cat litter

arrianalexander

Just wondering what people can recommend for cat litter.. the one we got was quite dusty and smelly

which one is best and where can i get it

regards

Jonny

mymo

I used a wood based one for a while which smelled nice too me, but cats didn't like it much.
Have tried several brands currently using a cheap clay based one, they seem to like it, kind of. Will use it if they can't get out. (let them out for a while when I'm around and it's not prime hunting time!)
Really think it depends on the cat, had 2 that liked different litters. Best thing is try a few and see for yourself, I did this by having 2 trays with different litters, see which they used most.
Also get biggest tray you can, with high sides or put tray in a cardboard box.(with cut down one side)

waraf

I tried a few of the more expensive ones such as World's Best and Husse but I was flying through the stuff with the two kittens. I just use the stuff from Lidl now. It's 3 euro for 10 kilos which lasts anywhere from 10 days to 2 weeks. Much easier on my pocket and the kittens don't mind either way.

On a separate note, I use one of these litter trays and they're great. No leaks, no litter getting flung out and it holds in the smell a bit too.

sweetnjuicy

I use one called beauticat.
Its wood pellets instead of being wood based.
I have 2 3 month old kittens and used the dusty stuff for a week or 2 but it smells and was like cement.
Took my lil ones a day or 2 to get used to it but now they dont mind it at all.
And instead of turning into cement when they "go" it just desolves to a kind of sand.
As I type the 2 of them are in the same litter tray fighting over who gets to go first.

The Sweeper

I use a recycled paper pellet litter called Breeders Choice. No idea if you can get that brand in Ireland, but I've tried:

• Gravel (couldn't dispose of it easily, weighed a tonne in the bin bags)
• Odour-free crystals (cats didn't like them at all - they were heavily scented - the lack of odour was supposed to be a lack of cat odour, they themselves smelled of awful chemical air fresheners)
• Clay (dusty, tracked through the house)
• Small granules made from plant material (tracked EVERYWHERE - small enough to stick to paws and get walked through the house, felt like I had to sweep three times a day)
• Recycled paper balls (light, cats liked them, fell apart the minute they were used, felt like I had to change the whole litter every two days).

I use litter trays similar to the ones linked by waraf - large, deep, covered with charcoal filters. I provide one tray per cat (I don't provide one extra, because the trays themselves are very large and what they have seems to suit them fine). I put the litter in very deeply - four inches deep in the bottom of the tray.

With that much litter, they have plenty to dig. Also, the wees trickle to the bottom and soak the layers of litter at the bottom of the tray, leaving the top layers loose and dry for more digging.

One 35 litre bag of paper pellets lasts me about 10-12 days. (I do have five cats, mind.)

I also feed my monsters a diet with a lot of raw food, meaning they mostly have small, dry poos and they don't poo even half as much as they would if they ate a kibble-only diet.

Once I've filled the trays, I poo-pick them three days later, and clean them out totally on the one week mark. So even with five cats, I only have to do full litters once a week. If I poo pick more often - every 48 hours - the litter lasts easily 9 days. The cats wouldn't use them if they were intolerable.

The litter itself - when doing a full clean, I poo-pick and flush all poos down the loo, then use the paper pellets on my garden. They make good mulch, good soil improver and a great compost ingredient. It also means I no longer have bin bags full of cat litter to put into landfill. I have 600m2 of garden so it's well able to take the volume of litter, and you'd be surprised how quickly the pellets disintegrate.

Through trial and error I now have an easy litter life - change once a week, and no litter or poos go in my bin, plus the litter goes on the garden, so no environmental guilt.

Ad lucem

My cat is 16 and half years old s and onlys uses TESCO cats litters .It is thes bests shes sayes simples!

PinkTulips

oko cats best... i ickle bag last 2.5 weeks for my 6 extremely sh!tty cats ... put it this way, i'd have to buy 3 bags of lidl clay a week, or one huge bag of ordinary wood pellet stuff a week which worked out as just more or less than a tenner... the oko stuff is ten quid for 2.5 weeks worth... fecking incredible. and it's flushable, compostable and throw over the hedge into the cow field-able

Ad lucem

Pinktulips, I'm lost but at 16plus I guess this cat has a earned preference

Heroditas

We use Sepicat litter. It appears to work the best for our monsters.
I tried the Lidl stuff but had to change it nearly every day, despite cleaning out the cats' deposits.
The litter just turned nto something resembling wet cement.

speedscot

I am using Tracks-Less Litter Pearls (you will need to google as I can't post links yet.)

It's quite expensive but lasts my one cat quite a long time (she is 100% indoors at the moment) and there is zero odour.

I had to go for something like this as the only place for her tray is beside the front door. Nice welcome - smelly cat tray LOL!

My cat took to them straight away, no bother.

PinkTulips

ad lucem... lord knows what goes on in those fluffy little minds. my lot have turned up their noses at some of the 'best' cat foods on the market but will fight each other for the supermarket stuff :rolleyes:

nearly

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

Once I've filled the trays, I poo-pick them three days later, and clean them out totally on the one week mark.

if only i could poo-pick every 3 days! i have to do it 2x a day. we're currently using the clumping litter, and we scoop it out in the AM and in PM. we tried just doing it in the morning, but that doesn't work.

one of our 2 cats gets so frustrated about the litter. he can't use it unless it's very clean. he'll literally hold it until the litterbox is cleaned...

we have 2 cats, two deep litter trays (maybe we should get another??)

speedscot

nearly wrote: »

<snip>...one of our 2 cats gets so frustrated about the litter. he can't use it unless it's very clean. he'll literally hold it until the litterbox is cleaned...

we have 2 cats, two deep litter trays (maybe we should get another??)

My cats have always been the same, they won't go in a box if there's even one little poo in it. I would have thought two trays for two cats would do the job. A third is just more work for you. Funny, when I had two cats/two trays, one of the moggies was always the first to soil both trays. The other wouldn't use a tray until No1 cat had used it first! Strange fluffies!

The Sweeper

It's gotta be said the diet makes a huge difference with my lot. They wouldn't use the trays if they were disgusting. When they get a lot of raw food the trays are incredibly easy to keep. A small amount of bank-breaking quality kibble, a medium amount of commercial wet bank-breaking quality food, and the main volume of raw food: the result is small, dry stools that don't smell, dry quickly and are odorless when dry.

To be honest a supermarket-kibble-only diet seems to generate mountains of poo because it contains a lot of indigestible fillers. I couldn't believe the difference even in moving from high-end kibble to including a lot of appropriate raw food.

waraf

nearly wrote: »

if only i could poo-pick every 3 days! i have to do it 2x a day. we're currently using the clumping litter, and we scoop it out in the AM and in PM. we tried just doing it in the morning, but that doesn't work.

one of our 2 cats gets so frustrated about the litter. he can't use it unless it's very clean. he'll literally hold it until the litterbox is cleaned...

we have 2 cats, two deep litter trays (maybe we should get another??)

That's a nightmare. Have you looked into getting an automatic litter tray?

sweetnjuicy

I have to clean mine maybe 4 or more times a day with my two.
They both use the same deep litter tray.
Ive tried having 2 separate trays but they always go to the one.
So I gave up on it last week.
I suppose whatever keeps them happy right?

waraf

A quick selection of auto cleaning litter trays:

Littermaid

ScoopFree

Omega

LitterRobot

or just train your cat to use the toilet in your house with one of these

Note: I don't agree with the whole cat using the toilet idea due to the possible spead of toxoplasmosis

nearly

The Sweeper wrote: »

A small amount of bank-breaking quality kibble, a medium amount of commercial wet bank-breaking quality food, and the main volume of raw food: the result is small, dry stools that don't smell, dry quickly and are odorless when dry.

I looked into the raw food diet, but the problem of getting a meat grinder, getting the right supplements and chemicals... and it all looked slightly confusering/complifexified. We've been feeding them Whiska's wet food since they were kittens (this is what their original humans fed them). Then we tried them on some different kinds of dry foods. Whenever we have meat or fish (sadly, not everyday) we always give them some raw.

So, The Sweeper, you just feed raw meat, and they get the supplements they need from the commercial food? I'm curious in what amounts, as an example... like a burger a day with a 1/4 can of commercial wet food, and a 1/2 cup of dry food? I am just guessing here. I'd love details.

Meanwhile, I just mentioned to my fella about "automatic littertray" and he said 'FANTASTIC, I WANT ONE".

Thanks, waraf, going to look up those links!

The Sweeper

Raw food - mine will eat muscle meat, fat, heart, liver and ground chicken carcass that the butcher makes up so that ticks the box against bone. Kidney makes one of them chuck and I can't tell which one, so it's off the menu.

My butcher will happily put a chicken carcass that's been denuded of breasts and legs through the grinder and he sells the resulting mush in plastic takeaway sized boxes for $1.50 a box. If you have a good local butcher, they may well agree to mince some carcasses for you - and you can freeze whatever you don't use immediately.

They don't need much bone. I have five cats and they get about three heaped tablespoons of the mush between them in the form of one meal, two or three times a week.

I don't use any of the supplements that the grinding diets recommend. I think it's overkill. I'll add powdered taurine to their raw food once a day, and L-Lysine if there's a time of stress coming or if they're showing signs of runny eyes or sneezes. Cats can't rid their bodies of toxins the way we do, so I don't believe in giving them vitamin supplements. (Same with people. If your diet is balanced enough, you don't need supplementation.) Unless you *really* know what you're up to and the cats are having routine blood and thyroid function tests, I wouldn't go giving them vitamin supplements.

The point is you have to find a regime that suits you. I can't be bothered grinding up meat for my cats, so instead they get large pieces - too big to swallow in one go, so they have to gnaw pieces off. It takes them a few weeks to get used to it, but I can happily say if I dropped a piece of cheap stewing steak that was on special (you know, the tough as boots stuff with the rind of fat) on their plate, they'd work their way through it over the course of an hour. (They also pull it all over the floor so I remember to mop when they're done.)

The ratio I feed mine is kibble to commercial wet to raw in varying proportions. Some days they get all raw. Some days they get kibble and wet commercial. Some days only wet commercial. Some days only raw. They never get a day where they're only fed kibble.

The yahoo raw food groups are full of information, but also full of evangelical obsessives (imagine - and apologies to vegans here - but imagine the worst vegan you've ever met, who tells you meat is murder, criticises everyone else's eating habits and is generally obnoxious - now add to that the normal fervour of an animal lover with a pet.) The raw food groups would have you believe that if you aren't tossing whole quail with innards to your cat, you're just not trying hard enough.

Water intake is also important - I have a pet fountain. (In fact, my bengal X girl is currently standing on it, letting the water run over her paws and spilling most of it eveywhere, but at least she's drinking while she does it.) Once they get used to the running water, they drink more of it than they would from a bowl.

waraf

nearly wrote: »

Meanwhile, I just mentioned to my fella about "automatic littertray" and he said 'FANTASTIC, I WANT ONE".

Thanks, waraf, going to look up those links!

No problem

Can I suggest this as a replacement for the whiskas too. My two were whiskas only cats until I bought this stuff. They absolutely love it. It's full of meat (check the ingredients on the link) compared to 4% meat in whiskas and it's even a little cheaper than whiskas too.
I buy 50 euros worth at a time to get free delivery on the order.

cltt97

My dear cat owner friends... I am wondering if there is a better cat litter than the one I already use.... I am using Cat's Best Öko Plus cat litter and I am generally very happy with it, as lasts forever, and best clumping litter I have ever come across. HOWEVER, the stuff tracks everywhere and I have started to wonder if there is not something better out there... One of my cats has kidney problems so pees a LOT. the oko plus has been brilliant for this, so I need something that works well with lots of pee....
All suggestions (and where to get it) welcome!

ladyjuicy08

Someone suggested to me on this before cant remember who now but chick crumb and some baking SODA.this what I use now chick crumb 25kg €12.50 baking soda €2.99 I have 2cats and it last a whole month now I used to spend this amount every week .

cltt97

Where do you get the chick crumb?

ladyjuicy08

U cn get it in an Agri store and some pet shop have it depends were u live It's actually for feeding baby chicks bt apparently it what worlds best cat litter is made from.since I switched over only havta fully clean trays every 10days used to every 4 full bag does me a month.

cltt97

Cool thanks, I'm in Dublin 12, I am going to check out that big pet store in Tallaght, maxi pet or whatever it is called. Not sure about the closest Agri store but will investigate!

ladyjuicy08

I gt it in pet mania in santry nt sure if one out ur way though