Tips and Tricks: Cheap Cat Litter

For quite some time now, I've been meaning to share with you a new feature I'm going to add to the site called "Tips and Tricks". Catchy and unique name eh?

My first tip, is for cat people.

I'm a cat ppl too. Shocker, I know.

Anyway, I've never been overly happy with my cat litter choices. Clay is bad for cats lungs, and also doesn't keep the odor down. Clumpy litter is a pain in the butt and I just don't like to scoop. But if you don't scoop, it gets smelly fast.

Then I found feline pine.

Feline pine is a compressed wood product pellet. They are about 1/4" wide, and vary in lengths from 1/2" to 1" approximately. I thought it was a great compromise as it was reasonable priced and available near by.

THEN, as usual, walmart stopped carrying it. Like they do every other product that I come to love and use on a regular basis.

I switched cat litters a couple times, each time liking something else, and they'd stop carrying that too. I was having to drive 45 minutes for cat litter! Finally I decided enough was enough, it was too expensive and I googled "cheap cat litter".

What I found was this:

These are heat pellets that you use to heat your home in a pellet burning stove in the winter. They are exactly the same as feline pine! Literally a fraction of the cost.

Throughout the winter, the pellets are very easy to find. I got mine at Lowe's and Sutherland's. You can also find them at orschelns. We bought several bags at Lowe's in the off season, they had them on a high rack.

Anyway, they are approximately $5-$6 for a 40 pound bag. I have 2 cats, and a full bag will last approximately 6 weeks! this works out to about $4 a month, whereas before I was spending upwards of $40 a month on cat litter.

There are many different brands, but they are all essentially the same, compressed wood pellets. Put they are better for the environment because it breaks down faster, and I don't have any sort of pet smell in my house (well, unless you let it go way too long of course).

Also, the natural pellets have no fuel additives in them (something I was very worried about at first). Just wood, so they will not hurt your kitties!

You don't need very much in the box, I only put in about an inch. It will swell up as the cat uses it and break down. You can scoop if you wish, but don't need to. If you do, you'll need to cut every other bar out of your scoop to let the pellets go through, they are too large for the regular scoop. I change the boxes once every 4-7 days.

The biggest downside? It's really loud when the cat scratches in the box! lol.