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Published: September 17 2012

I’m calling out to all the cat owners out there. Actually, cat ‘owning’ is a mis-nomer, you don’t actually own a cat; the cat has you. But there are a lot of us. If you took all of the cat owners and laid them end to end, the cats wouldn’t care. But they do care about one thing.

Keep the litter box clean. So let’s celebrate the invention of kitty litter, which is 65 years old. In 1947 Ed Lowe operated a company that made industrial absorbents including sawdust and absorbent clay called Fuller's Earth. Ed was approached by a neighbor who was tired of using ashes in her cat's box and dealing with sooty paw prints. She asked for some sand, and Ed suggested clay instead. The rest is history.

I’m glad the absorbent clay was industrial strength because sometimes cats are. That’s why I bought some extra super absorbent triple odor controlled moisture activated, dust free crystal blend kitty litter the other day. Why? When you have an inside cat, there’s no option. You need kitty litter.

Buzz Fleischman - Columnist Page. If the cat could speak, I’m sure it would thank us for the ease of building that little kitty mountain in the to-go box. Clumping litter is like a kitty rock climb to the peak. Used to be there was only one type of litter. But then it started selling real well because people didn’t want to use newspaper ashes or sand. So the marketers stepped in. Not in the litter, in the advertising. And then there were a couple of types of kitty litter. First of all where did the term litter come from?  Was a cat observed wadding up some cat box paper and throwing it in the street? Guess all the other proposed names weren’t as marketable, like, ‘Kitty goes to Town’ ‘Cats a Poppin’  ‘Kitty Dood It’ and, of course, ‘crumpled clay that your cat will --- go in’. In 1984, biochemist Thomas Nelson invented the first clumping kitty litter.

 If you throw it all out when you clean, you don’t need the clumping. If you like to save the “unused portion” then buy the clumping.

The marketers are cruel, because now there are different types of clumping litter; the immediate odor control and the long lasting odor control. Do I want to use the immediate odor control or do I want to nose it from afar and check the progress of the kitty crystals. If it uses all its odor control immediately what’s left the next day?  The people that name this stuff do it for our sake. When will this marketing end? While in the pet food aisle, I saw the Snausages display that said ‘Invite your dog to the party’. These doggy treats are made of shapes that the manufacturer thinks is cool. They’re shaped like a fire hydrant, a dog bone and a mailman. The shape they say, ‘That your dog will love to sink his teeth into’. Not the kind of image I’d want to give to a dog. Do dogs have the same status as cats? In one way they do because I discovered a new doggy product. A product I believe will work for a Chihuahua, a schnauzer or a toy poodle. Not a Doberman, Saint Bernard or a Great Dane. Do you see where this is going? That’s right; just when you thought it was safe to walk the dog………dog litter!

And that’s the scoop.

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