My wife and I have two cats, Max and Saskia. We’ve had these two monsters for almost three years now, and I couldn’t imagine our home without them. We adopted them as stray little kittens, and coming home to them really brightens up my day, They’re pretty adorable (as most cats are), but there is a nasty little side effect to owning cats: Litter boxes.

This past weekend, it was my turn to empty the litter box. We use litter box liners, which are basically plastic trash bags that line the inside of your litter box so you can quickly pick up the litter, close up the bag and toss it in the trash. Unfortunately, as my luck would have it, we ran out of litter box liners and never remembered to buy new ones.

So there I was, standing in front of an empty litter box, trying to figure out where to go to get litter box liners. I grabbed my car keys and drove off to the super market and walked into the pet supply aisle. The brand we normally buy was priced at $2.99 for six bags. Normally my wife buys this stuff, and I don’t put much thought into it. $2.99 didn’t seem too bad, until I saw the store brand bags next to it for half the price.

“What a great deal!”, I thought. My wife would be so proud of me when she sees that I saved us a whopping $1.50 on litter box liners. Triumphant, I returned home, excited to see how my frugal purchase would work out.

Of course, you probably know where this story is heading. When I got home, the stupid liner bags barely fit. And then, to make matters worse, the bags were made with an extremely thin plastic. I think it only took a few hours for the cats to rip through it. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the displeasure of cleaning out a litter box where cat urine leaked through the liner bag, but I can tell you right now it’s no fun.

So what’s the moral to this story? Don’t cheap out on litter box liners. $1.50 may not seem like much, but it’s all the difference between a clean litter box, and an ammonia stenched afternoon.