Pet Products

Review by A. Young:

This pen is light and totally folds up for easy travel. My dog loves it as she has room to stand up and move around, yet gives her security. It is great for either going on vacation or to dog shows. I would highly recommend this pen, especially if carrying something light is needed.

Review by Lisa Salinger:

We recently rescued 2 tiny abandoned kittens and have been bottle feeding them for several weeks. Since my husband and I work very long days, and the kittens need to eat every few hours, I needed a way to take them to my office during the day, and for them to be confined and safe at the same time. This enclosure completely did the trick! I can use it at home in our spare bedroom at night (to keep them safe and separated from my 3 other cats)and in the morning just fold it up and take the kittens to my office for the day. There is plenty of room for a little bed, a litter box, toys, and food/water now that they are eating solid food. It saved us from having to purchase 2 separate cages for home and work. My only wish is that they should include a diagram about how to fold it up once open! I am “spatially challenged” and fussed with it a bit in the beginning until I got the hang of it! Overall though, an awesome product!!!!

Review by John Shepard:

One of two batteries in the pack was dead out of the package. The company will not accept returns after the package is opened

Review by Tonya Glover:

Got a years’ supply of batteries at a great price. I have no worries about my fence or it’s collar. Fast shipping and well…they work.

Review by M&M Catboy:

My complaint for these brushes is the poor product design, specifically, with the tips of the biggest and the smallest brushes. To clean around all the sharp corners well, it is important for the tips of these brushes to be covered with a lot of bristles. Guess what, the tip of the smallest brush is prety much dominated by the metal wires, so when you try to clean, instead of getting the bristles to touch and rub against the surfaces, it’s mostly the metal wires that come into contact. Last time I checked, it’s the bristles that clean, not the metal wire. Same with the biggest brush: The way the metal wires wrap around the sponge tip to hold it to the handle prevents the sponge from coming into full contact with the surfaces.

The product designers for the brushes don’t deserve to be product designers. Do you know how much it takes to design a simple floor mop? A lot. A good product designer has to think about which yarn absorbs water well, how much water to absorb so the mop won’t be hard to wring, what wringing mechanism to use, how long the handle should be, how thick the handle should be, how the mop head comes into contact with the floor, and so forth, in order to maximize ease of use and effectiveness.

The designers of the brushes are a failure. It seems that not much thought went into the design. Yes, we are dealing with just brushes, but even brushes should do the job they are supposed to do well.

Review by E. L. Fough:

I am glad for the sizes but the construction is poor and the bristles too stiff to do a good job cleaning. I still have to break out the pipe cleaners for the small spots and the rag for the large. The bristles don’t bush out at the end so when you push the brush into the well, you are scraping the metal end against the bottom – the metal end doesn’t do a great job scrubbing the residue off the bottom of the well.

Bamboo makes a Kong cleaner with a suction cup that is better designed and has a small brush in the handle. You’ll still need the pipe cleaner for the smaller pieces though.

Review by Karl S. Chwe:

My aging cat, like many others, needs to be encouraged to drink as much as possible. I read lots of reviews for cat fountains, and decided on this one (there are basically two other options that I know about.)

I have a pergo floor that isn’t impervious to water, so I varnished a thin 2′x2′ piece of plywood to set the fountain on, to catch any random splashes.

Maisie wasn’t sure about the thing at first, though maybe the smell of the varnish was putting her off. After a few days she has taken to it fine. I don’t know if she LOVEs it, as other owners have claimed, but she does use it, which is all I could reasonably expect.

Good:

- It is quiet. The motor is virtually inaudible. I don’t know why some other people complain about the humming or buzzing noise. I don’t hear a thing, and mine is sitting on a hard floor (on top of a sheet of 1/16″ plywood.) It can make a trickling watery sound at the high setting, but apparently some people like the sound, and anyway turning down the flow almost eliminates it.

- It holds a fair amount of water. I don’t have to worry about it going dry every few days as I did with the old water bowl. So Maisie always has water to drink.

- Doesn’t splash water everywhere. In fact it doesn’t splash at all. The water has a landing ramp that lets it down easy.

- Stable, not easy to tip over.

Not so good:

- It does need to be refilled every few days, not because it will run out of water, but because the impeller pump sits a fair distance above the bottom of the drinking bowl, so there has to be a fair amount of water in the bowl so the impeller (like a little paddle wheel) isn’t spinning in air. The pump will complain then, making a sucking, thrumming sound. If the water level falls too low, the pump will run dry and possibly burn out, even if there is still water in the bowl.

- It isn’t that easy to clean. I clean mine every week or so, which seems to be often enough. It doesn’t take me 30 minutes as it does another reviewer, more like 10. I don’t have the problem with cat hair (I brush Maisie twice a day) but I do get a bit of brown or pink slime (just as I did with an ordinary water bowl.) That is anaerobic bacteria, just like you get on the lower edge of your shower curtain, and it isn’t dangerous to your cat. But it is icky.

The fountain was designed with absolutely no thought to making it easy to clean. There are several nooks and crannies that are hard to reach and would have been easy to eliminate. For example, in the water reservoir there is a deep, round cavity about 1/2″ in diameter and about 4″ deep, closed at the bottom. It serves no purpose other than to align the reservoir assembly with the base, and it is continuously filled with water. To clean it well requires something like a test tube brush (long thin round brush with bristles on the end.)

So instead of cleaning it with a brush, I am experimenting with simply rinsing it with white vinegar, which should kill most of the bacteria, and unlike dishwasher detergent or spray cleaners, it leaves no residue and especially, no odor (once it is rinsed away.)

Or I may just use the dishwasher. The fountain is top-shelf safe, but a different plastic would have made it anywhere-safe. Also, it would be hard to position it so that it won’t collect dishwasher water (with little bits of coffe grounds, etc.) somewhere inside.

For those reasons, I give it four stars. The water filter is nice by the way, but it is quite thin and I don’t know that it does very much. Nor do I know if it is really necessary. It is supposed to remove tastes and odors, but there wouldn’t be much in tap water, and Maisie certainly doesn’t mind when she drinks from the faucet. Also, it filters water that has already passed through the pump. It would have made more sense to put a screen or filter in the water flow in front of the pump where it can keep hair out of the impeller.

Review by Derek Hofmann:

Some of the negative reviews indicate that the Drinkwell is noisy. The truth is, it’s only noisy if it doesn’t have enough water or if the intake valve is clogged (which so far hasn’t caused the pump to burn out for me). There’s a slight hum from the pump when it’s working correctly, but it will be much quieter than the other appliances in your kitchen.

Cat hair and cat food can both clog the intake. So to keep it in top condition, check the water level once every day or two (or get the add-on reservoir), place the Drinkwell several paces away from the food dish (so your cats aren’t tempted to moisten their food with it), and break down and clean the Drinkwell regularly, perhaps once a month when you change the filter cartridge.