Feline Pine™ now has scoopable, clumping litter

Last summer I posted a story about how I changed the cats’ litter boxes over to Feline Pine™ litter. As much as Wicca, Molly, Miette and Nemo protested via their Count Dookus being left on the surface of the litter, the conversion has been 90 percent successful (Molly still craps on the floor out of spite from time to time). This week during the post-vacation errands, I discovered Feline Pine’s new scoopable litter. It’s still the bio-degradable sawdust that excels at soaking up the number one’s moisture and smell. Now this clumps and it can be flushed down the toilet with the solid waste in the morning.

Personally I prefer the original because I only have to scoop out less in the morning but the other kind was on sale, three bags for 10 dollars and they’re the same volume, just different weights. I bought three bags of both for this experiment I’m conducting. The guest bathroom has two litter boxes anyway so the blue one has the standard pellets and the red one has the scoopable. What I am checking for are three immediate things:

1. Do the cats have any preference?
2. Does the scoopable absorb the ammonia smell as well as pellets?
3. Does the scoopable make as much mess as clay and wheat? I haven’t really set a duration for the experiment.

This isn’t married to the Scientific Method, it’s probably going to be more anecdotal. When the scoopable runs out, I will weigh the results and I am not counting on the new FP to be always available at Target or at such a good price; normally FP regular is four dollars on a 10-pound bag or 11 on a 20-pound bag at HEB.

The current results? The cats demonstrated their preference within two hours of setting out the scoopable and let me say politely they’re voting with their paws. It was used several times that quickly. I have also been cleaning out the red box every morning and the blue box only needed it once the whole time. I think blue only got used because a certain cat (Miette is my guess) shoveled out a third of the red box’s contents on to the floor. There’s my immediate answer on the mess factor; leaning on it not being worth the effort, unless I buy a new dust buster (a cat owner’s other best friend). The smell variable will have to be decided by Somara and guests. Both types work well there.