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Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Litter-ati

I'm a very sophisticated cat.
Please don't talk about my "business."
Let's talk about poo.


Not people poo. Cat poo. And other cat unmentionables.


One of my biggest green failings is that when it comes to my pet, I'm about as far from green as it gets. My cat eats cheap-o Purina Indoor Cat Chow (because he barfs if he has anything else). I've been using clay cat litter, which is full of badness - it's made from clay that has been stripmined - and puts money into the pockets of  Halliburton, since they produce most of the clay!


Blergh! That's really bad.


The problem is that when I tried to switch Wily to a more environmentally-friendly litter (pine) the little prince was having none of it, so he used my bed for a litter box. 


I did some research and found some info that said it could take 30 days to switch a cat's litter.


Problem? I'm never home for 30 days at a stretch.
Mr. Cheney is making that face because
he's no longer reaping the rewards
 of his cat litter monopoly.


So Dick "Meanypants" Cheney kept getting my money. Until recently, when I just decided to go for it. I was going to be home for a few weeks. 


I chose some corn-based litter because it was made by Arm & Hammer, and I used their clay litter and liked it. Plus, they make baking soda. Baking soda's my favorite! It also looked the most like clay litter, so I figured Mr. Fluffybutt would be less likely to "poo-poo" it (pun intended - and with malice!)


The next two times I cleaned the litterbox, I added some of the corn-based litter. There was no finger pointing or dramatic accusations of kitten abuse. Wily seemed just ... fine. A few days ago I made the complete switch to the corn-based litter and all is well.  The whole process took a week and a half.


Sigh. So I guess that the land was stripped for years longer than it had to be. I'm going to blame the cat.


Now, if only I could get out from under the finger of the corn lobby. Oh well - maybe if this cat litter thing works out for them they can stop shoveling high-fructose corn syrup into our pie holes.