Your feline kindred spirit has been identified, and tomorrow will come home from the animal shelter. The shopping day is now. Time to obtain the products listed: cat food, toys, scratches and toiletries.
The litter box requirements are at the very top of the list. You go to the closest animal supply supermarket and find litter options row after row. What do we decide, what should we choose? If you are an experienced owner or a beginner, there are several different options. That has not always been the case.
Dirt to pay
Most cats lived indoors/outdoors before World War II, and neighborhood rear courties and gardens were their toilet areas. Some families kept sandboxes or ashes from the oven for use in the cellar to cope with indoor needs. None of the 1940s Housewives were too loved by cats that monitor ashes, or household sand. One ex-sailor, Ed Lowe, said his neighbor would try to clean up industrial oil spills in factories during a war, which the company of his father had just made. Yourka! Yourk. The litter of Kitty has been born.
The pellet granulated clay litter increased smell control over ashes or sand by siphoning the urine to the bottom of the pot and regulated ammonia to the point of saturation, normally within one week in a single cat box. Today, most people use granular clay to make a scoop and replace the whole litter once a week or to use less litter in the box and to dump and clean it every day.. The typical litter granules are very big and do not appear to stick with the cat’s paws, so that a little litters are tracked outside the box.
To have or not to have
Granulated clay beds remained unchallenged for almost 40 years and were not changing or sophisticated until Thomas Nelson, Ph.D., needed a way to increase his income while he graduated. The biochemist started raising Persian cats and eventually producing litter. Dr Nelson quoted in a Cat Fancy article in October 1996: “I searched around and found clay which had dried, but which was not cooked. I found it. The cat was really absorbed and formed a clump while the cat was urinating on them. The clump can then be dissolved and the urine removed. I had a litter box that in ten years did not improve – I added only more – and that didn’t have any smell at all.”
Almost all urine and fecal materials are removed for weeks, without tossing the old litter entirely out and beginning from scratch. However, when more than one cat is using the box, a very pronounced odor is normally present within 4 to 6 weeks, even with litter substitution and scooping. It is necessary to substitute approximately the quantity scooped out with fresh litter, since if a certain volume is permitted to fall, urine tends to bathe and cake in the corners and scents emerge.
Clumping litters are much costlier than granular clay. By 1999, however, the clumping litter had more than half the litter market with its superior smell control capacities.
Clumping litters provide a range of items beyond the usual sweet and non-scenting options with the majority of grained litters. Most cats prefer scentless litters, particularly for owners who intend to use litter boxes. There are multi-cat formulas that form more cement clumps, which will retain their shape even when additional cat traffic is carried; these are certainly not flushable! There are slightly bigger granulars that are more likely to slip off cat paws before he leaves the box. And clumping litters are particularly bred for flushability because most clumping litters have little consistency due to their extensive characteristics. The list of varieties is expanded every year.
A few years ago, an article published in the now defunct Tiger Tribe magazine challenged the safety of clumping litter when it is ingested, especially for neonate kittens, which often eat litters during weaning phases. Dr.James Richards, the head of Cornell’s Ithaca Feline Health Centre, NY, remembers when the article appeared a flourish of Internet communication, mail letters, or phone calls.
But Richards says: “Never met anyone with a clumping litter problem, after he was using clumping litter at home and in his practice and networking with veterinary surgeons and online contacts on this issue.. If this happens, it really is unusual, and we’d know by now definitely.”
Although there is no evidence of claims of clinical literature issues, custodians might want to delays the introduction of kittens into litters up to the age of three months. Any cat older than the litter identified should be brought to a veterinarian, as the behavior may suggest anemia or other dietary impairments.
The litter area does not end in granulated versus clay clumping. There is also an abundance of litter in the local animal feed emporium made of environmentally friendly materials, including recycled journals, maize cob, peanut coat, processed orange peel, wheat, pine sawdust and shavings, hard-wood and cedar chips, silica gel and crystals and automatic self-cleaning boxes. All promises to be superior, sustainable, and earth-friendly controllers. What you want to choose, what you want…
In 1990, an animal behavioral applied Dr. Peter Borchelt carried out three 10-day testing to identify the choice of the feline litter by comparing 14 forms of trade litters with clay litter and playbox sand. Each cat had six boxes to choose from, and in the middle of the test, the boxes were relocated to avoid placing the preferential form of the box. Test after test, fine seed clumping was used more than twice as much as its closest rival with wood chip boxes, litter of grain and recycled litter paper not being used in full. “The clinical finding, according to Borchelt, is that the texture, granularity or coarseness of the cats’ preference for the litter is an important factor. . fine textured clay (clumping), rather than larger particle size clay. . But playsheet sand, even finely textured, was not any more preferred than ground clay, maybe because of its weight.”
What do I want? As a protector, you control the bags, but your feline buddy has to make the final decision. He can quit the business otherwise if he doesn’t like the smell and sound of the litter.
Read more at Katzenstreu Testsieger 2021