[Sca-cooks] Cat Litter substitute

[Gretchen Beck]

--On Wednesday, October 01, 2008 11:10 AM -0700 Susan Fox
<selene at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Let me start by saying that I have only rarely lived with cats, I'm a
> pretty dedicated dog person.  No particular objection to cats, mind you. 
> That being said:  I'm not sure flour would really register on a cat as
> gravel-like enough in which dig and defecate;  if he did, his little paws
> would track flour all over the house. 
> Also,  I'm a bit dubious about "flushable" anything.  In this case:  as
> the starch particles soak, they expand and you could have a toilet
> blockage to deal with.  Legumes, even more so.  If it were I, I would
> probably get a little garbage pail with a liner and lid and dispose of
> the "evidence" once a day in the household trash.

I have to agree -- almost nothing is truly flushable. The trick is that it
has to be able to break up  in the pipes (which is why you flush toilet
paper, which is designed to do this, but not kleenexes and papertowels --
which are designed to stay in one piece).

On the other hand, focusing on the problem (how to get the cat to learn to
use the pot without flushing unflushable litter down it) yields another
possible solution: Train the cat on a bedside commode or see if you can fit
a pan under the cat seat piece. Follow the procedure, but don't remove the
pan (or, in the case of the bedside commode, move to the regular toilet)
until you're at the "leave out the litter" step. While this is more work
(you have to still empty out the pan during this process), you're going to
have to remove the cat seat to use the toilet anyhow, so it's not really
any much more work.

Hope this helps!

toodles, margaret