Kitty Litter

In the dark corners of my house lies a box. A plastic, mauve colored, close lidded box with a wee hatch and sort of welcome mat - large, blue, paw shaped, texturized, rubber mat with a smiling cartoon cat in the center. Within this box little sandy bits from brands whose names could easily be mistaken for old person nappies like "Doo Doo Voo Doo," "Ever Clean," or Harvest Ventures' award winning crystal technology backed "Pearl." This special container is - The Litter Box.

When strolling the aisles of Petco for your litter box's key ingredient there are options to fit every character. Among the multitude are clay based brands including the popular Tidy Cat which clump your kitty's poo and pee pee together, crystalizing brands such as Pearl suck out odors and brown colors from the droppings to add a fossilized look to your little one's dropping, and for the environmentally conscious cat guardian - natural biodegradable litter mixtures.

My house has stood by the clay based Ever Clean Extra Strength Premium for years, very high quality clumping. Today, while sifting through the Sahara like sands with my little sifter, the clumped bits just kept coming. The process normally reminds me of that movie The Mummy, but today I was more like Charlize Theoron in North Country. In 1.5 wks, my cats had created boulders I had to use a screw driver to de-earth from the quarry that is their litter box.

Each cat weighs about 10lb, and in this time slot they created 5.8 lb of clayed up feces! Yes, I measured it on my Dad's fancy sport scale (oh the joys of living at home!). This is a body weight:poo/pee ratio of 10lb:2.9lb! If that were me, an average weighing human of 145 lb (see June 25: Women's Weight, How I Measure), that would mean dropping 42.05 lb in the toilet over 10 days, or 4.2 lb a day!

And what is it with the clips on the side of a litter box? Are cats typically the type to get rowdy when they have a big one to push out? I can see it now - growls echoing through the basement, litter spewing from the little entrance hole, a scent so deadly it suffocates everyone in the neighborhood going about their daily lives like those people in Pompeii. Then the cat goes about spreading Pearl over us.

Anyways, those are my thoughts.