Crystals seem pretty similar to non-clumping clay. You have to dump the boxes completely and the idea of my cats stepping in urine-soaked litter over the course of a week or two, and stepping around an accumulation of poo over a week’s time is not appealing to me. With good clumping litter, I scoop every other day (more than one box per cat here - would do every day if I had fewer boxes), into a doggie doodoo bag and then into a diaper bin that I take out about every 2 weeks.
Using the really hard clumping litter, I don’t have to do complete box changes. When they get low, I’ll dump one into another to wipe it out once in a while, each box getting a full wipe-down about twice a year, but that’s it.
I also use World’s Best Cat Litter (Thanks to the suggestion of a fellow Doper). I love it because I can go three days with out having to scoop. But I will say that once the litter goes bad, it REALLY goes bad, which is about 10 to 14 days for my two cats.
I also wish the bags were a little bigger because my cats are big which means my litter box is big.
Yes–the stuff in the red or green bags, but not the purple; the latter has a lavender smell the cats don’t like.
I used to use SWheatscoop, which also clumps nicely and smells very nice fresh out of the bag, but gets nasty after awhile even with frequent scooping.
If your cat tears the lining, here’s tip to keep the bottom of the box from getting disgusting. You need 2 linings and one of those absorbent puppy-training pads. Put down one lining in the box, then the pad, then the other lining to contain the litter. You’ll have to change the upper lining as usual and change the pad once in awhile if the upper lining gets ripped and pee and dirty litter gets through. But you rarely have to change the bottom lining or scrub out the box.
Another vote for Feline Pine (‘wood pellets’ in the poll). It does a good job of keeping the odour down, and it’s cheap. The last bag has been Petsmart’s ExquisiCat pine litter. It’s cheaper than Feline Pine for a bigger bag. It’s the same thing, but it smells a little different to me.
ISTM we’re going through it faster than the Feline Pine brand. This might be because I put more in the box than the SO does, or it might be because I change the litter every couple of days while she sprinkles it with baking soda when it gets smelly. I mentioned in another thread that the SO had some surgery a couple of months ago. She found it comfortable to put an air mattress on the living room floor and sleep out there. I also mentioned that we acquired Creamsicle Kitty, a stray, and Tonka urinated on the temporary bed a few times. The SO decided to sleep in the living room the other night, just for the change. (She does that.) Tonka urinated on the air mattress again, though he and Creamsicle are pretty much getting along now. I’m keeping an eye on his litter box so that he can’t use that as an excuse to relieve himself inappropriately. And that tends to use more litterl.
Tried that. At the time I had two cats, both long-haired, so both have tufty paws, so they TRACK EVERYTHING through out the house. Stepping barefoot on those crystals is almost as bad as stepping on a Lego block. (At least they look sorta pretty in the litter box!)
Now I’m down to one kitteh (for now!) and she’s not bad about digging hard, and doesn’t track nearly as badly as the recently-departed Maine Coon, so I might try them again when my budget allows. For now, though, I’m using Albertson’s store-brand clumping. Yes, it’s dusty, and yes, it’s strip-mined, but it’s cheap and it works. Works better than most name brand versions I’ve tried, interestingly enough.
SWheatScoop isn’t bad, but the lack of clumping made it difficult to scoop properly.
The thing about pine litter is that you don’t have to scoop at all. It decomposes when it gets wet, so we just dump and replace. We just cover the bottom of the litter box; so even though we change litter frequently, we’re not using that much each time. (But it still seems we’re going through it faster since it became my job.)
I started using Pure Nature a couple of months ago and really like it. The bags are lightweight. You really do have to scoop every day, though, because, although it clumps, the clumps are soft and cats tromping around on them will break them up.
Amen! Two cats (on the small end of normal), two litter boxes, two bags of all crystal litter (not picky about the brand, but faced with bigger crystals or smaller crystals, I chose bigger, because it doesn’t track), one month.
We don’t scoop. We don’t even stir. The bottom is funky by the time we dump and fill, but we have the best cats in the world and they don’t mind. Never had an “accident”.
Total love.
(Oh, and my mother the cat hater can’t smell a thing. Believe me, she’s not shy about sharing. But the crystals dehydrate the poop in a matter of minutes, so it’s poop jerky, and draw the urine to the bottom and absorb it all.)
Same here, but both of my cats like chewing on plastic (and one occasionally swallows - she’s my not-so-bright one).
I tried the lighter litter a few months ago - mistake. I never realized how much I relied on the weight of the litter clumps to clean the box. Both of mine always go RIGHT in the corner of the box so the clumps are always stuck to the walls. If the litter isn’t heavy, I have to manually scrape it off the wall instead of just shaking the side of the box to dislodge it.