This is picking up pet hair, sometimes with a few passes, but it doesn't seem strong enough to pick up kitty litter or small "needles" from my asparagus fern no matter how often I go over it. In fact the needles got stuck in the hose and when I turned the machine off, they mostly fell out and some I had to pull out. The canister was not full at all. It just seemed the machine was not strong enough to pull it into the canister.