Pets Making a Mess? Here’s a Solution

You have to indulge people who have babies and pets when they gush every once in a while about how cute their little ones—furry or the human variety—are. And while I’m not prone to gushing—even though my three cats are the most precious ones on the planet—you’ll have to indulge me today while I rave about a few cleaning products that really, seriously work on pet hair, stains and odors.

If your cats or dogs rule the house like my little Rover, Whiskers and Jay-Jay do, then you’ve probably had to clean up an accident or two—and perhaps have suspected that they’re not always accidents, but smelly reminders of who’s in charge—everywhere from the basement walls to the living room furniture to the top of the bed to the dining room floor.

And like me, you’ve probably tried everything from spreading around red pepper flakes to tacking up aluminum foil to spraying water at your pets to yelling your head off in an effort to get your otherwise-cuddly creatures to do their business, shed their fur and throw up the treats you spent way too much on  for someplace besides on fabrics and surfaces that absorb stains and smells and seem impossible to rescue.

I have tried everything to keep my house from smelling like the four litter boxes in the basement, from closing the door (cats can’t get to the boxes if the door’s closed) to plugging sweet-smelling air “fresheners” into the wall (masks the smell somewhat, but not enough) to leaving the windows open all night (brrr).

And over the years, I’ve actually found a few genuinely effective products that I buy practically in bulk. Result: I can happily report that my house no longer smells like the three cats who own it.

These products worked for me, so it might be worth your while to give them a try, too. Here they are:

Nature’s Miracle Just for Cats. This comes in a handy spray bottle or in a gallon-sized jug. I buy both and use the gallon (a little cheaper per unit) to refill the spray bottles. You can spray this stuff on anything! When I placed a litter box in a spare bedroom so a sick cat wouldn’t have to walk all the way down two sets of stairs to find one, the poor thing overshot the box and left the guest-room bedskirt a smelly, cat-pee yellow. I didn’t notice it until the next day, after it had dried. I saturated it with Nature’s Miracle and left it to dry (that’s how it works; you don’t need to rinse or scrub. You just spray and wait). And sure enough, both the stain and smell were gone within two days. A note: Spray on Nature’s Miracle and let it dry before you wash the soiled fabric. If you wash it first, the product won’t work as well. You’ll find Nature’s Miracle at local pet stores.

Zero Odor. I found this online at a cat-lovers’ site that showed a video of cat owners who brought their filthy litter boxes to a test site. They had been instructed not to scoop for a week (oh, gross!), and to spray Zero Odor directly onto the litter every day instead. The owners testified that they couldn’t even smell the ick in the box. I bought the cat-safe, enzyme-based product right away, but of course, I’ll never know if it works as well as advertised because there’s no way I’m letting my cats’ boxes go unscooped for a full week. But every morning and evening when I scoop the boxes, I spray Zero Odor on them, and my house no longer smells like a cat latrine, even when I stand in the room where I keep the litter boxes. You can order Zero Odor from www.ZeroOdor.com. I order it by the case.

Gonzo. In one form or another, this is just about everybody’s favorite stain remover. I buy the one labeled"Pet Stain Remover & Odor Eliminator." It works by lifting stains right out of fabric. I use it on the jute rug in our TV room, where Whiskers likes to deposit his goopy hairballs every few days. I don’t know why he can’t vomit on the Pergo floor, which is a snap to clean up, instead of on the only rug in the house, but he just can’t. You can find Gonzo at the grocery store, pet stores and Walmart.

Pledge Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair. Pledge should win a Nobel Prize for inventing this product. It gets pet hair off of furniture better than vacuuming; better than rubbing a wet washcloth over the fabric; better than a sticky lint roller; and even better than throwing the hair-covered material into the washing machine (not that you could wash your upholstery). It’s a plastic, hand-held device with two rollers on the bottom. You roll the thing from side to side, using small strokes, and it creates static that picks up the pet hair. It picks up every single strand. It is a miracle. It’s on the pricey side: around $8 or $9 for two at the grocery store, and here’s the rub: They’re meant to be thrown away once they’re full of cat hair. That seems unnecessarily wasteful—and expensive if you have three cats like I do or if you have one with long fur. So I slide a flat pair of metal eyebrow tweezers between the rollers and pull the captured hair out once the plastic case fills up, and that way, I can reuse the rollers again and again.

 I hope my “finds” help you keep your pet-friendly house clean and fresh-smelling.

 Sharon O’Malley is a freelance writer who has lived in College Park for 12 years.