I had to buy another 20 pounds of kitty litter last night. After moving to a place that does not do recycling, I made a point of buying a large plastic tub and refilling it from paper boxes of litter. I feel it’s a little better, environmentally, to do that.
When I pulled down that box of Fresh Step last night, I was thinking about the many pounds of cat poop that I have scooped over the years, all to be tied up in plastic bags and taken to a dump somewhere. I was feeling a bit remorseful about it, when I looked up and saw a bag of scoop-and-flush biodegradable cat litter.
I have two cats. Two cats generate a lot more poop than you would think, especially if you take their size into account. I bet these cats poop their own weight over the course of a week. Well, some of it is urine, which gets soaked up into little urine bricks by the cat litter, and those weigh a pretty alarming amount too. These bricks don’t smell good, either. Kitties in general do not smell very much like roses.
I’ve got a very, very small apartment. To fit the litter pan in the bathroom, I have to sit on the toilet sideways. That means whatever stinkiness my kitties are responsible for permeates the apartment. I need litter that has level 18 stench resistance.
To know about any scientific benefit, you would have to take into account all that extra flushing plus the treatment load of the coat poop plus whatever the litter is. It may not be environmentally favorable at all (or it might) but those are the kinds of things you have to think of.
Let’s see, amount of water plus increased load to water treatment plants plus manufacturing of litter contrasted against space taken in landfill by non-biodegradable litter plus poop and that manufacturing process plus plastic to wrap plus…too many variables. My head hurts already.
My feeling is that if you live anywhere where your potable water source is not generally replenish able (i.e. from an underground aquifer), then you’re better off just using the landfill. If you live in a place where landfill space is a huge premium (i.e. athens), then flushable might be better.
What I’m really interested is in how effective natural cat litters are with odor. I’ve never tried it, and might be willing to try a flushable litter, but don’t want to waste my money tossing it out after having choked on kitty fumes.
I don’t think we have problems with landfill space, but I don’t think we have problems with water, either. I’m on city water.
Flushable cat litter does okay covering up the smell of poo, but when I scooped it to flush it the smell of the urine made me run from the room gagging. If you are using it solely to cover smell I would suggest scoopable clay litter with baking soda.
Ugh. Cat urine. I have a horrible story about cat urine. It would make this thread a bit TMI, though, if it isn’t already a little bit that way anyway…
Okay, you guys have nearly persuaded me out of it. Although the convenience is tempting, like Quiddity said.
There’s a wheat-based clumpable litter called ‘Swheat’ that’s flushable, although I have yet to flush it instead of dumping it.
That being said, so far it has done a GREAT job at controlling odor: I only notice a smell now when either a) my cat has just gotten done using the box or b) it’s getting time to do a complete toss and refill instead of topping off (which is about once a month or so: depends on how often we’ve had canned tuna that month ).
And the cat seems to agree on the odor control as well: she’s no longer trying to dig to China in order to bury things deep enough to mask the odor.
The only downside I’ve noticed is that if it’s humid enough, it tends to take awhile to clump up firmly.
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I tried several kinds of the biodegradable stuff. Picky kitties did not like it and chose to poop on the floor in front of the box instead. (This was with slow introduction of the new stuff into the regular litter.) Oh well. Back to the regular. I think this would have worked if the picky girls were introduced to it at an earlier age, not well into stubborn middle age.
All in all I tried: some kind of cedar-mulch stuff, the wheat stuff, and the piney-pellet stuff. The wheat was the nicest, it clumped fairly well. Even if you didn’t flush it, you would still be using a more earth-friendly product.
Great, we get a cat Friday. Now I’m kinda freakin’. I spent a ton last night on stuff just for poop but doubt that’ll keep up with and animal that craps it’s own weight 52 times a year.
And congrats on the kitty! They’re demonspawn, but I love them!
Okay, now I’m kind of freakin’ a little too. Kitties pooping in front of the box instead of inside kind of disrupts the natural order of things.
Wheat sounds like the best option. Better Way litter is cedar, unfortunately. I bet if I go to my natural food store I can find the wheat stuff. But still…pooping outside the box…not an option.
I’ve used “the worlds best cat litter” in the past. It’s a corn based clumpable flushable litter. Expensive, but I was rather pleased with the performance. No terrible urine odor issues, but that’s going to depend on your cats and your habits.
I’ve switched back to regular Fresh Step since I’ve moved to a home with a basement for the litter pan. I’m much happier having the litter down there instead of in the bathroom.
Thanks, Elysian. She’s a little Maine Coon, a shelter cat we’ve agreed to adopt. Actually, this is my fifth but the first indoor cat, a condition of her adoption, so I’m going all out to try and prevent any odor as we’re just not used to it. Importantly though, this will be my daughter’s first kitter so I’m really excited for her. She’s beside herself with anticipation.
We’re going the Scoop Away route first but I’m really paying attention to everyone’s experiences here. Quiddity, do you know if it was an economic or legal reason it’s now unavailable in Canada?
AFAI can tell, it’s the Jinx of Products I Like that reared its ugly head again. I think the company just decided it was too much hassle to export or something. I switched to Maxx Scoop which seemed almost as good but didn’t have the deodorizer options.
Chiming in on the love for Swheat Scoop. My cats love it, I never notice any smell unless the box is freshly pooped in, and the stuff dissolves when hitting water and so flushes easily. One 40-lb bag (a bit over $20) keeps two large litter boxes in good condition for a month. My friends with the 5 cats have recently converted to it and they are quite happy with it, too.
Two votes for wheat, one for corn. Isn’t it nice that they’ve started to really work on the natural cat litter option now? I’m not too worried about my kitties being overly picky and pooping outside the box, now that I think about it. I have changed litter styles and brands often over the past seven years and they haven’t turned a hair.
Now, they are very picky about what they eat. IAMS exclusively, or they act like I’m wringing their little kitty necks. Go into full panic mode, writhe on the kitchen floor, begging me to have mercy. Such drama queens
I think I’ve tried most, if not all, of the natural litter products. Here’s my take:
Pine stuff: Keeps odor down, one cat was ok with it, the other didn’t really like it. Doesn’t clump.
News-something the recycled paper pellets: Didn’t do anything for odor, didn’t clump. Not flushable. No go.
Swheat scoop: Cats liked it. Good on odor. Tracked horribly though. Clumped into such solid pieces that I couldn’t get them off the bottom of the litter box. That became a big problem.
PaPurr (recycled paper but not pellets): Currently using this. Cats like it. (It’s the most similar in look and feel to clay litter.) Pretty good on odor control but needs to be scooped and more importantly stirred daily. The pee doesn’t dry unless it’s exposed to the air so stirring it up keeps it from getting nasty. If you don’t stir it, it does start to smell. It does have some sort of “fresh” bits in it that help, but again only when stirred. Flushable.
Overall, I like the pine. The cat likes the PaPurr.
Unfortunately I had the same experience with the corn-based “World’s Best Kitty Litter”, which I tried out last year with the new kittens. It claims to be “low tracking”, but if so I’d hate to see the “high tracking” version. Little paw prints of corn dust everywhere. It was barely adequate, but no more than that, in terms of odor issues.
Frankly I’ve gone utterly unnatural and use silica ( not the beads, which roll everywhere ), which as far as I can tell is best odor controller. But I wouldn’t flush it, not all cats will tolerate it and I’d be pretty careful with kittens that might try to eat the litter ( some will ).
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