Got burned by a $60 'cat calming' diffuser, then talked to a vet tech

I bought this plug-in pheromone thing at the pet store because my cat kept yowling at 3am for two weeks straight. Sixty bucks for the starter kit plus refills, and I'm pretty sure it did exactly nothing. The vet tech at my clinic said those things work for some cats but not others, and she told me to try a heated pad under his bed instead. Forty dollars later, he sleeps through the night and only yowls when the pad accidentally gets unplugged. Anyone else wasted cash on stuff like that before finding the simple fix? What other weird cat quirks turned out to have a cheap answer for you?

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leog681mo ago

Well, I read somewhere that those pheromone diffusers are hit or miss because cats react differently to synthetic scents, and some just ignore them completely. My own cat used to cry at the door every night until I realized he just wanted the hallway light left on, so now we leave a cheap nightlight plugged in and he's quiet as a mouse. It's funny how often the answer is something simple and boring, not the fancy gadget the store wants to sell you. I also heard that a lot of those plug-in calming products lose their strength if you put them too close to a window or vent, so maybe that was part of your problem too. Anyway, good on you for finding what works, and I bet that heated pad is doing double duty keeping his joints warm as he gets older.

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