Of cats and litter

We'd had a litter that we liked, well sort of. It's this one, only unscented. What we liked about it is that it clumped solid with no odor. But there’s also a big negative too: it’s super dusty. And when I say dusty, I mean the dust goes everywhere. That’s not good for our lungs, the kitties’ lungs nor our computers (which are in the same room as the litter boxes.

So I scouted around online and read up on the various litters out there to see if we could find a better alternative. The World’s Best Cat Litter had a lot of positive reviews, although a few did say the odor control wasn’t the best – but it didn’t have dust. We were cautiously optimistic and got some.

The switch-over seemed to be going well, with all cats acting normal and not upset. But then – and at the same time as when I started this consulting job a few weeks ago – someone started pooping in the dining room on the rug.

We knew that cats don’t actually just start going outside their boxes for no reason so we figured it was due to one of the following:

• He (based on the size of the chocolate Lincoln logs, it was almost certainly one of the boy kitties) was upset that I wasn't around all day anymore
• He didn’t like the litter
• Or he had something else going on

We tried a couple of things. First, we got a much bigger container to use as a litter box because both boy kitties are very long and we’d read about how much cats hate to feel confined in their boxes. But he still pooped outside the box. Then we noticed that Eddie was crying more and I could feel tiny hard lumps again on either side of his butt, the same as when he had the anal gland issue a few months ago.

So tomorrow he goes to the vet’s to be checked. In the meantime, we changed out the litter in the big box and put in the dusty stuff again. And you know what? All three of them are using that box exclusively. Clearly The World’s Best isn’t our best option. We’ll be trying Precious Cat Ultra Premium next. Fingers/paws crossed and all that.