Earning Her Keep

Miss Muffin recently "brought home the bacon," or to be more accurate, the kitty litter. ..

Thanks to a referral from a neighbor, I had registered some time ago with an organization called Opinions of Sacramento that runs focus groups for various market research projects. Though I'd responded several times to emails for different potential projects, I'd never been chosen until about a month ago when I received a survey about pets in the home and kitty litter use. After a few more follow-up questions and a phone call, I was selected to participate in the focus group.

The catch? This study involved using a specific brand of cat litter in your home for two weeks prior to the interview.

I was worried at first that Muffalo would reject the strange litter, so I was incredibly relieved when I picked up the big ol' 25-lb bag of "new & improved" Fresh Step, since that's the brand we use anyway. Phew!

As instructed, I changed Muffa-Golightly's litter to the new product and carefully monitored her use over the past two weeks (she seemed to like it just fine). My follow-up interview was this past Tuesday and lasted about 15 minutes.

Here's the really cool part - for using the litter and chatting for 1/4 of an hour, I received not only a big bag of free (and fab) kitty litter for the Muff-Cat but also $75 in cash for my time. Not bad!

So Pooka-Muff really earned her keep this week ($75 would cover almost 3 bags of her Iams food) and got a spiffy new litter in the process. Way to go, kitty!