Friday, May 1, 2009

(Extra) Sandy Claws

I’m not sure how many years I’ve been buying cat litter (most of my life), or how many of those years have included the purchase of the “clumping” variety of said litter. Granted, I’ve only been buying Arm & Hammer for about a year, but regardless of brand, I’ve NEVER had anything like this happen before!

OK, cat owners – has this ever happened to you? Here’s a BIG box of cat litter.

I am a big fan of the reusable pails manufactured by my former brand. (I think I established that by putting mortar, sand, and dirt in them while doing my brickwork last year.)

But I keep one in the laundry room that is used only for litter. What I usually do is rip open the side of the A&H box, let it rest and subsequently empty itself into the reusable pail. (This task takes care of itself while I’m off dealing with something else.)

Imagine my surprise then when I get a closeup of the contents as seen in this cup.

Hey! Who put mortar mix/sand in my cat litter package?!

Cat litter has a high concentration of dust to be sure. But this is ridiculous. The entire box is mostly this dust, with maybe 5-10 percent litter at the most thrown in. Yeah. As if Toby didn't muck things up enough when the mix is mostly litter!

It doesn’t look nearly as odd either until you compare it to what it’s supposed to look like. (This came from a second, smaller box I purchased from a completely different location out of pure paranoia that I would end up with 20 more pounds of the previous!) I think you can see the difference.

It's almost as if someone just stomped on and ground an entire box of litter into dust.

I wasn’t able to call the consumer line this week and since they’re not open on the weekends, I’ll have to try to contact them by email.

And it’s a good thing I had the foresight to save the box, even if it was on trash day, as the lot number and all that rot contains a lot of the information they’re going to want.

Let’s see how they do at making good on this.

3 comments:

Jayne said...

I had the same problem a couple months ago with the A&H litter. Don't try to use it like that; it ends up making a big mucky mess in the bottom of the litter box. I've since gone back to Tidy Cat Clumping, which my son famously mispronounced when he was 3 or so by shouting down the grocery store aisle, "MOMMA!! DO WE NEED MORE TITTY CAT?!"

NV said...

Jayne -- That's hilarious! Bet he loves when you tell that story.
Glad I'm not alone then in having this happen. This reminds me that I need to make my complaint on their site so I can throw that box away finally!

Vicki said...

So, what happened?