MONDAY Report : One Industry That Certainly Isn’t in Danger of Going to the Dogs Is the One That Caters to the Needs of CATS

Sharalee Aardal has lived without a cat only once in her life--a short period while she was enrolled in college. Aardal’s husband Danny is not a cat person. “He likes an animal that will come at your beck and call,” Aardal said recently. No matter. Rum Tum Tugger, Sherry and Possum--sisters that Aardal found abandoned in a tree two years ago--”are just having a great time” living in the couple’s San Marino home.

Strictly indoor critters, the cats are provided with pounds of fresh cat litter for their powder room and are assured of a well-stocked pantry of their favorite tuna, liver and eggs and beef parts blends. They seem to prefer the Crave brand manufactured by Kal Kan, Aardal said.

That is not the kind of news that the people at Heinz Pet Products Co., the division of H. J. Heinz Co. that makes 9 Lives cat foods, are going to take laying down. The Long Beach-based company this month launched an unprecedented $50-million offensive aimed at winning what it calls the “cat food war” raging in grocery stores across the land. Of course, Heinz’s cross-town rival, Los Angeles-based Carnation has been steadily clawing its way to the top and vows not to roll over in the face of the Heinz assault.

For the past decade, cat food makers have been in the clover as the day of the dog came to a close in the United States. Cat food sales have grown by nearly 50% since 1981, reaching about $2.19 billion last year. Cats outnumbered dogs for the first time in 1985--50 million, compared to 49 million dogs. Today, cats number 57.5 million, compared to 49.9 million dogs. (A larger percentage of households own a dog than own cats, but cat owners are more likely to have more than one in the house.)

Booming Sales

Cats, creatures of such stubborn independence that they are often interpreted as indifferent to human contact, have become the ideal pet for a growing population of busy singles and working couples. Growing urbanization and apartment dwelling has also worked against dogs.

Makers of cat litter have also enjoyed a boom. Sales are expected to pass $400 million this year and the litter makers are engaged in their own war at the other end of the grocery store aisle. There are signs that the competition in both cat food and litter will intensify. This year, the cat population declined for the first time in five years, suggesting a leveling of the trend. If the feline population is indeed stabilizing, stay tuned for a real cat fight.

Overall, Ralston Purina has the largest share of the cat food market because it has the largest number of brands. Carnation is second. But Heinz, number three overall, has kept 9 Lives--made famous by Morris the Cat--the leading single brand for years. A worrisome trend developed last year. “Their (Heinz) products are doing fair to middling,” John C. Maxwell Jr., a pet foods analyst with Wheat First Securities Inc. of Richmond, Va., said in explaining why the fat cat appears skittish. “They feel they need to put some money behind the product,” he said. 9 Lives still held the No 1 position last year, according to Maxwell’s annual market shares survey. But sales for the brand declined in all three categories--canned, dry, and moist. Heinz’s smaller Amore brand gained ground.

9 Lives has responded with new sizes for single and multi-cat households, new food formulas, new packaging and what the company calls the largest advertising and marketing support campaign “in cat food history.” Morris, long portrayed in commercials as fussy and indifferent to his owners, has been softened and will be shown “interacting in a series of heartwarming, real life vignettes.”

Prefer Convenience

The company is offering 9 Lives in 3-ounce and 13-ounce (resealable) cans along with its 6-ounce size and the company boasts new textures and the widest variety of flavors in the industry--30 flavors in the 6-ounce serving and eight each in the smaller size servings.

In introducing a variety of can sizes, Heinz is following consumer preferences for convenience, said Bill Johnson, president of Heinz Pet Products. “Our entire program reflects research showing that regardless of how busy people become, they still devote a great deal of thought and time to their pets,” he said, adding that each of its products is formulated according to animal nutritional research.

Carnation, which says it pioneered pet food research in 1932, claims to have already gotten the jump on Heinz in responding to consumer needs. Innovations such as recyclable aluminum cans, pull tops and variety packs are among the reasons Carnation in 1988 will take the lead from Heinz in the canned food segment, said Charles Weil, vice president and general manager of Carnation’s Friskies PetCare division.

According to Maxwell’s survey, Heinz last year held 28% of the canned food market, compared to Carnation’s 27%. Weil won’t say specifically how Carnation will respond to Heinz’s offensive, but said “we will actively support our brands.”

Of course, cats are the real consumers that the cat food industry are trying to win over, despite the effort put into commercials and packaging designed to appeal to humans. That is why major companies such as Carnation and Heinz maintain a stable of research cats. Carnation has 500 housed in its cattery in Carnation, Wash. Experienced cat owners say that when there is a conflict between what appeals to the human and what appeals to the cat, the cat--being a cat--usually wins.

That is a lesson that some so-called innovators in the cat litter business have learned the hard way. Attempting to break the stranglehold that makers of clay-based cat litter have on the market, a few enterprising souls have introduced litter made of shredded paper, rolled alfalfa bits and just about any other absorbent material available. Very few of these products have been successful, said Larry Strauss a 17-year veteran of the clay-based litter business. Strauss is now vice president for sales and marketing for Cansorb Industries, a Cleveland, N.C.-based company that has recently introduced PineFresh Natural Pine Wood Litter into the North American market.

The bottom line, Strauss said, “is that cat’s just don’t want to go in corn cobs and peanut shells.” Cansorb isn’t worried about “cat rejection,” he said, because the wood pellets have been used in Europe for years. “We don’t think American cats are any different from European cats,” he said. Europeans used wood byproducts because they don’t have the special clay found in the United States, he said.

Makers of clay-based litter have had to find a way to deal with the different sensitivities of humans and cats to odors. Cats won’t go in a box that doesn’t smell right to them, no matter how much the smell appeals to humans. Thus, the deodorants in clay pellets are designed either to be activated when the cat starts to scratch or when the clay gets wet.

Oil-Dri Corp. of Chicago, the No. 2 cat litter maker with 22% of the market, has introduced the third generation of clay-based litter, said Executive Vice President Richard Jaffee. The company has introduced Control, a litter with clay pellets that attack cat waste with a germicide, thus eliminating odor, he said. Oil Dri also makes Cats Pride and manufactures Fresh Step for Clorox Co., which has about 15% of the market.

Strauss says the extra absorbency of the wood pellets in the PineFresh litter will eliminate odors by absorbing all of the waste.