We have a Princess of a cat (Princess Kiki) who is very particular about her litter box. In spite of daily cleaning, she has found it necessary to make her own accommodations when it’s not up to her standards–much to our chagrin. Princess Kiki is getting to be an old lady cat (she’s 11). She’s also pretty quirky. She’s a rescue cat who had multiple homes and spent some time on the streets–these early experiences gave her a unique personality. (Some days we would say she’s just plain crazy.) But she is affectionate and beautiful–and ours–so we do our best to meet her needs.
So we tried the new Breeze litter box from Tidy Cat. It uses pellet litter on top of a pass through screen with an absorbent pad in a pull out tray below. This allows liquid waste to pass through so it doesn’t create a wet clump in the box. (Princesses don’t like wet clumps under paw.) Early returns are good. With 3 boxes–1 Breeze and 2 standard boxes, the breeze box was seeing most of the action. The breeze system seems to consume a lot less in terms of litter and the boxes don’t require as much washing. The problem is the questionable content in the litter and the plastic lined pads. I was not feeling the biodegradable love.
So we purchased biodegradable puppy training pads for the tray. They are larger so some creative folding is required. They are not as thick but they are less expensive per pad and I am less worried about the environmental impact. And we purchased Feline Pine cat litter which is a pellet litter but of a more explicitly friendly origin. It’s also somewhat absorbent which helps mitigate the issue of the thinner pad without recreating the wet cat litter clump that our Princess finds objectionable. It also smells better in my opinion. (We were looking for another pellet litter, a recycled newspaper litter called Yesterday’s News, but couldn’t find it. It seems like that would also work.)
We also bought some biodegradeable poop bags for the cleaning regimen. I think the carbon pawprint just got a little smaller.