LitterBox Solutions
By Bonnie Shull
I got my first cats about five years ago. Our community’s feral population was expanding rapidly, and our small municipality didn’t have an animal control budget. The townsfolk worked together to round up the wild cats, get them spayed and neutered, and find homes for the multitude of kittens. I, and almost everybody else for ten square miles, wound up the proud new owner of multiple young felines.
I have to admit that I was smitten, and I’ve been a cat collector ever since. I did rescue and foster work for the first few years, but now I’ve settled down. My husband and I have four house cats that will
live with us for the rest of their lives. I can’t get another, or I will have crossed into crazy cat lady territory.
I love my cats, but I hate their litter boxes. Living in a multi-cat household only makes the problem worse. I’ve tried just about everything out there in the past few years, and I’d like to share what
I’ve learned with you.
I started out manually scooping the litter box. There were only a few electric boxes on the market at the time, they were expensive, and I’d heard horror stories about them. I concentrated on trying to find the
most odor free manual box and litter combo possible.
The Booda Dome Clean Step litter box combined with either Feline Pine or Swheat Scoop litter worked the best for me. The Booda Dome design really did help to control odors and prevent tracking, with the added plus of making it difficult for my dogs to eat the cat leavings. Both Feline Pine and Swheat Scoop did a much better job of controlling odors than any of the clay based litters I have tried.
Feline Pine started having trouble containing the odor once there were more than two cats using the box. I would have stuck with it if I had been able to spread the load across a few litter boxes, but BoodaDomes are big and my house was small. I think that Feline Pine is the more ecologically sound product, since it is made from a byproduct of the lumber industry and SwheatScoop is using a primary food grain in the midst of global food crisis. I also greatly prefer the clean-up of a
Feline Pine litter box.
Feline Pine doesn’t clump. It starts out as pellets which slowly dissolve into sawdust as they absorb urine. You know that the litter box needs to be changed when it has completely turned to sawdust. Its
easy to scoop the solids out during daily cleaning, and when its time to dump the litter box there isn’t that cement like residue that clumping litters leave behind for you to deal with. If you only have
one or two cats, I strongly advise you to give it a try.
Swheat Scoop’s odor control is amazing. Even when you’re on your hands and knees scooping the dirty litter box all you can smell is a pleasant odor reminiscent of Cheerios. The only time I surpassed the
odor absorbing capabilities of Swheat Scoop and the Booda Dome was during a brief period when I fostered two momma cats and their sixteen kittens.
Last year I decided to get an electric litter box. After a good bit of market research I settled on the PetMate Littersweep Ultra. The system costs less than $100 and bears a strong resemblance to the Booda Dome. Its motor is a little loud, so I keep it tucked away in the laundry room. Its not perfect, but I’ll never go back to manual litter box maintenance.
I have to empty the receptacle bin every few days, and give the box a good cleaning about once a month. I have occasionally let the bin get too full, or failed to realize that the litter was no longer usable
and caused the scooping mechanism to bog down. I actually broke my first unit because I didn’t maintain it properly. But you get used to the routine, and I think its vastly superior to the daily scooping
routine.
Swheat Scoop has recently come out with a new multi-cat product that is perfect for electric litter boxes. My only complaint with the electric box so far has been that the clay litters that I have had to
use with it are nowhere near as good at odor-control as the natural alternatives I had been using. I can’t wait to try out Swheat Scoopt in my Littersweep.
I would love to hear about your experiences with litter boxes. Feel free to leave a comment!
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