Since 1854 — News from Montcalm County and Ionia County, Michigan

By Stacie Smith | on December 03, 2019

My cat, Mootsie, is the messiest of the three felines who live in our home. Stacie Smith The Daily News

There are three cats in my family. Yes, three. I also have a dog and I tell her daily that she is my favorite. Part of that favoritism stems from simply opening the back door and allowing her to do her, ahem, “business” outside.

With multiple cats, there are multiple litter boxes and with that many cats and litter boxes, there can potentially be offensive odors that slap you in the face upon entering the house. For years, I turned to clump litter, both scented and unscented. I am not a fan. It is tough to be dignified when shoveling and straining kitty litter, nothing to say of the dust that assaulted my nasal passages.

I have no idea how I stumbled upon an online thread discussing different kitty litters but one comment made me rethink the whole process. Some random individual was singing the praises of using kiln-dried pine pellets for kitty litter. For $5.99 for a 40-pound bag, I decided it was worth trying.

I went to Tractor Supply Company (TSC) in Greenville and wandered back into the depths of the store I had never before traversed. It is in the section through a garage door, past the cat and dog food aisles. Housed with items for farm animals, are the bags of pellets. Sure enough, it was $5.99.

I had my oldest two sons dump and thoroughly clean our litter boxes before pouring in the pellets. This allowed me to also sweep and mop the rooms where they are stored. I have a sense of smell comparable to DEA bomb-sniffing dogs, so I wanted everything to smell fresh.

As always, our cat, Mootsie, immediately sabotaged the freshly cleaned litter box and was not hesitant to use it. As a kid, we had a family cat who refused to enter the house through a sliding glass door because we had changed the linoleum so I was unsure how my cats would react.

I can’t say it is odor-free, but it is much less pronounced than when using typical kitty litter. When the pellets are dampened, it turns into sawdust. Because of the larger size as compared to litter granules, the cats also were not tracking it outside of the litter box. The biggest offender of making a mess was the aforementioned dog who thinks the litter box serves as a snack bar. That’s a story for another time.

Clean as normal by scooping out the waste and adding a little more fresh pellets. A perfect solution would be toilet training the cats but since there is no way I want to tackle that, I will continue to use pine pellets.

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