How PrettyLitter is taking its DTC health-monitoring cat litter into stores

Daniel Rotman had an orange tabby, Gingi, who died from an illness that had gone months without being detected. It led him to wonder whether cat litter could flag an illness before other symptoms appeared.

PrettyLitter, which Rotman launched as a DTC brand in 2016, is made from white silica gel crystals containing color-changing health indicators that respond to atypical pH levels or traces of blood. When Garfield’s box has spots of blue, orange, or red, it may mean a health issue and prompt a vet appointment.

Normally a DTC model for cat litter could be a heavy lift…because it is a heavy lift in terms of significant shipping costs. But silica is considerably lighter than typical clay litter, with a six-pound bag of PrettyLitter lasting about as long as a 20- to 30-pound bag of conventional litter, per the brand.

Today PrettyLitter, which Rotman sold to Mars in 2021, has more than 1 million customers who purchase the product on a recurring subscription basis.

“Once people know us and they try us, they stick with us,” Jess Hauff, CEO of PrettyLitter, told Retail Brew.

In September, it launched in 1,300 Publix locations, bringing its total physical store count to more than 13,000 across the US and Canada. That’s about double its 2022 footprint. The brand was entirely DTC until 2021; now about half its business comes from online and physical retail partners.

“We just need to get it out there in front of people more,” Hauff said.

Marking territory: While the health-monitoring aspect helped put it on the map, PrettyLitter is now focusing much of its messaging on more common priorities for litter purchasers.

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about your cat’s toilet,” Hauff said.

According to 2025 research by Clorox, which owns the Fresh Step litter brand, the most common requirements people who have cats cite for litter are olfactory, namely fast odor control (51%), followed by continuous odor control (49%). Next are concerns about the mess, favoring products less likely to kick up dust (40%) and be tracked outside boxes (37%).

In its own lab tests, Hauff said, PrettyLitter “performs either at or above parity in all of those critical elements” including odor control and having “low to no dust.”

In a video posted earlier this year to its YouTube channel, four cat owners participate in demos where they test the brand’s gel crystals side-by-side against an unnamed brand of clay litter. In one, pouring a cup of clay litter into a little box produces a small dust cloud and leaves residue in the cup; neither happens with PrettyLitter.

Cat fancy: PrettyLitter is more expensive than major litter brands, but Hauff said that higher price can be more of a feature than a bug to its growing cadre of retail partners.

“There is a role for premiumization in every category,” Hauff said, adding that the brand has helped retailers draw shoppers apt to pile more into their carts. “We brought in a consumer that’s not only going to spend more on litter, but they’re going to spend more on treats and food and hard goods because they’re just a more engaged pet parent overall.”

On its website and social media channels, PrettyLitter not only spells out its attributes but also educates consumers about major differences in how to use the product. A major distinction: with clumping clay, users scoop out urine clumps; with non-clumping PrettyLitter, they remove solids and stir the crystals. Hauff said the brand is assessing how best to convey all that to a shopper rolling by in Aisle 6.

“To be honest, we’re still learning what it looks like to be great at merchandising in store and in aisle,” she said.

Its packaging hasn’t changed since the product was DTC-only, when it didn’t need to cheerlead as much as products often strive to in stores.

The packaging “is almost too beautiful and too clean for a retail shelf,” she said. “It doesn’t scream.”

While she didn’t provide a time frame for when the packaging will be updated, she said packaging changes and advertising on retailers’ media networks are both on PrettyLitter’s priority list as it grows in physical retail.

Hauff also hopes the brand will soon do in-store product demos, which happily do not require cats’ input…or output.

“It would obviously not be with real urine,” she said. “We have a little cool kind of science experiment that we do.”