My Best Friend Told Me My Apartment Smelled Like Cat Pee. I Tried 7 Things Before I Found What Actually Works.
When I moved into a 1-bedroom with no balcony, my cat's litter box had to go in the living room. Within 2 months I'd gone nose-blind, my friends were making polite faces in my doorway, and I was sniffing my own sweaters at work.
Otis is a 6-year-old gray tabby with a white bib and white front paws that look like little socks. Every morning while I'm in the shower, he sits in the middle of the bath mat and waits for me, and if I take too long he reaches one white paw under the curtain to tap my ankle. When I come home from work he meets me at the door with a crumpled receipt in his mouth like he caught it for me.
He is my whole heart. For the first 5 years I had him, we lived in a place with a covered balcony and a cat flap in the sliding door. His litter box stayed out there, and my apartment smelled like coffee and whatever candle I was burning.
Last spring my rent jumped and I moved into a smaller 1-bedroom on the third floor of an older building. No balcony. A bathroom so narrow my knees almost touch the tub when I sit down. The only place a litter box could fit was the corner of the living room, about 10 feet from the end of my couch and maybe 15 feet from the front door.
For the first 2 weeks, the smell hit me every evening when I put my key in the lock: that warm, sour clay-and-ammonia smell that hangs in a closed room. By month 2, I only noticed it if I'd been gone all day, and even then only for the first 3 or 4 seconds in the entryway.
I told myself that meant it wasn't that bad. Then my sister came over for dinner on a Sunday, stepped onto my doormat, and her nose gave this tiny twitch before she caught herself and smiled.
Once you see that look on someone's face in your own doorway, you start looking for it every time the door opens. Over the next 4 months I spent $178.45 on 6 different fixes. These are all of them, and the seventh thing, the one that finally gave me my home back.
The twice-a-day scoop and the Sunday tub scrub
My first thought was that I'd gotten lazy because I couldn't smell it anymore. So I got strict with myself. I scooped every morning while my coffee brewed and every night before I brushed my teeth, double-knotted the bags and walked them down 3 flights to the dumpster so nothing sat in my kitchen trash.
Every Sunday morning I dumped the whole pan, hauled it into the bathtub and scrubbed it on my knees with dish soap and hot water until my lower back ached. Otis kicks litter over the rim when he digs, so I started vacuuming around the mat most nights after work too.
Up close, that corner was as clean as a litter area gets.
Three weeks into all that, my sister came for dinner again. I had done the full tub scrub at 4. She arrived at 5, hung her coat on the back of a dining chair, paused, and asked, very gently, "Did Otis just go?"
He was asleep on my bed. He hadn't touched the box since I'd washed it.
An $18.99 jug of lavender-and-charcoal litter
The next Saturday I drove to the big pet store across town and stood in the litter aisle for 20 minutes reading labels. I walked out with a 35-pound jug of premium litter with purple lavender crystals and black specks of activated charcoal mixed into the clay. It cost $18.99, and I carried it up 3 flights hugging it against my chest.
When I poured it into the clean pan, a wave of floral, herby smell came up, and for a whole weekend I thought I'd solved my problem for 19 bucks.
By Wednesday evening, when I walked in from work with my arms full of groceries, my entryway smelled like hot cat litter and cheap perfume at the same time. The lavender hadn't taken anything away. It just sat on top. By Friday most of the lavender had faded, and I was right back where I started.
The $5.99 shaker of deodorizer powder
At that point I still believed the smell was coming out of the clay between scoopings. There's a whole shelf at the pet store built on that idea: plastic shakers of baking-soda deodorizer made for litter boxes.
I bought one for $5.99. Every morning after scooping, I shook a layer of white powder across the top and raked it in. On Sundays I dusted the bare bottom of the pan with it before pouring the fresh litter in.
If you knelt on the floor with your nose a foot above the litter, it smelled like baby powder. If you stood up and walked 10 feet over to the sofa, the room smelled like cat and baby powder.
That was the week I understood there's a difference between covering a smell up and actually taking it out of the room. Everything in that aisle put a louder smell over a bad one, and none of it reached past the corner the pan sat in.
The $3.49 room spray and the paranoia at work
By month 3 I had stopped inviting anyone over. When my mom wanted to stop by after her dentist appointment, I met her at the coffee shop on the corner instead. When the building super needed to check my radiator, I stood in the grocery aisle the night before trying to find a room spray that wouldn't hurt Otis.
Most cans don't say whether they're safe around cats, and googling ingredients got me 10 different scary answers, so I settled on a $3.49 can of plain linen air freshener.
When the super knocked the next morning, I shut Otis in the bedroom and sprayed the entryway and the living room 5 or 6 times before I opened the door. The fake-laundry smell lasted maybe 20 minutes before the stale litter smell came back through it. And when I let Otis out, he went straight to his favorite spot on the arm of the couch, right where the spray had settled, and started grooming his white front paws. I watched him all afternoon with a knot in my stomach, feeling awful that I'd sprayed his nap spot just to save face with the maintenance guy.
One rainy Tuesday on the train to work, my wool coat damp from the walk, I caught a faint, musty whiff of my own living room coming off my scarf. I spent the whole morning at my desk sniffing my cardigan sleeve whenever nobody was looking, terrified I was becoming the woman at the office whose clothes smelled like cat.
A $49.99 stainless steel pan, and the Friday night Jess told me the truth
Late one night I read that plastic litter pans hold smells. A cat's claws score tiny scratches into the bottom, and the ammonia soaks into the plastic however hard you scrub. Stainless steel, everyone said, doesn't hold odor at all.
I spent $49.99 on a heavy, high-sided stainless steel pan and carried my old plastic one out to the dumpster. Every time Otis scratched at the sides it made a loud metallic clang, and it looked cold and industrial in the corner, but I didn't care. When I washed it, the metal had no smell at all.
Two weeks after the switch, on a Friday night, my friend Jess texted that she was in my neighborhood and wanted to drop off the spare keys she'd been holding since my move.
Jess and I have been friends since we were 22. She's the friend who tells you about the spinach in your teeth and the guy you shouldn't be dating. When I opened the door, she stepped onto the doormat and bent down to unlace her boots.
My heart was thumping. Before she got the second boot off, I blurted out, "Jess, be completely honest with me. Does my apartment smell like cat?"
She stopped with her hand on her boot and looked up at me with the kindest, most apologetic face I have ever seen.
"Yeah, Han," she said softly. "It smells like cat pee, pretty strongly, right when you walk in. I'm sorry."
She hadn't taken 3 steps inside. She was 15 feet from the spotless steel pan, with one boot still on.
I thanked her, made an excuse about an early morning, and practically pushed her out the door 5 minutes later. After the lock clicked, I sat on the middle cushion of my couch for a long time. Otis jumped up, walked a little circle on my jeans and went to sleep on my lap, purring against my wrists. I loved him so much my throat hurt, and I felt trapped in my own home. A week earlier my mom had asked whether my new place was "really big enough for a cat," and just the hint of it had made me furious. Otis wasn't going anywhere. Ever. Which meant this was just my life now.
The $99.99 air purifier that hummed next to the box for a month
The day after Jess came by, I accepted that the box wasn't the problem anymore. If people smelled it at the front door, it was in the air.
I did what every home website recommends and bought a $99.99 small-room air purifier with a carbon filter. I plugged it in 2 feet from Otis's pan and left it running on medium day and night.
Otis hated the hum for the first week and crept up to the box with his ears sideways. A month in, I popped the front cover off to check it, and the pre-filter was gray with cat fur, so it was pulling in whatever floated right past it.
And yet when I came home from a Saturday out with my sister and opened my front door, there it was again: that heavy litter smell in the entryway for the first 3 seconds.
Around midnight I lay in bed with my phone, adding it up: $178.45 on litter, powder, spray, steel, and a machine humming in my living room while the entryway still smelled. Half desperate, I opened a cat owners' forum and asked how people in small apartments keep the whole place from smelling when the box is spotless and there's a purifier right next to it.
The forum reply from Dana that changed how I thought about the smell
By morning I had a dozen replies telling me to switch to pine pellets, or tofu litter, or to feed Otis raw rabbit.
Near the bottom was a comment from a woman named Dana. She didn't ask what litter I used. She wrote: The smell isn't in your box anymore. It's in the air of your whole apartment.
She'd been through the same thing in her condo. Every time her cat dug, and every time the air in the room moved, the litter dust and dander and the smell went up and drifted through the whole place, out to the front door and into her couch and her coat. Everything she'd tried either sat in the corner next to the box or covered it up for 20 minutes.
That was my whole list. The litter, the powder and the steel pan were all in the box. The purifier was 2 feet from it. The spray lasted 20 minutes.
"You don't need another thing on the floor by the box," Dana wrote. "You need something cleaning the air of the whole room, all day, without you having to do anything. Look up Barnakl before you spend another dime. It uses the ceiling fan you already have."
I looked up from my coffee mug at the 5-blade fan in the middle of my living room ceiling. It runs on low most days because the apartment gets the afternoon sun, and I had never once thought about it.
After almost $200 on things that hadn't worked, the last thing I wanted was another gadget from the internet. I opened a new tab anyway.
What cleaning the whole room's air actually looks like
Barnakl Ceiling Fan Filters are unscented pads of activated coconut-shell carbon, the same kind of carbon used in kitchen range hoods and litter-box filters. There's nothing to plug in and nothing on the floor. A small white clip sticks to the top of each fan blade and a pad slides into it, so the air the fan is already moving goes through the carbon, over and over, all day. The carbon traps the smell instead of covering it, along with the litter dust, pet dander and household dust floating around with it. Barnakl says the pads catch dust mites and mold spores too, and reports that in a 3-hour test by Aerosol Research and Engineering Labs, its filters cut airborne mold spores by 99.94%.
The company was started by two brothers in Wisconsin, it's in over 300,000 homes, and it was on Good Morning America's Deals & Steals.
I skimmed most of that. What I cared about was simpler. There was no perfume for Otis to lick off his fur, nothing humming in the corner, and nothing I had to remember to do. And there was a 30-day money-back guarantee: if my apartment didn't smell clean, I could get a full refund. They were running a bundle discount, so I ordered the Barnakl Starter Kit that night.
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
Three hours of errands, and the test at my front door
The kit came on a Friday in a kraft box with 5 matte-black carbon pads and 5 slim white clips.
Saturday after breakfast, I dragged my kitchen step stool under the living room fan. I wiped the top of each blade with a dry cloth, peeled the backing off a clip, lined it up with the little template from the box and pressed it down. All 5 blades took me under 5 minutes. The instructions say to let the adhesive set for 10 minutes, so I drank my second cup of coffee, got back up, slid a pad into each clip and switched the fan to medium.
From the couch you couldn't see the pads at all, because they sit on top of the blades. No sound, no cord, no glowing light in the corner.
I didn't want to stay in and go nose-blind while it worked, so I went to the bank, did a slow grocery shop and walked around the farmers market. I was gone a little over 3 hours.
Walking up my stairs with the grocery bags, my stomach tightened the way it always did right before I put my key in the door. I pushed it open, stepped onto the doormat and took a breath through my nose.
Nothing.
No sour clay. No ammonia. No fake lavender. It just smelled like ordinary indoor air, with maybe a hint of the wood floor and the coffee I'd made that morning.
I set the bags down, stepped back out into the hallway, closed the door, waited 30 seconds and walked in again. Otis was sitting by the kitchen doorway with his white paws together, watching me open and close the front door like I'd lost my mind.
The next morning the living room air felt lighter when I walked out of my bedroom. Still, after months of fooling myself, I didn't completely trust my own nose.
What Jess said two weeks later (and what came off my fan on day 30)
Two Sundays later, I did something I hadn't done in almost half a year: I texted Jess and asked if she wanted to come over for coffee.
I didn't spray anything. I didn't shake any powder. I scooped the box that morning like normal and left the fan on low. I didn't say a word to her about the filters because I didn't want to put the answer in her head.
She walked in, tossed her purse onto the chair by the door, kicked off her sneakers and stopped.
"Wait," she said. "Where'd you end up moving the box? Bathroom?"
I pointed 10 feet behind her. The steel pan was in the exact same corner it had been the night she told me my apartment smelled like cat pee from the doormat. She walked over, looked at it, looked around the room and laughed. "Okay, what did you do? It smells completely normal in here."
Two weeks after that, on day 30, my phone reminder went off to swap the pads.
I turned the fan off, climbed up on the step stool and slid the first pad out of its white clip. It had gone up clean and matte black. The pad in my hand was a dull, fuzzy gray. Along the front edge, where the blade cuts through the air, Otis's fine gray-and-white hairs were matted into the carbon. When I ran my thumb across it, a gritty gray film of litter dust rolled up under my skin, along with tiny dark specks I didn't want to look at too closely. It looked like the inside of a vacuum canister.
All of that had been floating around my living room, landing on my sofa and my coat and my hair, in the same air people walked into at my front door.
The clips stay on the blades, so sliding out the 5 dirty pads and putting in 5 fresh ones took me about a minute.
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
How all 7 things I tried stacked up
Here's what $178.45 bought me before Barnakl:
- Scooping twice a day + weekly tub scrub ($0): You have to do it anyway, and I still do. On its own, it didn't stop my sister asking if Otis had just gone, an hour after I'd scrubbed the pan.
- 35 lb lavender charcoal litter ($18.99): Smelled nice for 3 days, then like perfume and dirty litter.
- Litter deodorizer powder ($5.99): Only covered the smell if you knelt with your face over the pan.
- Linen room spray ($3.49): Covered it for 20 minutes at a time, and I worried every time Otis napped where it landed.
- Stainless steel litter box ($49.99): The pan stopped smelling. Jess still smelled cat pee the second she stepped onto my doormat.
- Small-room air purifier with carbon filter ($99.99): Caught some hair in the corner where it sat, hummed all night, and the entryway smelled the same after a month.
- Barnakl Ceiling Fan Filters (Starter Kit bundle): Cleaned the air of the whole room while my fan ran, with nothing to plug in or spray. After about 3 hours I couldn't smell the box from my doorway, and it's the only odor product still in my apartment 4 months later.
"Wait, won't putting filters on my fan make it wobble?"
That was my first question before I ordered. My living room fan isn't new, and I didn't want it clicking or shaking over my head.
Each Barnakl pad weighs about 6 grams, and the template in the box puts the clips in the same spot on every blade. Mine didn't wobble, slow down or change its sound at all.
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
Free shipping on bundles · 30-day money-back guarantee
How to get your living room back (without risking another wasted purchase)
It has been 4 months since I put Barnakl on my fan. The half-empty can of linen spray and the shaker of powder went in the trash the first month. I still scoop Otis's pan morning and night, and he still kicks litter onto the mat and waits for me outside the shower every morning with his white socks tucked under his chest.
What changed is how I live in my own home. When the delivery guy knocks, or my sister drops by without warning, I just open the door. I don't sniff my sleeves at my desk anymore, and I don't sit on my couch feeling guilty about the cat I love.
If your litter box has to live in a main room, or you've started wondering what people smell in those first 3 seconds on your doormat, start with the air in the room they walk into.
Right now on Barnakl's website you can save up to 49% when you order a bundle, and all bundles come with free shipping. Every order has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Try Barnakl Risk Free For 30 Days →Put them on your fan, leave the house for a few hours, and see what you smell when you walk back through your front door. If your rooms don't smell clean, you get a full refund.
P.S. Jess comes over for coffee most Sunday mornings now. Last week she brought croissants, sat on the end of the couch closest to Otis's corner, and didn't look at the litter box once.
Reviews from barnakl.com
Coconut carbon filter
Everything smells fresh when I walk in the door it’s like I just cleaned the house doesn’t smell like puppies anymore
Mary G. · Verified buyer
5 Stars
I love this product! I have two long hair cats and a dog and these ceiling fan “filters” have cut down on the floating cat hair in each room that has a ceiling fan.
Sharon · Verified buyer
5 cats
New user of these. I have 5 cats so sweeping is a must a couple times a day. I bought these barnekl and they have drastically cut down on the amount of fur floating around my house. I honestly didn’t think they would work this good. 10/10 Recommend
Staci B. · Verified buyer