Kitty litter: old fashioned or scoopable?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So. Like it says: which type of kitty litter do you use? Which do you find better? Why? Do your cats seem to like what you use?

Why am I asking? I generally use the old-fashioned, pour it all in the litter pan and change the entire pan every week kind, Tidy Cat to be exact. However, recently my kitty has been more interested in peeing on my carpet in the basement (it’s finished) rather than in her box. (I think it’s due to pets of the previous owner doing the same thing than any kitty health problems she’s having).

After banishing her from the basement, I’m hoping to find any other solutions that I can implement. I’d use the scoopable kind, but I don’t know if I want to deal with the scooping, although it’s admittedly probably no worse than the weekly dumping I’m doing. Thought I’d mob the board for your general opinions.
Snicks

2

“Litter” that is. Apologies for the goofy subject line.

Nuts.
Snicks

3

I use the scoopable kind.

It’s what my friend was using when she had to get rid of her cats. Since they’re used to that kind, I’ve stuck with it.

Scooping isn’t that bad. I do it twice a day, morning and evening, mainly because I don’t want my apartment to start stinking (it’s on the small side). It’s just become part of my start/end of the day routine.

Of course, it’s never clean for long, since Jake sees a clean litter box as a reason to poop.

4

I give my cats a choice. I have 3 cats, 4 litterboxes. It seems they pee in the scoopable, and poop in the regular clay.

5

We just switched to scoopable this week. I always understood that even if you don’t use the scoopable litter, you were to scoop what you could daily, and change the entire box weekly to get rid of the urine. So now, with the scoopable, we scoop everything, wet and “dry,” so we don’t have to change the whole box as often.

My kitties are still young and don’t appear to be finicky, so they seem to have hardly noticed the change. I think it smells better, though, because we get all the stinky stuff out earlier. And if it smells better even to me, with my inferior human nose, I imagine they must really notice the difference! :slight_smile:

6

Scoopable. If we should lose track and not scoop in a timely fashion, we will be soundly meowed at until we right the wrong.

Yeah, just a little bit of feline attitude there.

7

We switched to scoopable in the last year, and boy-o-boy, are we glad we did. No more urine odor, no more lugging the huge kitty box out to the garbage, where I was overcome by the ammonia fumes more than once on a hot day. And my garbage man isn’t throwing shit at the house anymore, either! :wink:

The girls seem to love it, except for the infant, who just can’t seem to hoist her little kitty butt over the wall and leaves a telltale tootsie roll on the floor for us (right outside the box).

8

Well, actually, I use a toilet, and my cat, Boojum, prefers that I don’t use his litterbox. But he does like watching things go round and round and round when I flush.

Now, if what you all are calling “scoopable” is that fine-grained clumping stuff, then I prefer to put down the old-fashioned clay for Boo. The clumping litter sticks to him too much, especially the fur between the pads on his paws.

Not that the litterbox is an ideal solution. See, Boojum is a rather large, 22 lb male, and he’s not overweight. I have difficulty finding litterboxes big enough for him… and finding a place to put a litterbox that big.

Right now, since we just moved in with ladybug, he’s just using a standard size box, and frequently, he will miss. It’s not his fault… he gets all four paws in the box, it’s just that the important parts are hanging over the edge.

And he’s not quite clear on the concept of “inside” the box and “outside” the box. Half the time, he’ll try and cover his turds by scratching the floor outside the box. This, of course, results in an extra stinky mess, causing ladybug to moan and complain and gripe about the odor until someone scoops the catshit out of the litterbox and takes it outside. And guess how often that someone is her?

Never.

But if I say anything like “gee, just wait until you have to change diapers,” then I’m the one who’s done something wrong…

Sorry, I better stop before this gets moved to the Pit…

9

Maybe it was just a myth but, I heard that that scoopable stuff was bad for the cat because they ingest it when they lick their paws and then it gets into their stomach and sops up liquid as it would in the box.

Makes a good story though.

10

We use scoopable. But the standard removal ‘scoopers’ bend or break under the increased weight. Next time I’m at Home Depot I’m going to pick up a small gardening shovel for the ‘cat boxes’.

11

Can I put in a pitch for an all-natural, scoopable litter made out of whole ground corn? It’s great stuff. We scooped the clumps and solid waste once a day or so, or really, when ever I happened to notice, since we keep the litter box in the bathroom, then flush it down the toilet. Voila! Perpetually clean litter box, and the litter was great, no smell at all, and it’s just corn, so it won’t hurt him if he licks it off his paws*. It clumps so well, that we only dumped the whole litter box about once every other month, as it was so easy to remove the dirty litter. We just added a bit more if it got too low.
We’ve since switched to the sillica litter crystals, the stuff that absorbs urine, then gets dumped once a month. We scoop the solid waste and have to take it outside to the garbage can, which takes a whole lot longer and means the box doesn’t get scooped nearly as often, but that’s a decent sacrifice to have a kitty who’s breath now smells like cat food**!

~mixie

*Or regularly munches on it as a snack. Cursed piss-breathed cat!

**And not piss!

12

Somehow, it just strikes me as wrong to replace dirt (clay) with a food product. Seems to be going exactly the opposite way we should be going, environmentally.

Now, I realize we currently have a surplus of corn (locally here in the USA – in other parts of the world there are famines). And that it’s a renewable product; it grows every year (but it takes energy, fertilizer, etc.) – clay is available at much less cost to the environment.

Personally, I’d have a real hard time doing this. Everytime I filled my cats litter box with corn, I’d think of the children dying of starvation around the world! I don’t think I’d be able to keep doing this every week.

13

Cant you just turn kitty into an indoor outdoor beast?

Seriously, my friends swear by that crystal stuff. Apparently it’s really odor absorbent, and it dehydrates the poo as well.

14

Well, sure, except a single bag, that is to say one litter box full plus a bit of topping off, lasted us two months, rather than the clay-litter users I know who have to dump and replace several pounds of clay litter weekly. We topped it off once or twice, but didn’t have to change the entire litter pan for two whole months. That seems a lot less wasteful to me, food product or no. Which would use more resources–mining clay for, say, eight times the amount of clay litter, plus doing whatever manufacturing needs to be done to turn it into litter–or taking surplus corn, and grinding it down to litter sized crumbles? Add into that the fact that corn litter doesn’t contain sillica dust which is known to cause upper respiratory problems, and I’m guessing there are more benefits to the corn litter than just the ease of use.

~mixie

15

I should note that I am actually asking, I don’t have any idea which is cheaper to produce. I know the corn litter is more expensive per bag, but it’s a “gourmet” type product, plus it works out to be far cheaper per use due to the fact that you don’t constantly have to dump and replace it.

~mixie

16

We love the scoopable but it does have one drawback. It contains a lot of very fine powder. It gets everywhere when we pour it and will sometimes form a nice concrete on the bottom.

Scooping each day certainly eliminates a lot of Bad Stuff left elsewhere in the house.

17

Scoopable - cleaned twice a day, thrown out once a month. Check your local store circulars for the “buy one get one free” offers. I don’t prefer any one brand, although I heard the ones with the blue crystals aren’t too good - the scoopable concept is relatively old at this point, so most big grocery stores offer their own brand at significant savings.

18

I can not find any ‘scoopable’ litter that is not drenched with same nasty cheap scent that I find more offensive than cat urine.

Furthermore, if there is a car accident in front of your house, the clay litter is great for absorbing the radiator fluid. The scoopable sticks to the road; really difficlut to clean up.

19

Scoopable, flushable stuff. I’ve been using it for 13 years - it’s much easier, and the kitties seem to like it. The only bad thing is that it’s dustier, and it does track some. It wasn’t noticable when I had carpet, but now I have wood floor.

20

Tried lots of different types this summer and found the regular Fresh Step to be the best by far - did not try the crystals yet.