Reflections - The Cats Go Green 

Ande and the Food-Poop Cycle

You can leave a cat green litter, but you can’t make him pee.

As an experiment, Spence brought home cat litter called Yesterday's News. The litter was green in two ways. Hard, green pellets replaced the familiar dusty, gray clay. Clay doesn’t biodegrade. The recycled paper would benefit landfills and Wells Wood where Spence spreads used litter as groundhog deterrent. Since we’d gone green with solar panels, geothermal energy, and a hybrid pickup, I agreed to Spence’s experiment.

The cats didn’t.

“What if they won’t use it?” I stared at our three tabby cats napping innocently on chairs in the great room.

Spence raised his arms over his head. “It’s an experiment.”

At least he didn’t say “Duh” or “Don’t worry.”

I did worry. Ande, Rills, and Gilbert might protest. They could poop beside the litter boxes. Their uncovered poop smells ripe, like a combination of feces and a man’s underarm after vigorous exercise. Plus, they could get into peeing contests and mark every corner of the log house creating an annoying ammonia stench. More was at stake than a green environment. If the experiment soured, my complexion, not the environment, would be green while I scrubbed their nasty deposits. Call me crazy, I still agreed to the experiment.

On Saturday, March 19, the cat brothers, exhausted after an extensive three floor chase, curled on the great room sofa with Spence for morning naps. Spence and Ande snored. I tiptoed to the bathroom. After scooping poop and clumps of pee-saturated clay, I scattered a handful of Yesterday’s News on top of the clay and waited.

The cats voted with their paws using other litter boxes—one in the basement, two in the guest room, and another in the loft. Finally, eleven days later, a cat peed in the clay sprinkled with paper pellets. I would have hugged him if I knew which cat.

The beginning of April, I added a fistful of recycled paper to a litter box in the guest room. Within the next two weeks, the cats made deposits in all five of the boxes twice. Carrying an old coffee bag full of droppings down the hall in one hand, I pumped the other fist and yelled, “Five for five,” like a basketball announcer celebrating a three-point shooter’s success. The fellas ignored my performance.

Though the cats only used the litter boxes with paper pellets on three days, they hadn’t left any stinky protests. They passed my preliminary trial. I read the directions in preparation to start the experiment.

1st  Week: ⅓ paper and ⅔ clay

2nd Week: ⅔ paper and ⅓ clay

3rd Week: 100% paper

Obviously, the writer didn't have three male cats using five litter boxes. I could adapt. I would substitute months for weeks. On a Monday afternoon in mid April, I toted my cleaning supplies to the first floor bathroom because it had a tile floor which I could mop after the job was complete. Then I lugged the basement litter box upstairs. I dumped and scraped the disgusting dregs into an empty fifteen and a half pound food bag before scrubbing the box clean.

The cats parading past the bathroom door recognized those steps.

I measured three quarts of recycled paper pellets and six of clay into the box. While I mixed them, Ande sniffed the recycled paper. Rills, eyes bulging, watched from the doorway. Gilbert stretched his legs over and around the clutter—the paper pellets, the clay litter, a bucket of scrub water, rags, deodorizer, the scoop, and the empty quart container. I returned the clean litter box to the basement and repeated the process with the other four boxes.

Usually Rills dashes downstairs to make a deposit before his brothers. He didn’t. He chased them around the first floor instead. Working off nervous energy?

No healthy cats had their waste functions scrutinized so closely. “Four for five” and “five for five” I called to Spence. 

Without looking up from his computer he mumbled, “That’s nice, dear.”

By mid May, I began stage two.

Ande and Rills attended the cleaning transition. Sitting straight backed on his haunches, Ande blocked the doorway. His eyes followed my scrubbing hand. Rills sniffed the air.

I’d done the math. If I followed the three step instructions, I would have left over clay. So, this time, I measured half and half, mixed, then distributed the litter boxes. I hoped Rills would dash for a clean box.

He dashed for the great room and sat beside the empty food bowls. The cat fountain growled—low water. I poured crunches into the food bowls and water into the fountain. Ande and Rills chomped and drank. Gilbert waited a safe distance for his turn. 

“I want you guys to poop in your boxes.” I sat with my laptop, typed some notes, and heard scratching in the guest room.

Ande lapped at the fountain. Gilbert crouched by a food bowl. A second later Rills pranced down the hall.

“Good boy, Rills!”

But three days passed, and I only found enough poop for one cat. A week later I didn’t find any. Were they constipated or mounting a protest? Crouching and using my teacher's voice, I told the cats, “Put your poopy in the boxes or no more chicken.”

Rills, who gobbled the chicken pieces Spence gave the fellas each morning, searched my face with worried eyes.

“Don’t threaten the boys,” Spence said. “They’re cats. They’re not bad.”

“They probably didn’t understand my words,” I lied. 

Rills understood chicken.

The next day, I cleaned the house from loft to basement pulling out every piece of furniture a cat could get under or behind. No brown dollops. No yellow puddles. Lots of dusty clumps of cat-hair. The cats didn’t act sick. Could they hold poop in protest?

The problem had worked itself out by the next morning. The litter boxes were full of it, so to speak. I relaxed.

Rills never missed his morning chicken.

Mid June, when I mixed two-thirds recycled paper and one-third clay, no cats bothered to watch.

 

Recycled Paper Litter

So, in July, the end of the experiment, I scrubbed a litter box and filled it with Yesterday’s News. Before a cat marred the green pellets’ Zen-like texture, I pulled out my cell phone to take a couple of photos. The beep of an incoming email from my friend Diana distracted me. I sat cross-legged on the tile, considered her suggestion for making me a co-author of her Medical Insider column about transgender youth, then concentrated on tapping the screen’s small alphabet letters with my index finger.

Ande trotted around me, jumped into the litter box, and sat with his back to me. He let loose a stream—the perfect picture proving our cats had accommodated.

With the camera in hand, I debated. Wouldn’t I be disrespecting his privacy? While I dithered, he scratched and scampered away. I didn’t need the picture. The experiment for exchanging materials to capture stinky deposits had worked.

On cats.

Would the new stuff still deter groundhogs?

Spence lugged the old cat food bags where I’d stashed the used litter to his tractor bucket and drove them to a wild blackberry patch near the south garden. I ran ahead of the tractor taking his photo as he drove. 

He scouted for the entrance and exit holes of the groundhog burrow then dumped droppings in, mounding the holes closed with the recycled paper—now gray, swollen, and reeking of cat pee. “When they dig out,” Spence clawed the air with his hands, “The pellets will—”

“Roll further into the burrow.” I giggled. 

“Or when they dig in.” Spence scanned the field. 

I doubted that. Groundhogs are fastidious housekeepers. A determined groundhog shoves and sweeps the smelly clay deposits aside. But Spence increased the size of the mounds he dumps so the garden thieves would move away. 

And paper litter requires a different technique than clay—brush away dry pellets to locate the dark wet ones. Ease the scoop underneath. Gently lift. A groundhog’s pawing would break the smelly papers, not remove them.

Our groundhogs didn’t attempt the task.

While I was scrubbing a cast iron skillet a few days later, Spence opened the front door and lifted Rills to his shoulder. “The groundhogs really hate it.”

“Hate what?” I didn’t imagine he meant the skillet.

“The new litter.” He put Rills down. “There are no signs the groundhogs went back.”

“Woo-hoo!” I waved the skillet—dripping suds on the floor—and waltzed around the kitchen table. Our experiment worked. The cats adapted to the green pellets. The groundhogs moved away. We’d ratcheted our green living up another notch.

And cleaning the new litter couldn’t be easier. Tip the box and the dregs slide out. Wipe the surface with a damp rag and refill. No scrubbing necessary.

But Yesterday’s News is yesterday’s news. Literally.

With the experiment concluded, I searched for a link to Yesterday’s News in case curious readers wanted more information. My heart dropped to my toes. 

Article headlines included “Yesterday’s News Discontinued” and “40 people in Springfield will lose their jobs when cat litter factory closes in June.” Purina argued demand for the product had lowered and businesses going digital created less paper waste. The company stopped manufacturing in April and put the factory up for sale two months later.

Yikes!

Spence and I will scramble for an alternative to the alternative litter he discovered this spring. We’re not reverting to clay.

The cats have gone green.

Spence Filling The Groundhog Hole with Used Litter