Cat litter

Well, the kittens have now turned into little cats almost and touch wood are doing ok at litter training.

We don’t normally have litter trays in the house as the cats all pretty much come and go as they please, even when the kittens were first born Biscuit wasn’t shut in with them until they had started exploring but weren’t big enough to be left out on their own and even then it was only when we weren’t home.

I haven’t liked buying cat litter; most cat litter is made from clay and although I am not sure how or why I remember it being explained to me how unsustainable and bad this was, something to do with the mining for the clay or maybe where it comes from? If anyone knows more than I’d be really interested as my google searches haven’t turned anything up.**

My google searches did turn up information about wood based cat litter which is made from ‘wastage’ from soft wood industries. It is basically little pellets of saw dust.

We have been experimenting with it and so far have tried two different brands – Morrison’s own brand and The Co-op’s own brand – and both have been pretty much the same just a little different in colour (however the Morrison’s one does come in plastic packaging whereas the Co-ops one comes in a paper one).  

There is one big downside to this kind of cat litter though; when the pellets get wet they swell and turn back to wood dust which seems to stick to the cats feet and so they walk it everywhere meaning that it is only really practical to use in the short-term.

It’s little things like this that mean a lot of people chose not to use the most eco-friendly option and it drives me mad but is something I’m not really sure how it can be dealt with.

**UPDATE – MyZeroWaste has posted about this subject this morning and it explains why clay cat litter is bad MyZeroWaste