no actual tip, just a war story.

A couple months ago I read somewhere that you shouldn't clean a litter box with bleach because it will cause some cats to refuse the box. I had just switched from Clorox to Target brand and Annie had pooped on a throw rug 2-3 times in as many days. Now I thought it was a behavior issue between her and Stink, but just in case it was the new bleach, I stopped using it when I scrubbed the boxes each week.

I do this in a half bath we have in the basement. There is a roughed in concrete shower built when the house was built, and a previous owner constructed the bathroom around it. So I dump the dirty water from the litter box down the toilet, and after the final rinse, set the boxes upside down to air dry in the concrete shower. No biggie.

Only after I quit using the bleach, there was enough urine scent left that one of my cats (don't know who) decided to pee in the shower several times. So I bleached the floor. Didn't work.

Concrete is porous. Bleach didn't clean it, petzyme didn't clean it, instead it got worse. I had some nasty chemical reaction going on in the concrete (it foamed up!) which was enough to knock the nose off your face. It was awful and getting worse each time I cleaned it.

So Thursday I petzyme one last time, Friday I set a fan in there to completely dry it out, and yesterday I painted the concrete floor with a thick coat of oil based porch and floor paint. Unable to clean it, I had to seal the floor. The stench is finally gone.

But as I left Lowe's yesterday with my non-refundable paint, I spotted their carpet guy - and remembered he told us to immediately use vinegar on cat urine stains to stop it's corrosive qualities. I wonder......

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