I have to admit, I don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about cat litter. Some of this is by design- when I was pregnant in 2004, I told my husband he had to change the cat litter because otherwise MY ENTIRE PREGNANCY WAS AT RISK (which, by the way, is not entirely true- one needs to take precautions, true, but changing litter during pregnancy isn’t an automatic Toxoplasmosis infection.)
Anyway, I left out that last part because I was happy to have an excuse to hand over litter duties, and I just never took them back. So here we are, that baby is now five, and my husband still does most of the litter changing. He has in this time become a bit of a litter connoisseur, dictating with precision which qualities makes a good or a poor choice with the snobbiness of a Beluga caviar taster.
Smell, dust, scatter, all of these things factor into his poorly described algorithm, and I simply just buy a new container of litter every week and hope I picked the right one. “What eeez theeees?” said with a sneer meets a bad choice, one a little too dusty. “I hate zee marbles!” he declares when I tried a container of crystals. I’m still a little unclear on which one he actually liked, but that’s OK.
I tried some of the more environmentally-friendly litters a while back, paper ones and pine ones, and found them soggy and a bit smelly, so I’ve been sticking to clumping litter ever since. Then the people over at World’s Best Cat Litter sent me a sample bag to try out. Our resident litter expert (aside from Apollo) was dubious, but agreed to give it a shot.
I asked my co-worker/ cat expert what she thought of it, and she told me that it is all she uses in her house of 13 cats. That alone was encouraging. I guess I haven’t been keeping up with litter technology evolution, but this litter wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
- It’s a corn-based litter- so it avoids the problem of silica inhalation for both pets and people (which is a very legitimate concern, especially with the abundance of feline asthmatics.)
- It’s the same approximate size and shape of clumping litter, so my cat accepted it with zero problem.
- It clumps very well. Their claim that urine clumps are smaller than traditional litter did hold in our house.
- I also agree with the claim that it doesn’t sink to the bottom and create glued-to-the-box clumps.
- It smells like, well, corn. It has a bit of an organic smell to it which is not at all disagreeable and not chemical-ly like a lot of scented litters. After one week of daily scooping, it still smelled fine.
- It’s biodegradable, and can be flushed in some locations (not in California!)
So help me god, I when I first opened the bag I sat there just smelling it trying to decide what type of hay it reminded me of before realizing that I was sitting in the garage sniffing cat litter. That’s the kind of thing you usually find neighbors talking about on the evening news. Then each day this week I actually stuck my face waaaaay too close to the box trying to be offended by the smell. It didn’t happen. Look, I’m not saying I want a perfume version of the stuff or anything, but so far as odor goes- I’m hard to please, and this worked very, very well.
The official statement from my husband, on the other hand, is “It doesn’t scatter dust all over my garage,” which is apparently his number one concern. High praise from Mr. Particular.
I’m more impressed than I thought I would be. It really is a great product- and widely available at pet stores. I’m convinced- we’re making the change!
I use Swheat Scoop, which is similar but wheat-based. I may try to find this stuff at the store – I had a friend call me asking it was okay to use clumping litter yesterday. Her cat has been having litterbox issues and the vet recommended trying a clumping litter. Now I have two brands she can try!
I use this litter and LOVE it. Well, I don’t use it, Cami does, but I have to scoop it. We can flush it here, and that’s wonderful, since both of her littler boxes are in the bathrooms (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs). I personally do not have a problem with odor from it at all. I’ve read that some people sprinkle some baking soda in when they put a fresh bag in the litterbox, and I tried that once, but the baking soda got all over the house from her paws.
Sometimes I’ll get a bag that has a slightly different texture (for lack of a better word) and it will track a bit more, but I’d say 75% of the time, the tracking problem is nill. The other 25% is no worse than any other litter I’ve tried, so I deal with it. Being able to flush it is worth it, IMO.
I’m surprised he didn’t like the crystal litter!! I love it because you only have to scoop poop, which it dries up into nice, relatively odorless little pellets. In fact, the only thing I don’t like is stepping on stray crystals with bare feet. OUCH. But I know it’s not for everyone… and I’m totally grinning thinking of you sitting in your garage, smelling cat litter. 😀
And for some reason, this post reminds me of the time when my little brother was, well, little, and he peed into the litter box, “to see if it clumps”. Little boys are HILARIOUS. As you have one, I thought you’d laugh at this… 😀
OH no, DON’T give my son any ideas! LOLOL!!!
Wow, thanks for this. I’d never heard of this stuff before, but anything that makes scooping 4 cats’ worth of litter smell less is a good thing. Adding this to my grocery list for today.
I just wanted to add that it seems a bit pricey at first, but it really does last a long time. And, PetSmart regularly has it on sale.
I commented on FB already, but I was incredibly surprised when Dakota decided she didn’t want to pee on her fancy new litter, but instead wanted to eat it. We seriously found her sitting outside the brand new litter box with the brand new litter, going at it like a giant bowl of corn. Needless to say, we quickly replaced it with regular litter.
Oh eeewwwww! So something my cat would do too.
Great, I’m definitely trying this out. My husband and I also have a disagreement about litter. He tries to buy the cheaper stuff sometimes, and I can always tell when he does, the sneaky bastard.
@casacaudill: my little one tried to eat the WBCL when we first switched over as well and she still nibbles when I give her a fresh box. However, there is no doubt that it is her litterbox, not her feed bowl. I got her to switch by placing some old clumps from a dirty box near the entrance… that turned her off to the eating! Plus, if they do eat a little, it’s OK… it’s just corn!
We use Swheat Scoup at our house, and keep the litter box right next to the toilet. LOVE it because of the same reasons you posted above: no chemicals, it’s flushable and it doesn’t smell. I mean, it doesn’t smell like gross perfumey kitty litter AND it doesn’t smell like kitty pee. This stuff is great. The only time I ever get an odor out of that box is when someone forgets to “cover up her work” in there, if you know what I mean. And that’s saying something with three cats!
One thing that is recommended by Swheat Scoup is to “pretreat” your litter box before you pour the fresh litter into it. They suggest spraying the sides and bottom with non stick cooking spray. Which seems really odd, but holy heck, does it work!! No more scraping clumps suck to the bottom! And you can even get organic spray, so again, no harmful chemicals for Kitty.
Also, I used this litter when I was fostering kittens. When kittens are starting to use the litter box you don’t’ want to use a clumping litter. The thought is that if they ingest it while they are exploring, it could clump in their little tummies and create a dangerous obstruction. This litter is essentially food, so I didn’t have worry about it!
I have never heard that tip about cooking spray! What an idea!! I’ll have to try it.
I go through a lot of litter. With three cats and five litter boxes, you can just imagine. One of my cats is asthmatic, so I switched to Yesterdays News. My cats– who didn’t like crystals when I tried those– loved this immediately. I love it because it doesn’t smell like, well, clay cat litter. I clean the boxes 3-4 times a day, so “cat smells” are never a problem. My only issue with it is the price and the fact that I go through it so much. They used to put coupons in all the bags, but those are few and far between these days. Which is too bad, because I need all the help I can get!
are you guys still using this cat litter for Apollo? I’ve been reading a lot of reviews about this litter (pet food direct, Amazon) and some of them are reaally negative, but i’d really like to switch to something more organic, and i can’t decide, some customers claim there was a quality change and this litter no longer works as well as it used to? I just hate inhalling that awful tidy cats litter when ever i clean out his litter box.