Make Your Own Kitty Litter At Almost No Cost

As a cat owner and newspaper subscriber, this seems eerily geared toward me, but given the ... unique nature of my cats' intestinal tracts, I don't know if this really seems sufficient enough to use when I'm expecting company.

@maines19: Nope. Nothing but the little ball-type stuff does it for my cats -- clay-type littler won't do it, so I don't think paper-based will, either!

@Shayne Bundus: Seconded. This seems to take up way too much time and space. It may be a fun project if you have bored kids...but I'll take the Giant Box o' Litter from Costco instead.

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The easiest and most inexpensive thing we have found is to simply purchase bedding intended for horses. We used to buy the expensive "Feline Pine" that you see at pet stores. We were at Tractor Supply one day and found a bag of pine horse bedding, which turned out to be identical to the stuff marketed for cats. It was much cheaper, at about $10 for a 50 lb bag. Cheap, economical, and can be found at just about any equine supply store.

Brian Roberts

I could see using this if it were a short-term thing. For instance if you needed more, but needed it ASAP and for whatever reason couldn't leave the house. (Babysitting, waiting for a package, etc.?) But the problem is that it needs to sit a few days. Has anyone actually tried this and found out how the odor is? I'd imagine that eco-friendly and close to free comes at the cost of odor protection... Either way, a great trick for those who don't want to spend that extra cash on kitty litter.

Seems like a lot of effort when a 50lb box is $6 at Costco.

Shayne Bundus

I use Swheat Scoop http://swheatscoop.com/ for my beasties. I toss it into the wooded section of my lot when it needs to be changed. As an added bonus sometimes it sprouts!

I would love to try this method but I have a Littermaid and it wouldn't work at all. Besides that, even with clumping litter my cats manage to pee in such a way that I get a gross paste of piss and litter on the bottom.

tlingitsoldier

Is the baking soda sufficient to control odor? Ours is a multiple-cat household, so that's a major consideration (for the cats as well as for us).

maines19

Baking soda does well at keeping my fridge from smelling like a rotten taco, but would it really do great against a pile of cat turds in recycled newspaper?

jonny6pak

This is great. I'm going to try it. My wife used to hide the litter box behind a partition/screen placed in the hallway. That doesn't work in apartment we are in now, so I'll check out the link for ideas.

Hmmm...the reason we have a cat instead of a dog is to have companionship without doing much work.

EthansDad

@rolltimer:
you are aware that outdoor cats have a shorter life span, right?

Pieter Montoulieu

@Charging Mooses: But what about the expression "Don't sh** where you eat"?

baest

What? No shameless cat pic? What has become of you Lifehacker?

baest

We place our covered catbox in the master tub (since both of us take showers). This way any stray litter that escapes the catbox doesn't leave the tub and wind up on the floor.

We tried to put in the utility room, but our BostonTerrier assumed it was a buffet, so that nipped that idea in the bud.

kstagg

@Twitch: I agree. I spend at the most $8 a month (less when I catch a sale) for silica crystals. The litterbox lives in a hidden, but common area of the house (wide open floorplan) and no one knows kitty lives here unless he nudges you for a treat.

memoryinmotion

Kitty litter goes in a spare room. I have two dogs that love kitty litter so I put a hook on the door frame and use a ribbon looped around the hook and the door knob to allow the cat enough room to enter. (FYI place hook at eye level and ribbon on the inside doorknob.)

EleanorArete

Where I live, newspaper, a paper shredder, water, dish soap, colanders, baking soda, screens, and TIME cost something.

This is stupid, and not at little or no cost.

robdew

As far as kitty litter goes, my fiance and I use store bought brand...the kind for "small spaces" (apartment living). But for our rabbits and hedgehog, we use regular old shreded paper.

Jagerkatze

@SangitaKisser: Save up used bags--sandwich, bread, grocery, produce [beware the ones with holes]--and plastic or glass containers with lids you're going to throw away anyway. Scoop the poop and plop into the bags, tie off and drop inside the containers and dispose of in the trash. Pickle, peanut butter and condiment jars with wide mouths are ideal. Cardboard type oatmeal or ice cream containers? Eh, not so much.

rolltimer

@Charging Mooses: I just put hinges on the floormat piece we used, and they push through easily. We got them from the animal shelter as kittens, so they just adapted to the home.

If you don't have any newspaper lying around, try 1040 instruction booklets! They're free, nice absorbent paper, and oh so satisfying.

SnehalDemophon

My cat makes his own kitty litter from the pine bark mulch in the flower beds outside. So far he's managed to kill a 6 foot row of Hosta plants with his toxic dumps. Gotta love him.

rolltimer

@y0himba: we keep our catbox in our laundry room. we put a pet door in the laundry room door, and vola! the smell of the cat box was almost undetectable. later we realised that one of our cats wasnt using the door, and was using our paper recycling box instead. we trained him to use the door by putting his food inside the room, so he would have to go through the door to get the food. and it worked! we had to cut the magnets off of the door so there was less resistance but he uses it now. okay im done rambling :)

We used to have that problem, we solved it by increasing the amount of litter in the box. Instead of standard litter boxes we started using plastic storage boxes like these: http://preview.tinyurl.com/kpsk5f Then we pour in about 6 inches of litter. Since you don't tend to have the "sticking" problem (unless they dig, which happens sometimes), the litter stays cleaner and tends to last longer. The taller boxes also help to cut down on the amount of litter dispersal from kicking, digging, burying, etc.

OsgoodHamjelly

We hide the litterboxes in the utility room. I cut a small cat door in the swinging door that leads from our kitchen to the utility room, covered it with a piece cut from an old car floormat. I mixed a batch of this up, we will see how well it hold up. Thanks for the hack, Lifehacker.

Wow...that is a GREAT tip - THANKS! We've been blowing a lot of money every week on Feline Pine. I'm making a B-Line to the local Farm Supply store as we speak! So obvious - why didn't we think of that before?? :)

SwapnaJiblical

We LOVE that stuff! I think it may actually *be* the world's best litter.

HelenTrophonius

make your own kitty litter? omg! www.citikitty.com/

timm5

we use a clumping type cat litter thats called "the worlds best cat litter" its made out of corn, and it works really well, its even safe to flush with our septic system. its kind of expensive but its much better than regular cat litter.

My daughter's track coach told her to put newspaper in her wet shoes and it absorbs all moisture quickly. I figured out that it might be good to line the litter boxes with a thick layer of newspaper. It absorbs most of the urine. I change the newspaper every day and clean out the solid waste and use the same litter for weeks. I sometimes spray it with Febreze. You can have two boxes and just pour it into the other box with new paper. It is amazing.

VeredKabobbing

@tlingitsoldier: Same here, it's as if the cats are going out of their way to make sure it's just out of range of the little rake.

JayDeEm

I think it would be hard to beat the 40 lbs for $12 bucket of litter from Costco. I guess if you already subscribe to a paper or buy it everyday that might work, but I bet it would cost more. I only need one of those big things of litter each month, so it doesn't really cost that much.

I'm sorry, kitty litter is so cheap that making it yourself isn't really cost effective. The ROI of spending a couple of hours making kitty litter seems a bit much to me. I'm someone that very often has more time than money, but sheesh....

Twitch

This seems like it would take up way too much time compared to cost. I can get a 50 lbs. bag or box at Walmarts or Costco for about $6-8. Plus I don't subscribe to a newspaper so I don't have much newspaper to use. I get all of my news from the Internet. If I were to use a alternative; I would use plain old sand and baking soda or something.

Kevin Haag

Why not just potty train your cat? When I had my Leo and Simba, we potty trained them. It takes some time and effort, but I think it's totally worth it. No scooping, no monthly litter buying. Guide: http://tinyurl.com/mjbts4 Google for more: http://tinyurl.com/ntzwjo

Pirate-M.Lifnen

@nwaasob: Same here. My cat likes it better than Feline Pine or The World's Best Cat Litter. Myself, I like TWBCL better since it has the best odor control out of the three.

yochanan_marqos

@t3knomanser: If you live in PA they deliver. ;-)

judgeschambers

Any alternative to real cat litter (which smells almost as bad as cat doings) is a good thing.

I use a good silica litter, it's a bit pricey ($13 per jug). But that jug is about 1 months worth of litter for 2 cats. This just sounds like I would spend a ton of time shredding and preparing newspaper and I doubt it has the same desiccating power that the crystals have. /plus, I hate newspaper, that crappy ink gets over everything. I can only imagine what kind of a mess I would end up with if the soaking procedure went horribly wrong.

There's a delivery company around Pittsburgh: kittylitterwedeliver.com - honestly, their litter is good enough that I only need one bag every 8 weeks, which is... I think $40/2 mo.s Whatever it is, it's totally worth it.

But what about a more eco-friendly BAG to put the "used" kitty litter in? I hate using a bag each day -- but a big trash bin full of 2 weeks of poop is gross too. Any ideas?

SangitaKisser

My cat's litter box is in the garage, with a cat door leading to it. Inventive, no? Oh, and our cats used to just go outside.

@nekoama: Interesting. I'm in no way affiliated with this plumber (I'm not even in his state) or this product... http://www.jsplumber.com/ Grab some bio clean and mix a scoop in a litter box. It doesn't make things smell like roses, but helps break down the waste matter, which lessens the intensity of the odor. The product is organic and pet safe. I've done it a few times mixed in with tidy cat and was surprised at how well it worked. I bet it would help out a ton in your litter mix. Yes, it raises the cost of your litter, but a jar of that stuff goes for quite a while. It works as advertised on pipes too.

jonny6pak

Thanks, but no thanks. I spend $18 a month on clumping litter and it is well worth it if this is the process for making my own.

ThickSkinned

I've been trying to find a good catlitter for my cat for ages - the overpriced 'enviromental' stuff has worked best for odor control, but kept clumping up between her toes. This sounds like a good idea, but I'm in the same camp where I just don't have the room to carry it out. Right now I use the pineshavings intended for small animals, with shredded paper mixed in. I use it for both the cat and the dog and it as a litter it works well and is crazy cheap, but I still haven't solved the odor problem.

I'm also curious as to how it controls odors. I'd rather not find out the hard way so I'll let others try it first.

justagigilo85

Can one add any ingredient to this mixture, which will allow it to clump like some store-bought cat litters?

nycrite

@baest: I'm going to sit in a corner and hang my head in shame for failing to use the shameless cat pic opportunity.

works perfect for my kitten too. use it since years. most animal shelters use that stuff too. they also have it at menards and sell it as "stove pellets" for pelet stoves". 4 bucks for 40 pounds. lasts forever.

KaliKepel

@Pieter Montoulieu: He's only an outside cat part of the time. He lives in the garage with his own pet door to the outside. He is locked in at night. He has a litter box in the garage but for reasons known only to himself, he prefers the flower bed bark.

rolltimer

This is very apropos timing ... I'm currently hating my cat for the fact she's clogging up our automagic litter box almost daily. (For those who don't know, the whole idea of an automatic litter box is that it rakes the "business" out of the litter and into a receptacle about 5 minutes after the cat has left the box.) The problem is my cat always seems to pee in the same place (right at the curved part before the receptacle) and two things are happening...

1) The litter is turning to a wet cement and stops the rake -- it seems to have less power as it's trying to make the curve upwards.

2) Should the rake actually get the clump, it sometimes leaves a bit behind which makes helps cement the next business.

I've tried several "fast clumping" litters and had settled on the $10/50lb Costco box, but I may need to give something else a whirl... or just toss the damned automatic box and go back to basics.

Anyone else got any tips for the automatic litter boxes? (My tip to share would be to use a plastic grocery bag to line the receptacle, makes for easier clean-out!)

Can you use regular shredded paper too, or just newspaper?

RosalieSongbird

@Brian Roberts: THANK YOU. What a fantastic tip. I just bought two 40 lb bags for a grand total, after tax, of $13.50.

If I'd bought 4, I could have used the $5 off $25 printable coupon on their site, for insane savings (and an insane amount of litter).

Amazing tip.

aphex242

The litter has a large effect on smells and cleanliness, but so does the pan. Plastic absorbs odor and can be scratched to create bacterial fissures. We use an old stainless steel sink that we picked up for $6 and closed off the drain hole with a stainless cake pan bottom. The smells reduced to the point that I only smell dryer sheets in our basement. The high walls also have ended accidental overshoots!

SushantiEspish

@SushantiEspish:

The old sink is a brilliant idea.

@kstagg My husband I also put our litter boxes originally in the spare bathroom tub. It was great to keep most of the litter in, it had shower doors on it so you could close it most of the way to block some of the smell, there was the bathroom fan, AND you could easily clean the area by lifting up the litter boxes and just turning on the faucet/shower.

NOW we have no smell at all. Why? Because we got one of these: Purr-Secure Cat Enclosure that we hooked up to our apartment's sliding door by adding one of these: Ideal Cat Pet Door. We can also put food and water out their for them. They can safely be "outside". And if we're doing a lot of moving things in and out of the house or need them out of the way for maintenance and other people we can lock them out there. It's wonderful!

brownize

So much work to teach your pet to urinate/defecate in the house. My dog has been trained to do that outside since he was a pup. :-)

we set up the spare closet for our 3 cats minimized the amount of litter they track around.

We had to fence it off when we adopted a dog since he liked snacking on their fresh leavings. We used an old shoe self that fit nicely into the door frame since, being a small, old, a slightly disabled dog he couldn't jump over it but the cats could clear it easily. As a bonus, this managed to minimize the spread of litter even further.

for the smell, we combine 2 types of litter, one for the smell and another that works better for clumping.

ratcore

@CapitalC: We tried the automatic catbox before too. We threw it out for the classic solution too. 3 cats just filled it too fast and we were wasting a lot of clean litter at the same time because the scrapper would dump it out with the waste.

ratcore