About Cat Landlord

Why this site exists

Cat Landlord started for a boring reason: most of what is written about cat gear is written by people who never had to clean it.

Too many “best litter box” lists are rewritten Amazon descriptions. Too many behavior guides are written by someone who has never lived with a cat that starts shouting at four in the morning. And too many sites recommend whatever pays best that month.

This one is an apartment, a couple of cats, and somebody who keeps notes.

Who writes it

I’m Alfredo Ramses, the founder of this site and an independent researcher. Independent means nobody assigns these guides and no brand pays for one; researcher means a guide starts with specs, sources and a few hundred reviews read for the complaint that repeats, long before anything gets bought.

I am not a vet, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I have is a home that cats actually live in, a habit of measuring things instead of guessing, and enough patience to keep a product for six months before writing about it.

Where a question needs a vet — medication, illness, anything that hurts — I say so and send you to one. Everything else is litter, smell, noise, furniture and territory, and that is what this site is for.

More about me →

The tenants

Every recommendation here goes through the only reviewers who cannot be bought:

• 
  Otisa very large ginger Maine Coon who decides within about ten minutes whether a new scratching post is furniture or firewood. He has been wrong once.
• 
  Hazela British Shorthair with eleven pounds of strong opinion about litter texture. Half the odor testing on this site exists because of her.

They are not a “testing network”. They are two cats in one apartment, and I would rather tell you that than invent a lab.

How something ends up recommended

Not by copying the product page. Four steps, in this order:

1. ResearchSpecs, dimensions and materials compared model by model, plus a few hundred real reviews read for the complaints that repeat — those are the design flaws.
2. It moves inThe thing gets used in a real apartment. Not a studio, not a photo set. A hallway, a corner, a litter tray.
3. The six-month ruleNothing gets recommended in week one. Almost everything works in week one. What matters is the seam, the smell and the wobble at month six.
4. The anti-sellEvery recommendation comes with its flaw attached. No cat product is perfect and pretending otherwise is how you end up not trusting a site.

Where the money comes from

Cat Landlord takes part in affiliate programs, including the Amazon Associates Program. If you buy something through a link here, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Ads on the page pay for the rest.

What this site will never do

• Publish a sponsored post or a paid review
• Recommend a product nobody here has actually used
• Give medical advice, or dress up a guess as one
• Sell your email address to anyone, for anything

The point of all this

Cut the noise. Give a straight answer about litter, smell, scratching, noise and space, so you spend less time reading and more time with the cat that is currently sitting on the keyboard.

That is the whole mission statement. There isn’t a longer one.

— Alfredo Ramses, Cat Landlord