Dazed and confused? Not me. I’m just Lost in the Cheese Aisle.

Monday, June 6, 2011

ON LITTER AND LINCOLN LOGS

Mr. Potato Head: [after spending the night in the daycare sandbox] It was cold and dark, nothing but sand and a couple of Lincoln Logs.
Hamm the Piggy Bank: Eh... I don’t think those were Lincoln Logs.

- Toy Story 3
* * *

She Who Must Be Obeyed knows that I am prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse... because I have over eighty pounds of Kitty Litter in the garage. I guess she must figure I’ll be serving it as cold cereal when things get really desperate. But she’s wrong: There’s no fucking way I would eat kitty litter as a cold cereal.

You’ve gotta cook it.

I jest, of course. Kitty litter might not be especially toothsome, even when cooked... but after the Zombie Apocalypse, it might be handy to have some litter around for human use. I suspect the water supply will be interrupted, making flush toilets useless.

I’m not worried about the cat. We’d probably have to eat her out of sheer desperation, which would leave all the litter for our use.

Cat litter technology has come a long way. On the recommendation of the Mistress of Sarcasm, we started using clumping cat litter several months ago and were pleasantly surprised at how odor-free it helps keep the box. With old-school litter, we’d sieve out the turds every couple of days and replace the entire contents of the box every week or so, by which time it would have begun to give off a characteristically cat-pissy pong. But clumping litter forms little boulders on contact with cat pee, boulders that get sieved out along with the turds. We just have to top up the box periodically and perform a full litter replacement about once a month. Much more efficient; much less stinky.

Best yet, Costco sells Fresh Step clumping litter in 42-pound plastic sacks, complete with carrying handle and zipper closure. You get an upper-body workout every time you pick that sack up, which is a good thing... and it’s a damn sight cheaper than buying sacks of conventional litter at the Stupid-Market.

The only thing I worry about now is what to do in the event of a Zombie-Kitty Apocalypse... but I don’t worry too much. With all that litter, at least they’ll have a clean box to crap in after they eat our brains.

Postscript: Cleaning a cat box is a lot like cleaning an oven... the filthier you allow it to get between cleanings, the nastier and more difficult the task will be.

3 comments:

Rahel said...

I'm pretty strict about litter box hygiene. I remove anything that my cat puts in it as soon as I know it's there. My late cat, the Lady in Red, used to capitalize on that. She would use the box once during the day, wait for me to clean it out when I came home from work, and then hop in and use it again because she liked to use a clean box.

I also stopped using clumping litter a few months ago because of the dust. Now, I use bits of torn newspaper. No tracking, no dust, and old newspapers are free. The only drawback is that I have to spend time tearing them, but for the price I pay, it's well worth it.

B....... said...

Many years ago, when the cat came to stay with us (lets call him bonkers), our all-knowing vet told us to put a page of newspaper down into the litter box and then a couple cups of clay litter on top of the paper. Each time that bonkers pooped we would scoop up the poop and flush it. A good pee, on the other hand (bonkers liked water) required a paper and litter toss. This went on for 16 years, WTH 2 maybe 3 times a day, but our house never stank of cat piss or turds. Worked for us, and I would do the same again - if I could ever find another Bonkers.....

og said...

Stays crunchy, even in milk.