Questions about the business and orders
What forms of payment do you take?
Can I add to my order once it's placed?
Do you make tarts full time?
How soon can I expect my order to ship?
Do you ship internationally?
What forms of shipping do you use?
Is insurance available on packages?
Do you accept returns or exchanges?
Do you offer wholesale pricing?
Questions about our products
How do you burn a tart?
Once the scent has been used up or if I want to change the scent of tart I'm using, how do I get the wax out?
Do you use essential oils or fragrance oils in your tarts?
What kind of wax do you use?
Why are some of my tarts slightly bigger than others?
Why do some of my tarts have stronger throw than others?
Can I get my tarts in colors?
Can I get a custom blend of scents listed in your scent catalogue?
Are your scents custom blends?
Why are the Top Shelf tarts more expensive than the regular tarts?
About how long can I expect to be able to burn my tarts and still get a scent?
Will my tarts arrive intact during summer months or will they melt in transit?
Other questions
Where can I get a tart burner?
If you have 6 cats between you and your mother-in-law, why is the business called 4 Fat Cats?
Questions about the business and orders:
What forms of payment do you take?
Paypal (credit cards and account balance - you don't have to have a Paypal account to pay by credit card!), money orders and personal checks (personal checks must clear before your items will ship!).
Can I add to my order once it's placed?
Well...that depends on several factors that I won't get into, the main one being whether or not your order has been packed and/or shipped yet, but if you'd like to add something, email me and we can talk! I try to be reasonable, but please keep in mind I may not be able to combine orders for you!
Do you make tarts full time?
No! As a matter of fact, I’m a full-time graduate student and I have a part-time jobs! Please note that this doesn’t prevent me from getting orders out in a reasonable amount of time as my elves (they’re not actually elves…but I like to pretend) help me out by dropping packages at the post office when I’m unable to do so because of school or work!
How soon can I expect my order to ship?
Currently, our shipping days are Monday and Friday. Orders will generally ship on the next shipping day after the order is placed, although it may be postmarked the next day because I often don't get to the post office until after they close for the day. If I'm swamped, your order may not ship the first shipping day after your order is placed, but will go out by the second shipping day after it is placed unless we tell you otherwise.
Do you ship internationally?
Absolutely! As long as you’re willing to pay the extra shipping, I’m more than happy to ship out your goodies to you! Depending on the weight of the order, your tarts will ship either via Airmail or via Global Priority and price will depend on which method is used and how heavy the package is.
What forms of shipping do you use?
I use Priority shipping or Express shipping (if you need your tarts in a hurry!) for domestic orders and will always ship your tarts in a hard box to prevent smushing. International orders are accepted, but shipping will be higher and will be sent by Global Priority in a hard box.
Is insurance available on packages?
Insurance is available on any domestic order for an additional price determined by the price of the contents of the package:
$1.35 ................ $0.01 to $50
$2.30 ................ $50.01 to $100
$3.35 ................ $100.01 to $200
$4.40 ................ $200.01 to $300
$5.45 ................ $300.01 to $400
$6.50 ................ $400.01 to $500
Do you accept returns or exchanges?
Due to the nature of the product, returns and exchanges will only be accepted if it’s due to a screw-up on my part (wrong scent, wrong product).
Do you offer wholesale sales/pricing?
Possibly. We haven't sat down and come up with a wholesale price list or established under what circumstances we'll provide bulk orders, but if you're interested in purchasing our tarts in bulk, feel free to email us and we'll get back to you ASAP.
Questions about the product:
How do I burn a tart?
Simple! :)
Step 1: Get a tart warmer (see the last question in the page for information on where to get one).
Step 2: If you have an electric tartwarmer, plug it in. If you have a tealight tart warmer (there won't be a cord), put an unscented tealight in the hollow inside and light it.
Step 3: Put your tart on the shallow dish on top.
Step 4: Sit back and let it melt!
To see a picture demonstration of one of 4FC's tarts melting, look here!
Once the scent has been used up or if I want to change the scent of tart I'm using, how do I get the wax out?
Simple once you know how to do it! :)
Step 1: Let the wax cool until it's hardened inside the dish of your tart warmer.
Step 2: Take out the tealight (if you're using a non-electric burner) or take off the dish if you're using an electric burner and place the dish (or the entire burner if you're using a tealight based one) in the freezer.
Step 3: Let it set for a while (how long will depend on your freezer's temperature and the wax, but about 15 minutes should do the job.)
Step 4: Remove the dish/burner from the freezer and either push gently on the wax, sliding it towards the edge of the burner or carefully place it upside down on a clean towel and tap on the bottom with either your knuckles or the butt of a butterknife (or anything else you have handy). Be careful not to hit it too hard! Tart burners are breakable! Step 5: The disc of wax should come free from the dish/burner. If it does, you can either throw it away (if the scent is used up) or put it in a ziploc baggie and save it for another time (if it still has scent left).
Step 6: If the wax doesn't come free from the dish, repeat the process until it does!
For a photo tutorial of how to remove the wax from the burner, please go here!
Do you use essential oils or fragrance oils in your tarts?
The majority of our tarts are made with fragrance oils, but we've recently introduced a couple of 100% essential oil-based tarts due to customer requests!
What kind of wax do you use?
4 Fat Cats uses a 100% soy wax made from pure, 100% natural botanical oils with a soybean base. This wax is completely biodegradable, contains no herbicides or pesticides and is safe enough to eat (not that we would recommend you eat your tarts, as good as they may smell!). It burns longer and cleaner, with less carbon build up and no pollutants than paraffin waxes. The wax we use is environmentally friendly and vegan.
Why are some of my tarts slightly bigger than others?
Because my tarts are handmade, there will be some differences from one tart to another when it comes to size. While I use the same size molds every time, sometimes the cups get filled a tiny bit more than other times and the resulting tart will be a tad bit bigger. :)
Why do some of my tarts have stronger throw than others?
Some of the scents I make are naturally stronger or lighter than others. It's just the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Scents like Wedding Cake and Cathedral are lighter than scents like Spiced Cranberry and Jakey's Down Under Thunder. I triple scent all of my tarts, but there will always be natural variations in scent strength depending on the scent. Our recommendation is to burn the lighter tarts in a smaller room to maximize their scent distribution, but you can, of course, burn them in whatever size room you want. :)
Can I get my tarts in colors?
For the moment, our tarts are only available in dye-free white wax (actual color will vary due to the color of the oil used to scent the melt), but we may offer an optional color choice at some point in the future.
If your tarts are dye-free, why is my _____ tart darker/ligher than my _____ tart?
While I don’t use dyes in my tarts, the oils used to scent the tarts are sometimes lighter or darker (for example, Deep Forest Meditation is darker than Cinnamon Toast or Pink Sugar) and this affects the final color of the tart!
Can I get a custom blend of scents listed in your scent catalogue?
Yes, you can, but we require that you buy the whole lot made in that scent (the number will vary depending on the scents you choose) if you choose to have a scent combination made as we would have to make a certain number and wouldn’t be putting the remainders on the site for sale if you didn’t want all the ones made in your particular scent combination choice. There will also be an additional wait period while we custom mix and create your tarts!
Are your scents custom blends?
Some are and some are not. Any blends custom made by 4 Fat Cats will be listed as a “4 Fat Cats house blend or signature blend.”
Why are the Top Shelf tarts more expensive than the regular tarts?
Because of the additional expense involved in buying the fragrance oils for these tarts, it was necessary to increase the price a bit to make sure that we wouldn’t be losing money by offering these complex scents.
About how long can I expect to be able to burn my tarts and still get a scent?
That depends on the scent and the size of your room, but the average seems to be about 6-12 hours (at the least, some go way longer!), depending on the scent!
Will my tarts arrive intact during the summer months or will they melt in transit?
That's not an easy question to answer because there's more involved than just the outside air temperature, but the melt point for the wax we use at 4FC is 130°F, so the chances of them melting is slim unless they spend a good deal of time in a closed up mailtruck or something like that.
Other questions:
Where can I get a tart warmer/burner?
We currently offer them on our website! If there are none in stock, let me know that you'd like one and I'll let you know as soon as they're back in stock!
If you have 5 cats between you and your mother-in-law, why is the business called 4 Fat Cats?
That's an easy one. We had 4 cats who happened to be fat when the business was started (Bella, Raven, Scratch and Spooky). Our feline family has grown since then with the addition of Mojie and Pickles (and technically, there's a 7th cat who is definitely fat in spite of being a stray: Sabbath) and then shrunk again with the loss of Spooky in March, 2007. 4 Fat Cats was named for the original kitties (and, if we were to change it now, which we aren't going to, we'd have to rename it 4 Fat Cats & 1 Skinny One, Too).