else shopping around for litter like I was.

It works as you would expect of clay litter. It clumps well, and works as it should. It’s a large bag that lasts quite a while, and is a great price in comparison what I find on retail shelves.

It doesn’t smell as good as pine pellets, nor is the price as good, but I have an elderly cat that seems to prefer the clay litter. The pine pellets smell better, but I am finding that clay litter is easier to clean on a daily basis.

I add a little bit of baking soda whenever I clean the box which really helps with the smell.