Cat Litter

There are only two humans in our household, and all the rest are cats.  We actually have 5 cats right now:  Chibi, Yani, Rabbit (or Usagi), Kurone (shortcut for Kuroneko), and Maru.  Yes, our cats have Japanese names and we love it that way.  Because of the number of our cats, we have to maintain two litter boxes.  For those who don't know, litter boxes are where cats poo and urinate (I was about to write "pee" but it would sound funny - poo and pee.).  A litter box should be filled with litter and then, cleaned occasionally. Cat's poo should be scooped out of the box, and the litter itself should be changed every two days.  Quite obviously, commercial litter costs money, and so, through the years of taking care of cats, we have different options as to what to use for cat litter.  A litter box usually looks like this:

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During our first few years of taking care of cats, we used Tidy Cats by Purina.  I think one bag contains 5 kilos of cat litter.  Tidy Cat contains clay litter that is non-clumping and dust-free.  A bag of Tidy Cats costs around Php220.00 in SM Department Stores/Ace Hardware.  We tried our best to make a bag of Tidy Cats last for seven days, but with our growing number of cats, this was just impossible.  As time went on, we found Tidy Cats a little bit costly for us.

I had to look for alternative kitty litter and I found this website: http://thegreenists.com/pets/tip-of-the-day-make-your-own-kitty-litter/1044.  This website teaches cat owners how to make cat litter from paper.  We have to make our paper litter a little bit differently because some of the products mentioned in the said website are not found in the Philippines.  

We have a mountain of scratch papers at home, and so, we use them to make the paper litter.  First, we cut the paper into strips using scissors (who normally have paper shredders in the Philippines?).  Then we "wash" the paper strips in water (just like what is mentioned in the given website).  We added baking soda to the moist paper clumps, and we dried these paper clumps in the sun.  Due to the summer heat, the paper clumps dried out in a day.  Thankfully, the paper litter works out fine and our cats have no problem with it.  The problem with this kind of litter is that it is too tedious to make.  Seriously, who has time to cut a mountain of paper into strips? (Unless you have a paper shredder).  The paper litter looks like this:

Image from thegreenists.com/pets/tip-of-the-day-make-your-own-kitty-litter/1044

Because of the problem of time to prepare the paper litter, we have to look for an alternative litter that is rather easy to prepare.  After researching the Internet, people came up with two suggestions: wood shavings and/or sawdust. 

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Here in Bacolod City, wood shavings are easy to acquire.  There are many furniture shops along Lopez Jaena Street, and you can simply ask for wood shavings and gather them yourself.  One big plastic bag of wood shavings lasts for a week.  We used sawdust a few weeks back but someone told us that sawdust might cause respiratory problems (both to the cats and the humans) because the sawdust particles are so tiny.  One of the problems of wood shavings is that the wood might have been treated by chemicals to protect it from termites. We asked the carpenters along Lopez Jaena Street about this, and they told us that chemical treatments are done right after the wood has already been planed (yes, "planed" is a valid word.  Check the dictionary).  I hope so.  

We are hoping that the wood shavings will continue working well for us and for our cats because they are really convenient to get, and we get them for FREE.