How to Toilet-Train Your Cat by Paul Kunkel

Author:Paul Kunkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2016-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

What’s Really in Cat Litter?

In the years since, manufacturers have been lured by the low costs and high profits associated with cat litter, using every conceivable absorbent material—including oat flakes, alfalfa chaff, corn cobs, and orange peels—to make what cats do in their boxes as pleasant and odor-free as possible.

Yet of all known materials, one of the most common materials in commercial cat litter is fuller’s earth, a highly porous calcium-based clay that attracts and absorbs virtually any liquid that flows in its direction. Used for more than seven thousand years, longer than any other mineral except flint, fuller’s earth has a variety of industrial, medicinal, and cosmetic uses. And it’s totally natural—the largest known deposit of fuller’s earth formed more than two hundred million years ago, when Africa separated from North America, and today it is mined all over the world. But other ingredients in cat litter are often the furthest thing from natural.

Indeed, determining the precise ingredients of any cat litter is difficult, if not impossible, in part because the materials that litter makers purchase from chemical specialty firms and fragrance houses are themselves secret.

Since cats routinely ingest these chemicals every time they use the litter box—dissolving the starch-covered capsules with their urine, hiding the spot, then licking their paws afterward—many cat owners and veterinarians question whether something strong enough to subdue the odor of a pound of sodden feces-laden litter isn’t also strong enough to subdue the cat.

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