Baking soda is a valuable weapon in the battle against cat urine odors. In fact, the properties of this substance are widely touted, if not perhaps a little exaggerated.
Browse around online and you’d get the idea that sodium bicarbonate, a compound of sodium, hydrogen and carbon, can not only whip up meals and clean the kitchen by itself, but is also the cure-all for numerous serious diseases.
While baking soda isn’t likely to manage your household for you or raise the dead, it does have certain chemical properties that make it useful in cleaning.
Litter Box Deodorizer
Many deodorizers that you can add to the litter box or spray in the general area only mask smells. What’s worse, they do it my produce a heavy, artificial scent that can discourage cats from coming anywhere near. It’s no good to have litter box that smells like roses and sea breezes if those scents make your cat avoid the box and urinate on the carpet instead.
Here’s where baking soda comes it. This substance neutralizes smells instead of just covering them up. Baking soda is weakly alkaline (the opposite of acidic). The molecules that create the scent of cat urine are acidic. When baking soda’s alkaline molecules come in contact with cat urine’s acidic molecules, they neutralize each other.
This chemical reaction is how baking soda deodorizes cat urine and many other smells. Any odor that baking soda itself may give off is inoffensive to cats and using it around the litter box won’t discourage them from using the box. To help hold down odors around your kitty’s litter box, every time you change the litter, sprinkle some baking soda on the bottom of the litter box before you add fresh litter.
Cat Urine Cleaning
Baking soda can help you clean up kitty’s little “accidents” outside the box, too. In Cat Urine Problems Eliminated’s Recipe #1 for lighter stains, you can add baking soda to make the solution less running. This is useful if you need to apply the cleaner to a small area and don’t want it spreading all over the whole item.
Additionally, as a quick way to clean up fresh stains, mix white vinegar and baking soda to create a runny paste. Brown vinegar works just as well, but it may leave a brown stain on some items. Apply the paste to the soiled area, let it sit for a few minutes, then sponge it up. Keep in mind that this mixture is really only good for fresh spots on non-absorbent surfaces like linoleum or well sealed wood.
Sodium bicarbonate also play an important role in homemade cat urine cleaners for older stains or stains on absorbent material like carpets and furniture. Cat Urine Problems Eliminated’s Recipe #2 is an example of one of these recipes. The baking soda in this this recipe causes a chemical reaction with the other main ingredient and this reaction breaks down the uric acid crystals in cat urine. It’s these crystals that retain the odor and make cat pee so tough to remove.
You can solve your cat’s inappropriate urination problems and get your home completely free of cat urine odors, but the solutions may not always be obvious. Instead of wasting time learning by trial and error, check out Cat Urine Problems Eliminated to discover proven-effective ways to retrain your cat and regain your home.
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