What You Need To Know About Natural Clumping Cat Litter

 

One of mankind’s greatest inventions was scoopable cat litter. Until the mid 1980’s, cat owners had to do a strange seizure when cleaning urine spots from the liter box. You had to keep the paper bag or trash can close and quickly shovel the wet litter into the trash can. You couldn’t linger. And, you always wound up throwing a lot of clean liter out with the wet. And now there’s natural clumping cat litter. Does it work as well as the man-made wonder of the ages?
Yes And No
Natural clumping cat litter works brilliantly, but your cat may think differently. Just as you have your own preferences in underwear and toilet tissue, so a cat will have his own preference in kitty litter. There’s no logic to it. It’s a cat thing. You’ll go crazy trying to figure it out. Just give in and buy a new brand of natural clumping cat litter.
Does natural clumping cat litter clump? It certainly does. There are many substances that does trap odors, swell up to help scoop it out easier and even helps tone down the ammonia smell. Pine and corncob natural scooping cat litters are especially good at mimicking the clumping action of conventional commercial clumping cat litter.
What About The Cost?
Natural clumping cat litter will cost you a lot more than conventional clumping litter. In the case of the brand I buy for my cat, it’s three times the cost of store brands like Tidy Cat or Fresh Step. However, the natural clumping cat litter lasts twice as long as the cheaper litters. I find I don’t have to shovel out as much litter as I did with the cheaper brands. So, the costs eventually even out in the long run.
Natural clumping cat litters are getting easier to find, especially now that big companies like Purina are jumping onto the green platform. It used to be that you could only find natural clumping cat litter at certain specialty pet shops. Now, you can find them next to the commercial clay brands on your grocer’s shelves.
Environmental Considerations
In this day and age, you must consider the environmental impact of anything you buy. Commercial cat litters are not environmentally friendly. First of all, they are made from the clay from strip mines, which is a very destructive form of mining. Also, commercial clumping cat litter isn’t biodegradable. It’ll be sitting around for thousands of years in landfills long after the organic matter it holds has faded away into oblivion.