Pet Gift Box – September 2016 Review

Pet Gift Box is a monthly subscription box filled with goodies for your fur baby.  You can choose between a cat box or a dog box, and Pet Gift Box will curate all of their items around a theme.  This is a review for September’s cat box.

$28.99/month with free shipping!

Discounts for 3, 6, and 12 month plans.  Good to know: if you purchase a plan, you don’t get hit with the bill all at once.  Pet Gift Box will still charge you monthly at the discounted rate, but you’ll be locked in for however many months you purchase.

This month’s theme is wine and cheese.  I really liked the wrapping paper that everything came in, even though mine was a little bit ripped when it arrived.  Wine and cheese is such a fancy theme!  How sophistiCATed! ;)

(I’m sorry, I’ll stop now.  Maybe.)

The box came with a nice little information card that described all of the products.

Spot Colorful Springs Cat Toy – $5.48

These were a set of brightly colored springs for your cat to bat around.  At first my cats were not interested, but I heard them batting these around in the middle of the night and by the next morning I was finding them underfoot everywhere.  They still “rediscover” them every few hours and chase them around.  The springs have some nice bounce to them and roll really easily.

A better view of all the springs.

Mari’s “wtf do I do with this?” face.  This is before they figured out how to play with them, so the poor springs were mostly ignored at first.  Once the cats started batting them around, it was too high speed for pictures!

Coconut Cheese Catnip Treats – $5?

These were made exclusively for Pet Gift Box by K9 Bytes.  I guessed a value based on the treats they sell on their website, but I’m sure this is an overestimate because the bags on their site are much larger than this sample pack.  These cheese treats look like small oatmeal cookies, and have been infused with coconut and catnip.  My cats couldn’t figure out what to make of these, so even though they were really curious and kept licking the treats, they didn’t actually finish any.  They did smell pretty good though – if I didn’t know any better I wouldn’t realize they were cat treats.

Sora was very intrigued by the smell at first…

Mari decided to give it a shot…

But ultimately, it became a toy.

Pinot Meow – $2.39 

Wow, I’ve been curious to try this for a while so I’m glad Pet Gift Box included a sample!  This is a “wine for cats” that’s made with catnip and beets.  I was really hoping my cats would enjoy this, but they weren’t crazy about it.  Sora was willing to try it and lapped up the little bit I poured out, but Mari wouldn’t go near it.  I actually took the sample home to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, and my mom’s cat went CRAZY for it.  We unscrewed the top, and even though he’d never had it before, he got really excited and kept trying to lick the bottle.  This was such a cute idea, and I’m so glad Pet Gift Box included such a trendy new product!

Meow Merlot Treats – $3.49

These soft treats contain turkey, tart cherry juice, and blackberry.  The fruit flavors erase some of the stale smell that a lot of cat treats have, so I personally appreciated that.  These snacks were pretty hit or miss at our house: Sora loved them, but Mari was not a fan.  Even now, Sora is the only one who will eat them.  I think some cats might not like the tart flavor, especially if they haven’t really tasted tart foods before.

Here’s what the Meow Merlot treats look like.

Cheese Scratching Board – $14.52 

This corrugated cardboard scratcher came with organic catnip for you to rub on it to attract your cat.  I’ve always been a little confused about how to apply non-spray catnip to surfaces: do you sprinkle it on, or do you rub it in?  As a result, my cats don’t really get exposed to too much catnip.  They also didn’t really care for cardboard scratchers as kittens, but they recently discovered all the cardboard boxes I used to move into my apartment and tore them to pieces, so I think they’re getting the hang of them.  As of now, they’re still warming up to the scratcher: I’ve rubbed some catnip on it and they like to lie near it and rub their faces against it, but they haven’t really scratched it up yet.  It’s very sturdy with a strong rope, so I have no worries about them pulling it off the doorknob I hung it from.

 

Overall, I thought this box was really cute!  Almost everything fit the theme (the springs were a bit of a head scratcher, but my cats loved them), and they included Pinot Meow!  I calculated a total value of $30.88 for the box, but that’s including my overestimate of the Coco-Cheese Catnip Treats.  I’d say that it just about breaks even if you’re on the month-to-month plan, so if you can get any of the longer subscriptions it’ll be more worth it (for example, the 12-month subscription is $18.99 per month).  Keep in mind that pet boxes can be pretty hit or miss: sometimes your dog or cat will love everything, and sometimes they won’t like anything.  The cheese treats were not as popular with my cats, but they seemed to enjoy everything else!

Taking pictures of this box was difficult: I had a lot of “helpers” during the unboxing.

I’ve taught my cats some tricks in exchange for treats.  This is Mari doing a very downtrodden “Paw” before she realized she didn’t actually like the cheese treats she was working so hard for.

And a rare shot of Sora offering me her paw!  She’s usually not as into doing tricks, but she loved the Meow Merlot treats and made an exception for them.

THIS GIRL.  Mari wouldn’t finish the cheese treat after licking it a few times, so I tossed it.  After two hours I came back to find her digging through the trash looking for it.

 

PR Sample.  All opinions are my own, and no compensation was received for this review.