My opinions about litter types, from my own experience.

First, some background:

I am blessed with two ex-male cats who will use whatever I put in their litter boxes. They have two boxes, both covered, one with a flap door (Booda brand) and one with no door(taller and deeper than Booda). I had to get covered boxes because one cat digs to China with every visit and the other likes to back up to the corner of the box and pee over the edge. The box with the door is in the kitchen and the other is in my bathroom.

The "Experiments":

I have tried:

• commercial clumping litter (Tidy Cats Scoop, Fresh Step Scoop):

  benefits: inexpensive, clumps well, decent odor control

  drawbacks: dusty (silica dust), tracks everywhere, not generally flushable or biodegradable, potentially harmful if ingested in large quantities

• Swheat Scoop:

  benefits: clumps, flushable, only a little more expensive than commercial clumpers, not harmful if ingested, pretty good odor control, biodegradable

  drawbacks: has to be deep (4") or clumps will stick to bottom of pan, dusty (but not as bad as above), gets scattered everywhere by digger cat and tracks everywhere

• Feline Pine:

  benefits: flushable, only a little more expensive than Swheat Scoop, good odor control, biodegradable, only have to scoop poop (pine pellets absorb urine and become sawdust), sawdust can be added to your garden or compost heap (neither of which I have in the apartment)

  drawbacks: sawdust tracks and gets scattered, have to get a scoop that allows the pellets to fall through while holding on to the poop, litter gets deeper with use

  Note: I found changing litter with Feline Pine to be a real chore, mostly because I didn't want to discard all of the pellets that were still usable. I found myself sifting and saving off the pellets (sometimes I could get up to a third of the original amount back), which is very time consuming. If you don't mind tossing the whole lot, then it's no more tedious than any other litter.

• Litter pearls (only used in kitchen box with door flap):

  benefits: absorbs urine but doesn't breakdown like Feline Pine, only have to scoop poop (flushable), controls urine odor well, no dust at all.

  drawbacks: pearls are round and get scattered despite flap door. Then they roll all over the kitchen like little clear ball-bearings! More expensive, although they last a while (1 month for one cat and one box).

Conclusion:

I went back to sweat scoop in the bathroom box after Feline Pine, but now I remember why I stopped using it: I hate having to sweep the bathroom twice a day to control the scattered wheat flakes. The feline pine sawdust was never as bad, even when the box was mostly sawdust.

Both boxes have a litter mat in front to catch some of the tracked out litter. The mats help a lot, but I still get tracked litter beyond the mats.

My cats don't seem to have a preference (they both like to play with stray Feline pine pellets and litter pearls though).

Hope this helps anyone contemplating a change.

This article is Copyright © Caroline J. Swindell, and printed with permission of the author.
January 12, 2000

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