Pet cats are house-trained to use a litter box when they are unable to go outdoors to relieve themselves. The litter box is bedded with a material to catch the cat’s urine and feces. This is called cat litter in short. The cat litter in general use is very much like clay and is called clumping. Cats get used to this very easily and quickly because that’s their natural habit.
There is one drawback in the use of litter boxes and traditional clumping – the odor from the litter box is nauseating! Till the owner doesn’t remove the cat litter, the odor just won’t go away. But help is at hand in the form of a brand new type of cat litter – pine cat litter. This litter is made up of pine pellets which absorb moisture and trap the cat’s solid waste. The natural odor of pine is very refreshing and it masks that of the cat’s droppings.
The price you pay is in cash. The shelf price is twice that of the usual clumping type. That is enough to put off most cat owners. However, the effective cost of the pine pellet cat litter is hardly more than that of ordinary cat litter! The volume of the pine pellets increases on wetting, so you need only use half the usual quantity of cat litter. So that brings the cost per use of the pine cat litter on par with that of the ordinary cat litter.
Price apart, the market for pine cat litter has not really taken off as the producer expected. Very unexpectedly, your Tabby put his paw down on the issue. Cats, as you are well aware, are creatures of pretty strong habits, and likes and dislikes. Cats like to have things exactly their way. So, faced with a box full of little pellets, Tabby is expressing his strong disapproval of this modernism! The small pine pellets are very uncomfortable to walk on, so Tabby informs us, holding up a set of chafed paws.
The work-around for this particular problem is to get the cat using the pine pellets gradually. In the beginning put in a handful of pine litter and make up the usual quantity with the normal stuff. Gradually increase the amount of pine litter and correspondingly reduce the amount of normal litter. Finally you’ll be using all pine litter. If your cat still does not go for it then that’s that! You’ll have to put with the odor. Better that than have your cat not use the box at all!
Or, you can do what some ingenious cat owners are doing: they use 90% pine pellet litter and then sprinkle the top 10% with the usual litter. This way they get the advantage of pine, and the cat gets the surface it likes.
Hardly have we worked our way around problem #1, than problem #2 crops up. It appears that pine fragrance is not very popular with cats. Now that’s something that we can’t do anything about. After all you’re using pine cat litter solely for its fragrance, and there’s your cat wrinkling up its nose at the very idea! That apart, pine cat litter is completely safe for your cat. All toxic substances have been removed from the cat litter.
There is an environmental advantage in using pine cat litter. It can be composted once the cat’s solid waste is removed. The composted litter can be put to use as manure for gardens, instead of adding to the ever-growing landfill of garbage.
Whether pine cat litter makes its way into your house on a permanent basis depends entirely on your cat! If your cat converts to pine then you’re home free, to a home free from that awful stench! On the other hand, if your cat gives pine cat litter a paws down, then you’ll just have to grin and bear it!
