Watching a woman haul a large bag of kitty litter out of a store got me wondering.
Before modern kitty litter, what was used to fill a litter box for indoor cats? Dirt? Sand? Scrap paper? Was there something specific, or was it “whatever is around”?
Wikipedia’s article on “cat litter” is straightforward:
The real question, to me, is “How old is the concept of indoor litter boxes?”
Heck, I used sand in my cat’s box as a kid. You still frequently hear cat boxes referred to as “sandboxes”. It wasn’t until I had cats in my own apartment that I used kitty litter. Some people still advocate for sand - you generally don’t throw it out in the trash (sand doesn’t clump), so it doesn’t fill landfills. And some cats have developed respiratory problems from clumping litter.
I’ll bet sandboxes were devised by people keeping cats in the city.
I imagine there used to be lots more indoor-outdoor cats . . . with much shorter life expectancy.
One of the books I read before I got a cat (sorry, I don’t know which one and certainly don’t have it anymore) said that the popularity of indoor cats, and cats-as-pets in general (as opposed to cats as pets who were also working vermin eradicators, for example, and barn cats) skyrocketed with the invention of clay litter. Previously I imagine most people with cats did have them as indoor-outdoor pets.
Shredded newspaper works in a pinch, but is pretty messy.
If they didn’t throw the sand out, what did they do when the cat peed on it?
I mean, back before clumping litter existed, and we had cats, we dumped the entire contents of the litterbox ever week or thereabouts (we scooped the poops every day). This was using regular clay litter. Wouldn’t you do the same with sand?
Well, when I was using it, it was “me” that threw the sand out, not “they”. I was acutely aware of this on a regular basis.
Yes, yiou throw the sand out regularly. How often depends upon how many cats you have, and how often they pee and poop (you scoop out the poop, of course, but you never get it all), and how big the box is, and how often they go outside and find an alternate spot. But at least once a wek you throw out the contents of the box. The point is, you don’t have to put it in the garbage if you have access to, say, a large tract of woods or something. It’s not toxic waste – your cat would be peeing and pooping in those woods any way. The point of using the sandbox is that your cat has someplace to go indoors.
Even a cat-as-pet is a vermin eradicator, whether or not the owners choose to notice that. They’ll eat bugs, mice, birds, and everything else they can get their paws or teeth on.
Now, cats are playful, and this does sometimes mean that they will drag a living animal into the house. Our cats (one in particular was notorious for this) would drag in a bird, a mouse, a slug, whatever, and leave it as a present for us (usually in the bathroom, where she could somehow close the door most of the way after depositing a present).
We used to move from Los Angeles to Ensenada during my school summer months (about 1/4 of the year), and we’d take 1 or 2 of our cats down there with us. There’s lots of obvious clues that mice inhabit the beach house while we’re gone (droppings, chewed things, etc.) and we can even see them when we first arrive (they’re bold after several months of no humans). But withint he first few days, the cats usually gobble them right up. This is in comparison to times we would use mouse traps instead of cats as mousers - cats are far more effective.
Yeah, since I got the third! cat, I haven’t had the roach people come and spray. I figure the cats are going to eat the roaches anyway and I don’t want them eating something that died of poisoning even if they say it’s safe. The only roaches I see these days are the pieces the cats barf up sometimes.