Something a bit different

Even with only one cat, I qualify as ‘the crazy cat lady’ because I make cat litter.  Yes, I’ve spent countless hours recycling old newspapers into cat litter.  And here’s how I do it.

After gathering some newspaper, usually donated by kind family members, I have to shred it.  Since my paper shredder is designed for standard copy paper, I tear the newspaper to a width that fits properly and feed a couple of layers through at a time.

Next I stuff the shredded newspaper into a bucket and add water.  The key here is to stuff as much of the newspaper into the bucket as possible, since the water will ‘melt’ the strips to an alarmingly low level if you don’t.  At this point, I let it soak, oftentimes overnight. 

I drain the water, add a bit more water, and drain again.  The point is to rinse out more of the ink before I start mushing the paper up by hand.  Once it has the desired consistency, I take a handful, place it on a piece of screen, and squeeze as much water out as I can.  I tried various methods with buckets and the strainer before deciding just using the screen worked best for me.

I crumble the soon to be cat litter to the desired consistency and leave it to dry.  But sometimes it doesn’t dry fast enough, so I improvised a way to dry it with a hairdryer.  I had to cover the box with a screen so the pieces wouldn’t just fly out, and I sometimes cover it with a towel to trap some of the warm air.

The end result is a very usable litter that lasts around five days.  One warning, always have extra on hand because once it starts to smell you are not going to want to wait an extra day to change the litter.

Some people add some baking soda to the litter when they are mushing the wet newspaper up.  I experimented with that, but it did not seem to extend the life of the litter, so I don’t do that.

Also, I’m not sure I could keep up with the process if I had multiple cats.  But it’s certainly worth the effort for just one Super Kitty.