Tess is our tortoiseshell cat who lives in Carmarthenshire in Wales. Until the last few years, she wasn’t alone. She was brought up in a multi-cat household. We originally only wanted one cat, Suki, Tess’s sister, but we ended up with both after seeing them. After a year, Bill was adopted from a family member and the infamous trio was formed.

Huskaloo was introduced to us as we used to go through lots of cat litter with three cats. We are also avid gardeners with 4/5 20-foot-long vegetable beds. With clay cat litter, we normally have to save up the used clay litter in the bags that they came in and take them to the local household waste site as we can’t put them in our normal bin.

First impressions.

I was surprised how small the box was! We normally buy the 20L bags of clay cat litter and have done for years. Initially the weight of a block made me sceptical. Will this really do what clay cat litter will do? (Spoiler alert – it does, and I shouldn’t have been sceptical).

Tess is both an indoor and an outdoor cat, so we had a feeling she would be fine with the transition from clay litter, which is what she’d used since she was a kitten. She can be very picky at times, especially when it comes to food!

I followed the instructions on the back of the Huskaloo box and poured water over the brick. After 30 seconds, I broke up the block with my hands and spread it across the tray. For some people, putting your hands into it might put you off. We spread clay cat litter with our hands so it wasn’t any different. You will be surprised how dry it is once you break it up and mix it all together. An added bonus is the initial smell when you rehydrate the block. Due to us still using an extra-large cat-litter tray due to Bill – he was 3ft long from head to tail – I had to use two bricks. This wasn’t an issue. I just repeated the last steps.

Once I put the litter tray back where we keep it, Tess came and had a smell, the normal procedure as other cat owners will know. I was just lucky she didn’t christen it straightaway. You know what cats are like.

I removed the solids daily and flushed them down the toilet, something we can’t normally do as we have a septic tank. I realised that due to Huskaloo being coconut husk, it should break down if any of it stuck to the solids. I also noticed that Huskaloo contains bicarbonate of soda, which is a product I use to clean the toilets and sinks.

‘Surprisingly we didn’t smell the litter tray’

For first-week impressions we defiantly put it to the test. We normally change the litter tray once a week but this week we experienced 30°+ degrees heat all week. Surprisingly, we didn’t smell the litter tray like we normally would have in this heat. We do have a contained litter tray with a door, but this doesn’t stop the smell completely. At the end of the week, we removed the last solids and put the remaining litter onto our smaller compost heap (for flowers). The clean-up of the tray was easier as I didn’t have wet clay stuck to the tray. This was a surprise due to Huskaloo still being dry when we composted it.

Overall, we are really happy with the results of Huskaloo. There are so many advantages for us personally which I will list below:

· Lighter than a 20L bag

· Smaller – we can keep it in the house instead of the garage

· Septic-tank friendly

· Compostable – we no longer need to go to the local recycling centre!

· Tess transitioned with no issues, especially being a senior cat

· No dust – you don’t get the big cloud of dust like you do with clay cat litter.

We will continue to use Huskaloo and will do an update about how well it breaks down on the compost over the next few months.