Choosing a pet urine remover is a required task for nearly every pet owner. Since there are dozens of urine remover products in pet stores, and hundreds online, how can you reasonably choose the best pet urine remover?
The first step is decide what you’re actually trying to do:
Do you want to remove pet urine, or remove pet urine odor?
According to a pet urine survey we conducted, the majority of pet owners want to neutralize the smell of dried urine. That’s probably because pet urine (especially cat urine), can be smelled long after it’s no longer visible.
If you want to safely neutralize cat urine smell, we recommend:
Below are some tips for choosing a good pet urine remover assuming you also want to focus on neutralizing smell
How to choose a good pet urine remover
- Make sure it’s safe around animals! It sounds obvious, but many urine removers have harsh chemicals, and some pets (such as cats) can develop liver or kidney problems because of them.
- Choose an enzyme pet urine remover. Pet urine contains chemicals that can best be neutralized with enzymes (unless you use harsh chemicals instead).
- Choose an antibacterial pet urine remover. One reason pet urine smells so much is because of bacteria slowly decomposing it.
- Make sure it’s safe on YOUR materials. Getting urine off your couch or your carpet is extra challenging because some pet urine removers will stain or bleach. Even if it says it’s safe, test it in a hidden area first.
- Do you REALLY like the smell? Many pet urine removers are scented, which may be fine for occasional use, but do you really want your home smelling like a pee-soaked pine forest, or a minty urinal?
How to test pet urine removers
Many pet owners would like to buy cheap sample bottles to evaluate them, but this isn’t possible. We had to buy and try dozens of cat urine removers to test them ourselves, and the results are shown below:
Unfortunately we can’t show the names of the “leading brands”, but we can reveal the results of baking soda and white vinegar for cat urine cleaning.
While baking soda and vinegar are popular DIY solutions, they’re not very effective at deodorizing urine. Vinegar is especially nasty, unless you enjoy the smell of a back-alley french fry truck!
In our test, Pee-Off consistently performed better, and had no stain or bleaching effect on common household fabrics such as carpets, curtains, couches, and clothes.