On Day 1 of Furball’s cat toilet training, I took the CitiKitty kit and placed the plastic tray insert on the ground next to the toilet.  According to the instruction booklet (which is printed on 100% recycled paper), the first step is to place your litter box next to the toilet.

Furball’s box has always been next to the toilet so I was already onto Step 2.  The second step was to actually put the tray insert into the toilet and show it to your cat.  I decided to go slower since everything I’ve read about cat toilet training suggests that going slowly is the best thing to do.

As a result, I put the tray insert on the floor where Furball’s litter box used to be.  The plastic made a scratchy scraping sound on the floor, so I carefully folded up a piece of newspaper and put it underneath as a buffer.  I thought the scrape (like nails on a chalkboard) might freak out the cat.

I also didn’t put only fresh litter in the tray.  I put a bit of his stink-o-factor litter from the box.  It made sense to me that he’d recognize what it was if there was some of his business in it.  The tray felt like it might move around when he walked on it, so I also wedged it between the litter scoop and the toilet brush to keep it from sliding.

I was expecting a big mess of litter all over the bathroom since the tray is quite shallow.  Much to my surprise and delight, when Furball used the “box”, there was just a wet spot in the tray and a few stray bits of litter.  Later in the day, when he did #2, he left a few logs sitting on top.

I guess I’m lucky that my cat is rather lazy when it comes to burying his stuff.  I’m unlucky in that for 8 years, I’ve had to put up with stinky cat boxes since he won’t cover it up half the time.  On the other hand, this might make cat toilet training really easy.

There seems to be a growing trend to feed pets raw meat as opposed to processed pellets. I can’t speak to the benefits myself, but have heard from a few readers who swear that their cats’ health improved dramatically on a raw meat diet. Here’s a chance to win dehydrated, raw, human-grade cat food. Bet you never thought you’d see that in a giveaway!

If you’re not chopping raw meat for your cat yourself, the most common option is to buy prepared raw cat food in frozen format. I always thought this was rather inconvenient. How do you chisel off just enough off of a polenta-sized frozen sausage to feed your cat? Don’t you have to thaw it and then leave a batch sitting in your fridge? Also, I wouldn’t want to give my cat icy cold food to eat. If these types of questions have run through your mind about feeding your cat a raw meat diet, then Prowl, a dehydrated raw cat food made by The Honest Kitchen might be just what you’re looking for.

Prowl is a natural grain-free cat food that’s high in protein and contains only 9 ingredients plus added vitamins and minerals. And, you can pronounce all of them! Check out this list, which reads like Thanksgiving dinner:

• Free-range chicken that’s 100% sustainably-farmed in Petaluma, California, humanely raised and vegetarian fed without the use of animal fat or by-products or antibiotic
• Eggs
• Potatoes
• Yams
• Organic flaxseed
• Zucchini
• Spinach
• Cranberries
• Rosemary

Prowl might also be just the high protein diet you’re looking for if your cat has struvite crystals. According to Lucy Postins, co-founder of The Honest Kitchen:

“Our foods are generally well suited to pets who are prone to urinary stones and crystals, because after re-hydration, they are high moisture diets and the increased fluid intake is recommended by holistic vets, to help keep the urinary trace ‘flushed out’. It is also possible to add a natural supplement to the food to help combat stones and crystals and help to reduce the risk of further blockages occurring.”

Lucy goes on to say that, “It’s important to know which type of crystals your cat is prone to in order to make a recommendation on the supplement. It’s critical to know this info because the two main types of crystals thrive in opposite pH environment, so using the wrong supplement could actually exacerbate the condition.” She recommended consulting with your veterinarian for this information.

If I didn’t have a small baby who likes to stick stuff in his mouth all the time, I’d give serious consideration to trying Prowl for Furball to help him manage his struvite crystals. I like the idea of how convenient it would be to simply add room temperature water to the food and allow it to hydrate rather than having to thaw frozen bricks of raw cat food in my fridge. I also like that since Prowl is dehydrated, it’s light and easy to transport, making it much greener than frozen raw cat food.

If you’d like to try Prowl, The Honest Kitchen is generously offering sample packs of Prowl for our Dehydrated, Raw, Human-Grade Cat Food Giveaway.  What a mouthful to write. There are 10 sample packs available to win, so 10 lucky winners will each get a sample pack of Prowl.  Those are some pretty good odds.  Plus, one of the 10 winners will also win Lucy’s first cookbook for pets called, Made out of Love: Recipes to prepare for (and sometimes share with) your animal companion.  Made out of Love includes nourishing recipes for toppings, treats, main dishes, raw, and functional cuisines that pet owners can make for their four-legged friends at home.

HOW TO ENTER
To enter the giveaway, simply click the link at the bottom of this article and you’ll be redirected to an entry form on my cat toy book website, MakeYourOwnCatToys.com.  Sorry, it’s not on Green Little Cat, but I tried to get it to work with my Wordpress set-up and it wouldn’t run.  With the new baby in the house, it will be quite some time before I debug the code.  I’d really like to hear how your cat likes Prowl and post it on GreenLittleCat.com, so please enter only if you don’t mind reporting back on whether your cat liked Prowl and how easy/difficult it was to use.

TRIPLE YOUR CHANCES TO WIN!

Because I’m really passionate about encouraging other cat lovers to go green for the health of their pets, families and the planet, I’ll triple your entries if you would be so kind as to help spread the word about greener living.  Please do one or more of the following:

• Join our Facebook fan page
• Click the “Share” button on the bottom of any Green Little Cat blog article to post it to your favourite social networking site.
• Click the “ShareThis” link to email an article to a friend.
• Send a tweet out on twitter and include our website: www.GreenLittleCat.com.
• Tell a friend about Green Little Cat the old-fashioned way.

There will be a checkbox on the entry form asking whether you helped spread the word.  Check it to triple your entries.  Obviously, I can’t verify whether or not you did any of these activities.  It’s based on the honour system and I thank everyone for respecting the spirit of my request.  Some free cat food is definitely not worth compromising your integrity.  Thank you.

ENTER NOW
The giveaway is limited to U.S. residents in the continental U.S. (excludes Alaska and Hawaii).  Please enter a maximum of once per day and the deadline to enter the giveaway is February 28th, 2010.

>> Enter to Win the Cookbook and a Sample Pack of Prowl >>

I might be a little late to the party, but I came across this awesome DIY cat scratcher on the Design*Sponge blog.  I love how it doesn’t look like a home made scratcher.  Instead, it looks like something out of a modern furniture design catalogue.

Besides the good looks, it’s also green.  Like a lot of the other eco-friendlier cat scratchers, Design*Sponge used recycled corrugated cardboard to make theirs.  Not only can your cat scratch, he or she can also sit on it.  It’s like a designer Kitty chair.  Detailed instructions for making your own cat scratcher, kitty pad, are posted on the Design*Sponge blog.  Check it out:

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2009/01/diy-project-recycled-cardboard-kitty-pad.html

Furball’s days of using eco-friendly cat litter may be numbered. Recently, Ewa, one of my blog readers, wrote in to recommend toilet training your cat as an alternative to using kitty litter. It made a lot of sense to me when I calculated that Furball was going through at least 200 lbs of litter a year. I also knew he was toxoplasmosis-free, so I wasn’t concerned about flushing his waste.

Ewa wrote that she was using the Litter Kwitter cat toilet training system and thought this was the best system as it seemed more durable and allowed you to go back a step in the training process. Without it being said, she was probably comparing Litter Kwitter to CitiKitty.

After I read her email, I looked at reviews on Amazon for Litter Kwitter and CitiKitty. There seemed to be a number of reviews that concurred with Ewa.   I thought about buying the Litter Kwitter, but balked at the hefty price tag. Also, when I read feedback on toilet training your cat, it seemed like the bathroom would be one giant mess of litter, feces and urine until the cat was trained, which could take months. With the demands of a new baby in the house, I hesitated.

After I posted Ewa’s tips on toilet training your cat, I got an email from CitiKitty. They offered to send me one of their cat toilet training kits for evaluation. They also told me some interesting facts about their product. It’s green!

They use recycled plastic and 100% recycled (50% post-consumer-waste) paper for the instructional materials that come with the kit. The product and its packaging is made in the U.S. unlike Litter Kwitter, which Amazon reviewers said was made in China. Litter Kwitter also comes with an instructional DVD, which seems a little unnecessary.

As with anything “green”, you need to weigh the pros and cons of the resources used to make the cat toilet training kit vs. the resources and waste from cat litter.

One of the major complaints about CitiKitty in the Amazon reviews was that once you punched out a ring, you couldn’t go back if your cat got freaked out by the bigger hole. Well, I just received the CitiKitty cat toilet training kit today, and I noticed there’s an extra ring set included that does allow you to backtrack.

My mother-in-law is going to be visiting for six weeks to see her grandchild and give us a helping hand. I figure this would be the only and best time to attempt to toilet train my cat, Furball.  Grandma will able to look after the baby in case I need to do a major bathroom clean every day. As well, the baby isn’t crawling yet, so he won’t be exposed to any stray cat litter.

I’ll keep you all posted at how successful the process of toilet training my cat is. The one thing I gathered from the reviews is that you need to go slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our giveaway.  And thanks to EcoSMART for providing the prize, a Safe Picnic Value Bundle which consists of the following products:

• Home Pest Control (24 oz spray bottle)
• Flying Insect Killer (14 oz can)
• Insect Repellent (Two 6 oz bottles)

The winner of our giveaway is a Cat Daddy living in North Carolina.

Stay tuned for another giveaway this month where we’ll be giving away sample packs of Prowl dehydrated natural raw cat food, courtesy The Honest Kitchen.

One of our readers wrote in to recommend toilet training your cat as an alternative to using kitty litter.  While switching to eco-friendly cat litter is much more positive for the environment than clay-based litters (See related posts at bottom of this article for more details), it may not be the greenest option.  I just read on the Internet that the average cat goes through something like 440 lbs of litter a year.

I thought to myself that the number was a bit high until I looked at the cat litter bag in the bathroom and saw that it was indeed a 40 lb bag.  We probably go through a bag every other month and I really stretch out its use. I’ll blog about how to do this in the future.  Regardless, that would still add up to 240 lbs of litter going into the garbage each year. If you factor in that there are over 80 million household cats in the United States, even if only half of them were using 250 lbs a year, that would be 20 billion pounds of litter a year.  I had to check the calculator twice to make sure I had the right number because it was so high!  I had made an estimate before that had astounded me, but it was only 3 billion.  Now, I’m looking at a number 7x higher.

That made me give more serious thought to idea of toilet training my cat.  Admittedly, it does seem strange at first, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes.

Fortunately, Green Little Cat has some very intelligent readers who are passionate about the environment.  Ewa wrote in to tell me that she has started the toilet training process with her cat, Netto.  It does take patience and a few months to make the transition.  She’s going to check in with us when Netto is fully toilet-trained.

In the mean time, here are some tips she offered based on her experience to date:

• Buy a toilet training system! She chose Litter Kwitter since it seemed like the best one on the market. It is more expensive than others, but since you don’t need to break it to make the hole larger it allows you to go back to an earlier step if you realize your cat was not ready to move forward. It also seems sturdier than other brands.
• Use a separate toilet for your cat if possible. She has a small apartment with only one bathroom and sometimes it’s annoying when you wake up in the morning and have to start cleaning because the cat made a mess during the night. (Poo and pee on the Litter Kwitter and cat litter all over the floor…)
• Take your time and make sure your cat is comfortable with every step forward. She tried to get her cat to “get used to it” by sticking by the changes even though the cat didn’t like it and that was not a good approach. Instead the cat started peeing in the bathroom sink (a problem Ewa now has to solve) and had a few “accidents” on the bed. To make the changes easier on her cat Ewa decided to buy the two extra trays from Litter Kwitter that give you 5 trays in total instead of only 3 and now the cat accepts the changes without a problem since they’re more subtle.
• Use a litter that your cat is comfortable with that is also flushable. She’s using one made of pine shavings and it works really well. No smell, her cat likes it and it doesn’t muck up the toilet when the cat digs it into the toilet.
• Have patience! She started toilet training Netto in March (!) and she has gone through a long process of different techniques etc. Ewa’s friends and her husband think she’s crazy since she is still confident it will work, but now they’re doing really well. You just have to be attentive to your cat and what he needs rather than trying to force him to do something. That will never work with a cat!

Thanks Ewa for sharing and being so honest about the experience!

I do have to add a caveat if you live in the state of California like I do.  Toxoplasmosis parasites from cat waste are killing the local sea otters.  Apparently the waste eventually ends up in the ocean and the parasite is harmful to sea otters.  All litter bags in California carry a warning sticker saying not to flush cat waste into the toilet.  Be aware of whether your cat may be affected by this parasite.  They will not exhibit any symptoms.  It’s spread by eating raw flesh such as rodents so if your cat has ever been outdoors, then they are at risk.

I personally know Furball’s entire history and he’s been kept indoors his whole life and has never been allowed outside or has eaten raw meat.  I was confident enough to clean his litter box while I was pregnant so I’m honestly quite sure that his waste is toxoplasmosis-free.  This may not be true for your cat, so please take this into consideration if you are thinking about trying the toilet training route.

Here’s a YouTube video I found on the Litter Kwitter system:

In a recent post, I was checking out whether Wee Cleaner was really non-toxic and discovered that although I was under the impression that it was all natural, it did indeed contain a number of chemical ingredients.  Then I segued into looking up ingredients with the Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetic Safety Database.

One of my readers wrote in to share some more insights about the chemical ingredients.  She works as a chemist in a lab, so it was great to gain her perspective.  There’s a radio station I listen to where the morning DJ’s always proclaim that they have the smartest listeners in the world.  I’m thinking I have some of the smartest blog readers!  Anyway, here’s what she had to say:

“It’s true that all chemical suppliers, and labs for that matter, are required to have MSDS’s on file for chemicals but while the idea is well meaning: to have anyone interested in safety be able to find information on a chemical, most MSDS’s now days are packed with legalese and meaningless warnings. In effort not to be sued, manufacturers have put every possible thing down for even the most harmless substances so that you really couldn’t tell apart something harmless from something that you need to watch out for even if you tried. If you would like an example read the MSDS on table salt (sodium chloride), or sea sand. You should apparently run screaming from the kitchen and the beach for fear of being exposed to such harmful substances. No one takes MSDS’s seriously, and they are pretty near useless, except for the lawyers.

About the issue of hydrogen peroxide, it’s actually a great and very safe cleaner! The reason why you have this contradictory information about it is because hydrogen peroxide is not very stable. When you buy Hydrogen peroxide from the supermarket it has a very short shelf life. It will spontaneously degrade into oxygen and water on standing, air and light just speed up the process. So while, yes, you should probably not drink hydrogen peroxide from the bottle, if you apply a little bit to your carpet, by the time it’s dry there won’t be any hydrogen peroxide there to get into contact with. Most of it probably reacts with (oxidizes) whatever stinky stuff your cat left behind to make less stinky stuff and the rest just turns into water and oxygen. Sounds great to me!

I think that’s why you should take these chemical safety scales with some skepticism. What does “safe” really mean?

Sodium laureth sulfate I’m not so sure about, I’ve seen it on my shampoo bottle so it’s probably not that bad, I’d be worried about my kitty eating some though, I would ask what percent composition it is before deciding to put it on my carpet. Maybe at this point I would just go out and buy a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to see if that works just as well as the cleaner.

Sorry for the rant, but there is always a lot of misleading information and witch hunts about how bad “chemicals” are. Even though everything is a chemical: water, air, or cyanide, weather or not it’s harmful just depends on how it acts around the environment and your body. Not how “natural” it is.”

Thanks for the insights Anastasia!

I didn’t know that there were MSDS sheets specific to each chemical and it was illuminating to learn that they list every possible risk to avoid litigation. I noticed the EWG Cosmetic Database also listed things such as tea tree oil in a way that made them sound hazardous.

I still do find that MSDS docs for cleaning products contain some interesting gems.  For example, Simple Green is labelled as “non-toxic”, but the MSDS lists butyl cellosolve, also known as 2-butoxyethanol, as one of the ingredients.  According to the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0070.html, symptoms of exposure include irritation eyes, skin, nose, throat; hemolysis, hematuria (blood in the urine); central nervous system depression, headache; vomiting” and target organs include: “Eyes, skin, respiratory system, central nervous system, hematopoietic system, blood, kidneys, liver, lymphoid system”.

I think I’ll pass on hemolysis (premature destruction of red blood cells) or the hematuria, even if the risk is low.  We bought some “Simple Green” thinking it was green, but now that bottle is sitting in the garage.

I recently received a catalogue from Drs. Foster and Smith, one of the largest mail order companies for cat products. They’ve added a few more green products, but nothing to write home about. I’m not even sure how they got my mailing info since I’d never heard of them before getting their catalogues. It was easy enough to call them and get my name removed.

Anyhow, while flipping through the pages, it occurred to me that there were quite a number of very ungreen products for cats, so I decided to have a little fun for the end of the year and post what I thought were the least eco-friendly cat products and ask you to vote for the winner of the “Ungreenest Cat Product of 2009″.

Products were selected completely subjectively with no research whatsoever into the manufacturing process. I just went with what seemed rather useless for a cat or used a lot of materials. Vote for your “favourite” using the poll at the bottom of this post.

Also, I’d love to hear from you about what you consider to be ungreen. Please send your nominations for a future poll to furball [AT] greenlittlecat.com.

And the nominees for 2009 are…

1. Play-N-Squeak Whack Attack

Indoor cats can stalk and pounce and engage their natural predatory instincts in a healthy way. Its also let cats engage in solitary play, which provides mental stimulation and needed exercise. The bouncy mouse promotes hours of frolic and fun.

I chose this one because I bought a pom-pom on a spring toy for Furball when he was a kitten. He swatted it once, found it really boring and never touched it again. This looks like it functions along the same lines, only chunkier with more carpet and material. I wonder if the cat has been Photoshopped into the picture.

2. Pawprint Ornaments

Festive resin ornaments with clever cat sentiments show your love for your feline friends. Perfect for your holiday tree, or as a gift for cat lovers on your list. Includes red hanging ribbon.

I enjoy Christmas as much as anyone, and have purchased ornaments for the family tree.  But this one is aesthetically-challenged.  No surprise it’s on sale now.

3. Memorial Stone

Use as a stepping-stone in your yard or garden, or use the attached hanger to display on your wall or an outdoor fence.

I have experienced the passing of a beloved cat, but this is not what I would choose to honour their memory.  This “stepping-stone” also weighs about 5 lbs.

 
 
 

4. Kitty Hoots Bobber Toy

A single paw swipe sends this cat toy bobbing erratically. Weighted plastic cat face won’t tip, no matter how hard your cat swats and bats. Spring steel “hook” and dangling catnip-scented Mouse Lure entice kitty to pounce relentlessly.

My well-meaning brother bought a similar toy for Furball.  The large plastic base scared him a bit and the bobbing action was too tame to interest him.  Lots of material for low play-value.

Here’s the coolest charity auction for an animal welfare organization that I’ve ever seen.  Where else can you bid for ultra-hip items such as:

• An autographed Sean Paul package
• Three nights at a couples’ resort in Jamaica
• Edun clothing gift certificate
• A “Tattoo You” wall hanging, autographed by Keith Richards
• And many more Jamaican vacation treats and hot music industry paraphernalia

The money raised goes to support The Animal House Jamaica, one of only two shelters in the entire country. The Animal House provides assistance to the island’s many abused, abandoned and injured animals.  I featured this organization in a previous post because of the creative ways they’ve found to operate in an eco-friendly manner.

Visit this ultra-hip Holiday Auction before it ends on Dec. 19th!
http://www.theanimalhousejamaica.org/auction2/ahauction.htm

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I was recently reading the latest newsletter from the David Suzuki Foundation.  If you’re Canadian, you know who he is.  If you’re not, David Suzuki is like the Al Gore of Canada, only he’s been in the public eye supporting the environment since the 70’s and no one questions the science he presents because it’s always sound.  Anyway, the newsletter had a great article which sums up why most antibacterial soaps and cleaners are harmful.

With the H1N1 scare going around, I’ve noticed people are going overboard with the hand sanitizer.  Also, with a new baby, I keep seeing ads advising people to wipe all sorts of surfaces that your baby comes into contact with (eg., toys) with a certain brand of antibacterial wipe.

Personally, I never use the stuff because I feel that they’re worse than the bugs going around.  And, if you’ve got a cat, antibacterial cleaners really make no sense to me.  Your cats rub up against you, you pat them with your “sanitized” hands and they lick the stuff off of your hands. I could never give an adequate, scientific explanation to people why they should stop using antibacterial cleaners, other than the increased resistance of bacteria to these products and a general feeling that any sort of chemical you rub into your hands is not a good idea.

However, thanks to the David Suzuki Foundation, I now have a better explanation other than my gut tells me it’s wrong.  Here it is:

“Triclosan is one of the most common antibacterial agents in household cleaners and personal-care products. It creates a known carcinogen, dioxin, as a by-product. Dioxin causes skin disorders and liver problems, and impairs reproductive functions and the immune system (to name a few effects).”

Notice the reference to impairing the immune system.  This is important to note because I read a friend of a friend’s Facebook post saying that they used antibacterial cleaners because they had a compromised immune system and didn’t want to catch anyone’s cold.  The David Suzuki Foundation article also mentioned that studies show that hand sanitizers aren’t any more effective than washing your hands with soap and water.

Here’s where to read more and get recipes on making your own hand sanitizer:

http://beta.davidsuzuki.org/library/finding-solutions/web/get-off-the-antibacterial-crazy-train/