Earth To Eats

The Feline Pine Adventure

19th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments

Ronnie is on the left, Hunter on the right

I think kitty litter is the worst part about having cats.  Ours do not go outside so there is no outdoor privy for them, they have boxes in the basement.  I don’t mind changing kitty litter, but I do mind seeing it on the cats’ paws.  Hunter is a Maine Coon and has a lot of hair between his paw pads so he often has clumpy litter stuck to them.

Enter my bright idea to try a more healthy, and environmentally friendly, kind of cat litter.

We tried Yesterdays News which is a nice option since it uses waste materials, but our cats did not like it at all and I didn’t either.  It didn’t keep the cat boxes from smelling like ammonia.  So it was a no-go.

Then I tried Feline Pine which, when compared to clumping litter, seems very expensive.  I loved the way it worked and the cats seemed OK with it.  It keeps the boxes smelling fresh which is great.  Problem was cleaning the boxes was tough since you scoop out the still usable pellets and leave the sawdust behind.  Not an easy task.

So I bought sifting cat pans.  They work wonderful.  With two pans and a sifter to each set you can alternate out bottom pans to make cleaning easier.  They were not cheap – we’re talking $30 or so for both of them and we could really use a third for upstairs.

Then I read online that you could use heating stove pellets instead of Feline Pine.  They are MUCH cheaper and made of wood so are basically the same thing.  Only they aren’t.  A friend has a pellet stove and had a few bags partially damaged by water so she let us have a bag to try.  The pellets are larger than Feline Pine and are made of hardwood not softwood.

They DO work and perhaps could be successfully used by certain people, but they didn’t control odors well and our cats rebelled by using the floor instead of the box.

So I had had enough and switched back to scoopable litter.  I bought an average priced brand and used the sifting boxes thinking they’d work really well and make cleaning easier.  NOT.  The litter clung to both sides of the sifting lid and ended up like cement.  I also found that I was spending way more money on clumping litter than I had been on Feline Pine.  A $13 container of clumping litter was used up in a week and we were back to stuff being stuck on the cats’ paws and dust everywhere.

I finished that container of litter and went back to Feline Pine.  It took an hour to pry the scooping cement off the litter boxes, but I got them clean and the cats and I are now happy to be back to the sweet smelling pine stuff.  I’m trying extra hard to keep their litter area vacuumed and so far they are pretty happy.

So ends the Feline Pine adventure – for now.  I’m sure someone will protest soon and I’ll need to find another solution.