This article is from the Winter 2000 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Nichole Royer

Hmmm . . . white CareFRESH™. My first thought was “but it will get dirty!” I’ll admit though, I was curious. Would this stuff be just CareFRESH™ in white, or would it be different. Both the Absorbtion Co. (the makers of CareFRESH™) and Western Research, Orange, CA, were kind enough to donate a bag of CareFRESH® Ultra™ for us to try. I jumped at the chance.

I do not use CareFRESH™ extensively, just mixed in with Sani-Chips® in the mouse cages, and by itself sometimes in the rat cage in the house. One week I replaced regular CareFRESH™ with CareFRESH® Ultra™.

As usual, I mixed a couple of handfuls in with the Sani-Chips® in the mouse cages. This thrilled the mice, as CareFRESH® Ultra™ is softer and fluffier than regular CareFRESH™. They seemed to like it very well, buildings big nests out of it. My hamster also was pleased, and I ended up giving her several more handfuls of CareFRESH® Ultra™ since she was happily nest building with it.

It was with the rats in the house that I noticed a big difference between regular CareFRESH™ and CareFRESH® Ultra™. Regular CareFRESH™ develops a slight “wet paper” smell after a couple of days, which I am not fond of. CareFRESH® Ultra™ did not do this, which was very nice.

Originally the white color of CareFRESH® Ultra™ bothered me. I just could not conceive that it wouldn’t get filthy and look really bad. I was wrong.

Actually, CareFRESH® Ultra™ does a very good job of covering up all those “little messes.” It doesn’t really look dirty, even just before it need to be cleaned. In fact, the critters really look nice on the white background. It shows off their colors very nicely, particularly the Satin mice.

This stuff is great bedding, a definite improvement over regular CareFRESH™. There’s only one problem—the price. It is considerably more expensive than any of the comparable beddings. For the average person with two or three animals, it would not be too bad, but with all my critters there’s no way I could afford it. It is, however, really good stuff.