I'm pretty sure a Sam Vimes reference can be had from this somewhere...

[camwyn]

I started using Swheat Scoop kitty litter in my cats' litterbox recently. It clumps, it's made from wheat, it doesn't have weird chemical smells as part of its masking efforts, and I can flush it. The litterbox is an automatic model that sweeps through with a rake ten minutes after the cat gets out of the box. The rake leaves neat little evenly spaced lines across the surface of the litter. Sometimes if one cat uses the box, the next one to come along doesn't bother burying his doots, or even disturbing the surface much; it's pretty standard 'whozyerdaddy' behaviour in the animal kingdom.

Thing is, with poo on the surface and the lines still visible in the litter... well, the litter is a sort of pale tannish colour. It looks rather like sand, only with oversized particles.

Kind of the world's most biological Zen rock garden.

Comments

[lasa.livejournal.com]

And now, thanks to you, I have a mental picture of someone meditating on their cat litter box.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

That's the stuff we use - nice, huh? Worst thing it smells like is baking bread -

It also tends to be scare and expensive in my neighborhood - hope you have better luck!

[camwyn]

It's on the expensive side here, but it's easy to find; the local pet store (2 blocks) has it, and the local Target (1.5 miles) does too. I can deal with that. I'd buy the corn-based flushable litter if I hadn't caught Shula licking it last time I filled the box with it.

[ouatic-7.livejournal.com]

Do you keep it on your coffe table for guests to admire?

[camwyn]

Hey, if they can't find zen in the kitchen, they're not going to find it anywhere in this apartment.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Ah, Sweat Scoop's what I use, too -- didn't know it went with the automagic litter boxen, but now that I know it does, I may want to try it.

I can't flush it out here, though: the protozoan that causes toxoplasmosis, one Toxoplasma gondii, survives the sewage treatment process and gets flushed out to sea, where they're fairly sure it kills sea otters (the evidence is circumstantial, but strong (http://www.magazine.noaa.gov/stories/mag72.htm)). In my particularly idiosyncratic pantheon, where a sea otter is a good friend of mine, that's rather, um, poor. So I don't do it.

But it clumps up nicely enough, so I bag it and throw it out instead. It's a longer path through the plastic bag, out of the landfill, into the groundwater, etc etc etc, than through the toilet and out.

-- Lorrie