The Skinny on Cat Litter
One of the necessary evils of having indoor cats is kitty litter. Having 6 cats we’ve tried out pretty much every kind of litter under the sun. The traditional kind, pine, corn and walnut. I’m here to give you the skinny on cat litters.
I’ve had cats my whole life. Growing up my parents always used the grey kind. This is what people traditionally think of when they think of cat litter. It smells funny, it’s dusty and it gets EVERYWHERE. It is usually a sodium bentonite clay based litter. Bentonite clay can absorb many times its mass in water. This is what makes it so effective at clumping. Personally this is my least favorite litter out there. Besides the fact that it’s messy, dusty and smells funny it can cause cats to have health issues.
Cats like to groom themselves often, this includes directly after going to the bathroom. Because of this they end up consuming some of that litter. The ingestion of the clay can cause a cat to have hydration problems especially if they are young. Cat’s kidneys are extremely sensitive. If they don’t consume enough water they get damaged. (This is why most cats get kidney disease in their old age. They are not designed to eat dry food.) Most likely you cat will be fine using this litter. Personally I prefer to avoid it just in case.
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Pine litters are a step above in my opinion. They are safer plus you can always grow more pine trees which makes it more sustainable. I find these litters frustrating however. They really do not clump which makes them a pain to scoop and leaves more saturated litter in the pan than other kinds. If I had to pic between clay and pine I would choose pine but it’s definitely not my first choice. The one benefit is that if you mill wood on your property you have excess wood shaving you could use thus making your litter free!
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There are also corn based litters like World’s Best. These are pretty decent though pricey. They don’t have a weird smell, they aren’t dusty and they are naturally based. This is huge for us! We are currently experimenting with composting cat waste. Composting wouldn’t really be possible with a bentonite clay litter. Corn Litters also don’t seem to find their way clear across the house like the clay litter. This is another kind you might be able to produce yourself if you can grow enough corn.
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Our absolute favorite litter we’ve tried is walnut. This litter is made by Blue Buffalo. It is of course the most expensive of the litters. It has all the same benefits of the corn litters but seems to last longer than the corn and smells just marginally better. If you’re going to shell out for a high quality cat litter you might as well go for the walnut. It’s definitely worth the extra $4 over the World’s Best.
We have never tried the crystal types and don’t plan to. They are the most unnatural option with more toxins. They can be dangerous if your cat eats them and the litters are expensive.
Recently, I was trying to find a way to produce our own litter. I thought if I could find out how World’s Best makes theirs, I could experiment with making our own out of corn. What I came across was genius though not what I expected. In a forum someone mentioned that they use chicken feed as cat litter. It’s mostly made of corn and soy anyway so it would be similar to corn based litters. The added nutrients aren’t likely to hurt your cat. So we tried it out and it works! It clumps just as well as the corn based litters.
The major advantage to using chicken feed is the cost. A 28lb bag of World’s Best will run you about $23. A 50lb bag of chicken feed will cost around $17. That’s .82 a lb for World’s Best vs .34 a lb for chicken feed. Pretty much a no brainer. The other benefit is you can buy organic chicken feed but not organic cat litter (even organic chicken feed is cheaper). World’s Best does not say much about where they source their corn so it’s safe to say that it’s GMO. Normally, I wouldn’t worry about my cats using GMO corn to pee in however we want to find a way to use all of our waste. This means we are trying to find ways to compost the cat waste. Once it’s composted we want to use it and I don’t want to use compost made from GMO corn on our property if we can help it.
Just a little info on keeping your litter boxes clean. Ideally you should have a litter box for each cat plus one extra. We normally have 5 and that works fine. They should be scooped every. Single. Day. We scoop ours twice a day because we don’t have the recommended number of litter boxes. Every 2 weeks we completely dump every box, wash with soap and water and fill with 100% new litter. This is the best way we have found to keep the smell down.
I hope this helps those of you with cats. I will explain the composting experiment more in the future!
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Interesting. Have you heard of Sweet PDZ? It is a granular (they have powder too) substance that is meant to be used in horse stalls (for example) as something to keep the odor down. I use it in my chicken coop on the poop deck as a "litter" medium along with construction sand. It can be composted, and really actually keeps down the smell! My chicken coop does not smell foul at all! Even with the poo exposed!! Though, one downside is it does produce some dust in the air when scooping. Maybe I didn't get the granular kind. I may have gotten the powder instead on accident.
You should look into it as either an alternative or an additive to your litter!
Here's a link to the product.
And a blurb:
No, I haven't. I don't think this is really something I would bother using for cats. As long as you keep the litter box clean and use a good material like corn there is virtually no odor. I did look it up and it looks like it's made of zeolite which is naturally occurring but most zeolite is man made because of the impurities found in the naturally occurring version. One of the ingredients used to made it is silica which is dangerous to cats so I have no idea if the finished product would be safe. It does look interesting for larger animals but probably not necessary for cats! Down the research rabbit hole I go 😆
I use PDZ in my goat stalls! Good stuff!
Great information! It's good to know there are many alternatives. We are so lucky to have our indoor/outdoor cat on our homestead, she is so helpful and completely potty trained so we have no need to buy litter. Her name is Death Claw, I hope you read about her on my husbands blog @rakkasan84. Up voted and followed. Looking forward to seeing your journey!
I wish we could potty train ours. Sadly they didn't take to it and now 2 of them are geriatric :( Thank you, I'll check it out
Sorry to hear that. We didn't have any special training with her really. Just a regular routine we could all adapt to, we got pretty lucky.
Thanks for sharing!
Have you considered potty training your cats to use a human commode? I have not done it myself but know friends who have had great success.
We have. We actually tried it when we only had 3 and it didn't go well. Now 2 of them are elderly and the one has lost a lot of her agility so she wouldn't be able to balance well enough I don't think
Nice Article, upvoted
Thanks for reading!
I would never have thought about using chicken feed in a million years as a cat litter. Genius, I tell you! I have a composting outhouse and this just makes so much since to me.
The only issue I can see is perhaps rodents in the compost pile trying to eat it. I keep my compost bins covered in hardware cloth to keep the larger critters out of it.
That's how I felt too. My mind was BLOWN! We are considering a biogas set up to 'compost.' I do feel there is a safe way to compost cat waste traditionally but because we aren't sure how long we will be here and the fact that our property is small I'd rather do something that is faster
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I should try that! We have indoor cats and I despise the nasty stuff we use in their litter box!
Do it! The corn based litter makes a world of difference! (I'm going to call the chicken feed corn based litter haha) I can't wait until we decide how we're going to compost it. It will feel so nice knowing it's getting used for something instead of just going to the dump!
I have beautiful Calico named "Boadicea", I call her Boadie. She likes the pine litter and there is hardly any odor. Nice post for us cat lovers🐓
The pine was pretty good odor wise but we didn't like the way it clumped. We also found it didn't last as long as the corn based stuff so in the end it was more expensive. I'm glad it works for you guys and if you have enough land you should look into milling!
Very good idea and I never really thought about trying this. We have 6 cats and this may just be a good idea. Thanks for the post!
We have 6 too! I hope you guys like it!
That is mind boggling that chicken feed is cheaper than cat litter!
Isn't it?! I was blown away when I learned about it