A safe, clean and odor free house with kitty litter
People love their pets. In the United States alone (the world’s biggest lover of our feline friends), there are an estimated 75 million pet cats. However, 75 million cats can create a huge mess. For your cat’s hygiene and the collective safety of everyone in your household, you most likely use kitty litter to keep your house clean and dispose of your cat’s waste. Cat litter has been around for most of the last century, and it continues to improve as new materials are discovered or designed to cover odor and become more efficient at a given volume than previous types of litter. In many ways, it is the most important foundation of your cat’s health other than a proper diet.
From the origins to modern literature
In the early years after World War II, a man named Ed Lowe designed and sold the first kitty litter mix to families. He was so successful that his company, built entirely on this one product (and later expanded), was worth half a billion dollars when he died in 1995. That’s how important this product is to families today. At first, sand was used primarily in kitty litter, but clay quickly became the standard due to its superior absorbency. So, clumping cat litter was invented. Cat urine and feces cause the tiny particles to clump together so they can be easily scooped out and replaced without having to change the entire kitty litter at once.
New advances like silica gel and biodegradable cat litter promise even more options for cat owners. There are a couple of reasons why cat owners should absolutely consider what type of litter is best for their pet. Cost is a consideration for the vast majority of families, so it’s important to keep trash cheap enough for people to buy it. In general, this means that technological advances in garbage are slow and distant, since functional and cheap products already exist. There simply isn’t a huge demand for new types of cat litter, although biodegradable litter was a big concern several years ago.
Cat litter is primarily used to cover up odors associated with fecal matter and urine, and provides a safe product for handling and removing such waste from your home. However, there are some concerns with the use of garbage. Flushing garbage down the toilet can introduce the tiny parasite Toxoplasma gondii into waterways, possibly harming a variety of marine life such as otters and sharks. Also, pregnant women should avoid handling kitty litter if possible, as T. gondii can harm an early fetus. In addition, environmental concerns continue over the approximately 2 million tons of trash that are deposited in US landfills each year, so more research will be done on how to combat these various problems.
