Apr272008
Natural Cat Litter Comparison
Filed under Litter & Hygiene by moderncat at 2:40 pm on Apr 27 2008
NOTE: This is a follow-up to the original post, What’s In Your Litter Box? which outlined the dangers of clay and silica cat litters. If you haven’t already, please read the original post to learn more about this important topic.
. . .
My natural litter comparison real-world tests have not been going so well — changing so many variables all at once has caused some protesting and a lot of spot-botting. So, in order to really compare apples to apples, I conducted some controlled tests using clean samples and water. Here are my findings:
Arm & Hammer High Performance
The package says that this litter uses “natural clumping ingredients instead of clay,” but it does not specify what it is made from. I did find a mention of the litter in a news release that says it is corn-based. This litter contains Arm & Hammer baking soda to help control odor.
Swheat Scoop
Swheat Scoop is made from naturally processed wheat, which has both natural enzymes for odor control and natural starches for clumping.
World’s Best Cat Litter
World’s Best Cat Litter, or WBCL, is another corn-based litter made from whole kernel corn.
Nature’s Miracle
Nature’s Miracle is also corn-based, however it is made from corn cob granules instead of kernels.
Scent
As I poured clean samples into the bowls, I checked each litter for it’s natural scent. The Arm & Hammer litter has a very strong, perfume-y scent that I can’t quite identify. It might be cedar. I find the scent to be a bit overpowering. Swheat Scoop has a very light scent of wheat or wheat flour, as you would expect. WBCL smells like a farm to me. The package says that “the extra strength formula contains a plant derived, natural scent that helps keep litter fresh for multiple cat use,” but I can’t stand the smell and it gets even stronger when wet. Nature’s Miracle has a light pine scent that is not too offensive.
Texture & Dust
Two other important characteristics are the texture of the litter and the amount of dust that it creates. The texture affects whether or not the cats will like it and how much it will track out of the box and onto the floor. The dust factor affects how much airborne dust is created when pouring fresh litter into the box and when cats dig around in it. Arm & Hammer and Nature’s Miracle have almost exactly the same texture. Both can be described as light and fluffy, meaning that they are more likely to stick to paws and be tracked around. This does also mean that the bag is much lighter to carry, which is a benefit, however if your cats are used to a heavy clay litter, they may need some transition time to get used to this lighter texture. Both of these litters produce very little dust. WBCL is very coarse with large granules, similar in size to many clay litters. It produces a fair amount of dust. Swheat Scoop has a variable mixture of coarse granules with some lighter pieces. Unfortunately, Swheat Scoop produces a ton of dust. I found this to be the worst by far, which worries me since I am gluten intolerant, although I have not been diagnosed with Celiac Disease, but I have read that some people with this problem can get sick if they inhale airborne flour particles, and I imagine that Swheat Scoop dust is similar. I have no concrete information about this, so if you know anything about it, please leave a comment.
Clumping
Clumping is one of the most important factors in a good litter. You want solid clumps to make scooping easier. If the clumps break apart, you wind-up changing the entire contents of the box more often and scooping is just a pain. Arm & Hammer and Nature’s Miracle performed similarly, with only semi-hard clumping. You can see in the images above that both fell apart when scooped. WBCL had the best clumping ability, with solid, easily scoopable clumps. Swheat Scoop had the worst performance with clumps that fell apart into small pieces, making it very difficult to scoop. Note: I performed these tests with the regular Swheat Scoop. There is a multi-cat strength formula that claims to clump faster and firmer. It may have better results.
Environmental Concerns & Flushing
All of these litters are made of renewable, natural materials that do not require strip mining like clay litters. Also, all of them are completely biodegradable, meaning if they go into the landfill in a paper bag (not plastic), they will eventually breakdown, unlike clay litters that will stay in the landfills forever. Swheat Scoop and WBCL both say that they are flushable, but please be aware, flushing cat waste is strongly discouraged in order to maintain water quality and protect wildlife.
Summary
After looking closely at these four litters, it is clear that there is no perfect litter. In terms of clumping, it appears that Swheat Scoop has the worst performance and WBCL has the best. However, I dislike the farm smell of WBCL. The light and fluffy litters are very low dust, but their clumping is poor. I’m not exactly sure what to do. Perhaps try WBCL with some baking soda or other natural odor control product? Maybe try mixing some of these litters? In addition to these natural litters, there are also several pellet-type litters like Feline Pine and Yesterday’s News, but I have tried these before and they were immediately rejected by my crew. Many people swear by them, though, so I encourage you to try them for yourself. Also, you may feel quite differently about some of the litters tested here, so please feel free to share your comments. There are already quite a few comments on the original post, so be sure to check them out as you decide which litter is best for you.
1 jakeandmicahon 27 Apr 2008 at 5:59 pm
We are dedicated users of Swheat Scoop cat litter. I recently purchased Swheat Scoop’s NEW “Multi Cat” formula. The clumping is 200% better than the normal formula. I would highly recommend it. It clumps as well as a clay cat litter which is a complete shock. I don’t know what they did to improve it but it’s definitely a better formula than the original.
2 Caraon 27 Apr 2008 at 7:26 pm
Awww, I wish you’d have included the newer, clumping version of Feline Pine in your tests. I can’t stand the pellet-y stuff, but I find the clumping version to be pretty good. I like your experiment here, I’m just curious how the brand I use tests out compared to the others!
3 nedon 27 Apr 2008 at 7:31 pm
I have to comment here also in favor of Swheat Scoop. It was your first article in this series that made me switch cat litter in the first place. We have 3 cats, and one of them is a Maine Coon… so with two litter boxes, we were getting so much dust from the Costco ‘Scoop away’ that we decided to switch after reading your article.
We picked Swheat schoop most because its basically rejected flour, and like the others, no clay/slica. For us, it clumps well, but we do notice the smell when its not cleaned in a day or two. (Note that our Maine Coon was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and he was using the box a ton before we got it under control, so our experience isn’t totally fair.)
The dust was our biggest complaint about the ’scoop away’, and the Swheat scoop has far less. I don’t notice the dust from it at all, but I may try out the WBCL just to see how different it is. But if you have a wheat allergy, then yeah, swheat scoop could be a problem. But at this point, we really like swheat scoop. (BTW, on our 40lb bag, there is nothing to say if its the new formula or not. It doesn’t say ‘multi-cat’ so unless I missed something, we have the regular one. Maybe that says more on how bad scoop away was…)
4 brieanneon 27 Apr 2008 at 9:23 pm
i use wbcl (the multicat formula) and haven’t had problems, but i haven’t tried other natural litters. we use a covered litterbox, so i don’t notice the smell, and when we can smell the litter it usually means the whole litter needs to be changed out.
anyway, my comment is more just an additional environmental tip–my husband and i save paper bags throughout the day (coffee shop pastry bags, lunch bags, etc.) and bring them home to dispose of our cat litter scoopings. this way the litter will go to a landfill in a biodegradable bag and we’re not wasting bags which we would normal throw away/recycle!
5 bon 27 Apr 2008 at 9:24 pm
I use a combination of the new, clumping Feline Pine (or other similar brands) and Swheat Scoop in the same box. I can’t recommend this enough! The combo clumps well and smells good. You could use WBCL in place of SS, but I don’t like the scent.
6 pbon 28 Apr 2008 at 9:50 am
I also use the scoopable feline pine (don’t like the pellets either). I’ve tried them ALL and it’s the best one. WBCL caused me to get little fruit flies due to the corn base and I’m not the only one I know that it’s happened to. Also, I didn’t think it controlled the smell of a #2 well at all.
7 JeninLAon 28 Apr 2008 at 10:43 am
We use WBCL multi cat formula and it works well for us for odor control and clumping. I started with the orginal formula of WBCL and we did have some odor issues back then and when I got the new kitten I decide to try the Multi-cat and it was significantly improved odor control. I find that we have had no dust issues with either. This is all that have I used so I am not sure how the others compare but I do know a lot of people that use the swheat scoop and swear by it. But I have someone in my household that is Gluten Intolerant as well and I avoid anything wheat.
8 eveningon 28 Apr 2008 at 1:21 pm
I totally disagree that clumping is an important factor. We use a compressed pine litter (not Feline Pine, but the same thing) and the urine breaks down the pine pellets and then dries into pine dust.
The result? You only have to scoop the poop! I think this is FAR superior to having to also scoop the pee clumps, esp when you’re on vacation. Plus no smell!
Not sure why so many don’t like the pellets, they rock!
9 DJon 28 Apr 2008 at 3:24 pm
I use a pelleted pine horse stall bedding for my rabbits’ litterbox. No smell, it doesn’t clump, but as evening said, it turns to dust.
It’s marvellous. I thought it would work very well for the cat box too, but…
My cat REFUSES to set paw upon it, she crinkles her face at it. So for the cat, it’s World’s Best Cat Litter.
I think it’s interesting how the smell of this brand of litter bothered you, moderncat, but I can’t smell it at all. To me, it is the only litter I’ve ever experienced that is entirely without odor.
Amazing how different noses work differently!
Thanks for doing all this research and posting it. ; )
10 hon 28 Apr 2008 at 3:55 pm
I’ve been using WBCL for several years. I highly recommend the multi-cat formula. I have 3 cats and and I find that the standard strength formula just doesn’t cut it. (I believe that you were using the standard strength formula in your test.)
11 Hepperon 28 Apr 2008 at 4:49 pm
We have 3 cats at home and force them to all use the same litter box because we literally have no extra room. (yeah, I know that’s not recommended) Needless to say there’s smell and tracking galore, and I’ve tested almost every litter out there. It’s not a dramatic winner, but the Swheat Scoop has top place for now. It clumps well and has minimal tracking (compared to the others).
12 Natural Cat Litteron 28 Apr 2008 at 6:57 pm
[…] has an excellent post up about Natural Cat Litter. Before I read “What’s is your litter box?,” I had no idea that conventional cat […]
13 Danielon 28 Apr 2008 at 8:48 pm
Hi modernpet,
A great and comprehensive review; unfortunately none of the litter products reviewed are available over here in Australia. I will however make a note for Buzzpet to do a similar review with Australian products, so will keep you posted (excuse the pun!). Will be interesting to see whether the results are similar.
Keep up the great work.
Daniel.
14 Cyrstal cat litter reviewed | Buzz Peton 28 Apr 2008 at 8:55 pm
[…] Modernpet have just posted a great cat litter comparison; although the products are all American based, the review is a great read when considering what […]
15 Abby in Vegason 29 Apr 2008 at 1:47 am
I don’t have personal experience with this, but I think it might help some people: I have read that cats have an aversion to pine and citrus scents. So pine or cedar scented litter might be a bad idea. (As an aside: it is also not a good idea to use a citrus or pine/cedar scented detergent cleanser to clean your litter box… or at least air it out really well before expecting the cat to use it again.)
16 Abby in Vegason 29 Apr 2008 at 1:49 am
I had a question for anyone or the moderator to answer if they have info: do we know if other kinds of Arm and Hammer cat litter are made of environmentally friendly products, or is it just the High Performance kind?
17 eveningon 29 Apr 2008 at 5:44 am
DJ - You need to gradually convert them to the pellets. Start with a small amount of the new litter in the old litter, and gradually increase the new litter with each changing. They should be used to the new litter by the time you’re done with the old litter.
18 Aprilon 29 Apr 2008 at 6:45 am
I think your review is spot on. Natural litters have a hard time clumping when you clean the box 2x/day.
Feline Pine Scoopable is very similar to Nature’s Miracle, with a much lighter scent. The clumps are firmer than Swheat Scoop, and it’s also better at controlling odor. Unfortunately, Brice isn’t nuts about the sawdust texture.
I’ve opted for a low-dust, high quality clay litter (Dr. Elsey’s Precious Cat Ultra). It’s truly unscented, with no added chemicals. I believe inhaling ANY dust or ingesting ANY clumping litter (whether corn, clay, or pine) is undesirable. My goal is to minimize this risk. Dr. Elsey’s litter fits the bill.
19 dawnon 29 Apr 2008 at 10:46 am
My aunt recently suggested using Chicken Lay Crumbles, which is just corn chicken feed. It is very inexpensive- I just bought a 25lb bag for around $8 and it seems to be the same stuff as The Worlds Best Cat litter. It’s a tiny bit more coarse but clumps just as well. I add baking soda to help with the odor.
It’s available in feed stores and luckily there’s a horsey community not far from me in Burbank, CA where I can purchase it. I’ve also bought TWBC and mixed them together when I’ve run out and I don’t see much difference except for the price, TWBCL cost 4x’s as much!
It’s a great option for people who live near rural or horsey areas and want to save money and still be eco-friendly. Make sure you get the crumbles, the other versions have bigger pieces.
Chicken feed as cat litter, who whudda thunk it?
20 Kateon 30 Apr 2008 at 9:46 am
I use WBCL as well– switched after reading your previous article and realizing that the clay stuff was irritating the hell out of my lungs.
I don’t think the smell is that unpleasant though. It almost reminds me of coffee grounds. Anyway– the cats adjusted to it with zero issue, and there is NO DUST (which is great for my poor little lungs in this tiny apartment).
Just wanted to thank you for the earlier heads-up and compliment the photo-rich and super-useful litter review! You rock.
21 Maureenon 30 Apr 2008 at 8:21 pm
Hi, I’ve been a regular reading up on cool cat stuff from your site. I can’t help myself by wanting to share this joy of finding the BEST natural cat litter for my pet Muji. After much struggle with Muji’s protestion plus wastage of money on cat litter she will not try. The winner emerged and it’s “PEE WEE”
PeeWee pellets are a purely natural product of wood without additives of any kind. PeeWee pellets are specially designed to have instant (within a few seconds) and high absorption power (300%) to synchronize with the PeeWee litter tray design. Other substitutes will not achieve optimal results in terms of urine smell absorption and cost savings.
Information about Pee Wee
http://www.holisticpaws.com.sg/productCat_toilet/detail_petToilet.htm
Here’s the video :
http://www.holisticpaws.com.sg/productCat_toilet/PeeWeeVideo_eng.mpg
Hope you can get it in the States : )
Cheers
Maureen (Singapore)
22 Tracyon 01 May 2008 at 11:03 am
One I have tried but didn’t see mentioned here is called SPACE. It is a silca based cat litter that is supposed to last twice as long by absorbing the liquid and trapping it in the silca. Well don’t bother Modern cat lovers! It’s horrible. It doesn’t absorb anything. The urine just pools at the bttom of your box and is an absolute nightmare to dispose of. But I a glad to hear about some of these other products. Thanks for taking one for the team MODERNCAT!!
23 Kiion 08 May 2008 at 8:14 pm
Moderncat also inspired me to switch up my cat litter. One of my cats has mild asthma. I knew that those oil diffuser things make it worse but I had not considered the kitty litter that made me cough every time I changed it. Add in the environmental factor and it was time for a change.
I tried World’s Best first because clumping is important for us, we have two boxes and 3 kitties. I noticed a scent that was a little like corn but it was pretty mild. I can see how the author found it smelled like a farm. It isn’t a problem for us, but we aren’t in a tiny condo either. Plus I am also pretty strange on certain scents. It is expensive, but it clumps well, we don’t go through as much as conventional clay clump, and I find the smell odd but mild. I have yet to notice any fruit fly issues. The damned stuff does scatter far if you have diggers. I have two.
I also tried Arm&Hammer High Performance. It stinks. I tried this one in the bathroom litter box. For an apartment, we have a very generously sized bathroom but that horrid perfumey smell filled the entire room and wafted outwards. It smells exactly like cheap air freshener at fast food joints or gas stations. It also made one of my cats smell of it (the only cat who would use it). Considering diffused oil can make our AsthmaKitty cough, we are never trying this again, even if I could handle that smell all the time. It lessened over the next 48 hours but was still quite strong.
So far, we are sticking with World’s Best. We might try swheat scoop at a later date. We’ve had enough litter switching for now.
24 meredithon 18 May 2008 at 9:30 pm
I’ve tried all except the World’s Best. Right now I have Swheat scoop and I think it’s a pretty good product. There’s no weird smell (the Nature’s Miracle is a little funny) and yet it seems to cut the smell of urine and feces pretty well (sometimes so well that I forget to clean the litterbox). THe only thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t clump all that well and because it’s made of wheat, I noticed the soggy clumps of litter start to smell like dough.
25 John (DesignIt)on 15 Jul 2008 at 9:39 am
I switched from Arm & Hammer clumping litter to the World’s Best Cat Litter after reading this review. WBCL works great and I don’t mind the “natural” odor at all. Best of all, my long haired cat has stopped spitting up as much. I think she was ingesting some of the clumping litter when she groomed and it was causing a nauseous reaction. Thanks again to Kate and ModernCat!
26 Miuon 27 Jul 2008 at 12:25 am
We switched from clay to SwheatScoop after I saw it advertised in a health food magazine. Compared to clay, the wheat litter is so much lighter to haul and easier to scoop. It clumps well enough if the litter is kept at a 3 inch depth. We have used this litter for 4 years. We have 2 litter boxes for 2 fairly large cats. The litter is scooped twice daily thus avoiding the soggy lumps someone described (as one cat tends to urinate in the same spot in the box). Odor control is very good so long as the cat covers the fecal matter.
One litter box is in the garage. This spring, a mouse came in to eat the wheat litter. So I had to switch the litter in the garage to clumping Papurr which does not clump as well as SwheatScoop, but does not attract mice.
27 Le Chat Noiron 27 Jul 2008 at 9:42 am
I use original WBCL with a small amount of the sawdusty (not pellet) version of Feline Pine mixed in. The Feline Pine helps with smell and WBCL clumps well so this combination works for me.
28 dinachkaon 03 Aug 2008 at 9:25 pm
Issue: Corn-based litter appears to attract cockroaches, so I’ll have to switch to different type of litter.
I did like using the Arm & Hammer HPCL because it was light in weight, clumped ok, and controlled odors well (didn’t stink when urinated on, like some others). I mixed it with Tidy Cats for Multiple Cats since the cats liked that & it clumped very well. However, I just noticed that the A&H HPCL has attracted cockroaches in my basement since it has a starch base (corn).
I hadn’t had cockroaches here before, and after seeing one hanging out on the litter today, realized the litter was attracting them. Rather than calling an exterminator & going through that expense, I am just going to switch to different litter and use boric acid powder around the floor perimeter.
I also understand that dogs will sometimes get into wheat litter (and probably corn) since it is a food. I don’t have dogs yet, but plan to add to my critter family. Now that I see the dangers of using clay & silica gel litters, I want to switch to all natural. I’ll probably try pine or paper due to the cockroach issue.
I also saw on this site that if a cat ingests clay/silica litter when grooming, and it can cause them to throw up, which my cats sometimes do. However, food could be a cause of that, too, in our case. I do see that they don’t throw up as much now that I feed them more wet food & less dry food, and the dry food I use now is grain-free (Orijen, Evo). Actually, Avoderm chicken & herring dry agreed with their systems and reduced their throwing up , although it had grain, but the pet store here stopped selling it. It seemed the grocery store brands of dry food, like Purina One for Sensitive Systems, Meow Mix, & Friskies made them throw up more. That may have been due to having poorer quality of grain in them than Avoderm, or maybe the avocado in Avoderm counteracted the grain effect. At any rate, the wet food (Wellness & Avoderm) & grain-free food (Orijen, Evo) seems to be doing well.
Thanks for the great tips, products, photos, and research on this site. God bless!
29 selkion 06 Aug 2008 at 3:02 am
We have 7 cats with 7 litterboxes (all manual), & have tried a number of natural litters (Swheatscoop, WBCL, PaPurr, Yesterdays News, Cat Country [a wheatgrass pellet litter], Nature’s Miracle/Fresh Results, & others I can’t rememeber).
The one that works the best for us is the Fresh Results/Nature’s Miracle litter. Fresh Results is the exact same litter as Nature’s Miracle (I called the company, 8 in 1, to make sure), but it’s almost half the price ($5.88) & is sold only at Wal-Mart (comes in a purple bag with a white kitty on it). Our cats like the texture (it’s very close to sand or sawdust, so it’s soft on their paws - good for kitties with sensitivities in that area). I was concerned about it having a pine-based scent, but while it’s a little strong when you very 1st pour it out of the bag, the scent dissipates quickly & becomes barely noticeable (my husband has bad allergies, so this was an important factor for us). It controls odor well. It has very little dust (really - I was surprised at how little), but it does track quite a bit - no more than the Swheatscoop or WBCL, & since it’s such a fine texture it isn’t as obtrusive wherever it does end up. I find the clumping to be adequate, though not as good as WBCL. The only times I have trouble with clumps breaking apart are when one of our extra-covering-happy kitties scratches the litter around excessively & scratches through clumps, or when I accidentally break through a clump with scoop (the only litter those haven’t ever been an issue with is WBCL).
Most of our kitties didn’t like the texure of the pellet-based litters, & I found them difficult to scoop (especially the urine; they aren’t clumping litters, but I still like to remove the wet waste daily). The Swheatscoop was pretty dusty, attracted ants & other bugs, & one of the kitties would eat it sometimes. WBCL was also pretty dusty & attracted ants & bugs, but worked well otherwise (very solid clumps - the best of any litter we tried). PaPurr was just too “pefume-y” smelling for us, so we didnt use enough of it to make a fair assessment.
30 Sealinkon 18 Aug 2008 at 8:47 pm
I’m pretty disappointed in the continued promotion of ‘natural’ cat litters. I have friends that have tried pine or newspaper pellets, and I was not impressed, as the pellets were just as likely to be tracked around as regular clay litters and they did not work very well (I know, because their one bathroom in the house had the litter box in it, so I had plenty of time to contemplate the litter.)
I have followed the recommendations of http://www.catinfo.org and switched to a low-dust clumping clay litter, Dr. Elsey’s (recommended above). While I understand the problems of strip-mining bentonite (full disclosure: I am a geologist) and I feel for the plight of the breeder whose story I originally read, I have been using clumping cat litter for years, with and without rescue kittens, without any of the problems mentioned by catmom.com. I believe that because cats are guests in our homes, we must do our utmost to make them comfortable and keep them healthy, and this means choosing the litter that is best for THEM, and not that which smells nicest to us or salves our eco-conscience.
31 Luddleyon 02 Oct 2008 at 6:08 pm
I have a gluten allergy, and recently brought a cat into my apartment. I had a bag of Sweat Scoop kitty litter, and without thinking about it put it to use. It upset my stomach immediately. I noticed the dust in the air when I poured it out. I find I am very sensitive to its smell as well. At first I thought is was my imagination, but I have been home full time from work this week and feeling miserable all week. It wasn’t until i searched on the internet that my fears were confirmed. I think wheat based kitty litter should be avoided by anyone with a wheat or gluten allergy.