The Best (Natural) Cat Litter
If you want a quick, easy and environmentally-friendly kitty litter option you came to the right place. In my many years of being a cat caretaker and I have tried dozens of litters. There has only been one so far that I have committed to using for more than a couple of years. For me, there are a few must-haves for kitty litter.
My cats must be willing to use it. I have gotten lucky with this one, my cats have always adjusted easily to any new litter.
It must be fragrance-free. I am sensitive to scents. I can smell everything, it’s a blessing and a curse. Cat litter, when scented tends to be heavily scented and to me, they all smell the same. So when I smell scented kitty litter all I can think of is kitty litter and I prefer to keep litter boxes as a once a day cleaning notion rather than thinking about how my house smells of a litter box, clean or not.
The litter must be clay-free. This one should be at the top of the list, but I know clay litter is incredibly popular so I didn’t want to turn off 80% of readers from giving something a try. Hear me out, starting with your cat’s health, clay litter (unless they are allergic to specific non-clay ingredients) is not particularly healthy. The dust can trigger asthma in cats and humans. Clumping type litters quite often get stuck in fur and between toes, and must be cleaned out by your cat (eating it), or you (a total pain). I have seen kittens get impacted from eating it (kittens…). It must be mined and heavily processed, making it one of the most environmentally unfriendly options.
LOW-TRACKING! I absolutely abhor the feel of cat litter under foot. We are a no-shoes house which means if there is litter on the floor I am going to feel it. If you are interested to see just how much this litter tracks I have a couple of pictures in this post: Two Tails Up? Battle of the Boxes where you can see two of my litter box set-ups, and what it looks like after about a week of use. We vacuum pretty frequently, but I tend to take the rugs by the boxes outside to shake off rather than vacuuming them.
Excited yet?! Doesn’t this litter sound meow-velous? Hahaha, I know, spill the cat litter…sorry too many jokes? Okay, my favorite cat litter that I currently use, have been using for around 3 years without even thinking about using another is Okocat Less Mess litter. By the way that link is an affiliate link. If you click through to purchase, at no cost to you, you will help support me in making these posts (btw, I have made $0 so far through these links, so no, I am not getting rich off of these posts. Not yet anyway lol.). This litter is marketed towards long-haired cats, but I have tried their other options and found that the Less Mess version to track the least out of all of them.
This litter is my favorite because it ticks all the (litter) boxes above and is a natural, food-free option. That’s right, I said food-free. My next post is going to be on the most over hyped natural cat litter (hint, it’s food based).
Okocat Less Mess litter is a sustainably sourced wood litter made from lumber waste. It’s light-weight, isn’t perfumed, has a very light natural wood scent, and doesn’t get stinky quickly. The one gripe I have with it is there is a bit of a learning curve when scooping pee-balls. Due to the size of the litter bits it doesn’t strain through the litter scoop easily so you can end up throwing out a lot of clean unused litter. I have found that if I tilt the litter box to the side to expose the pee-ball I can scoop us just the moistened litter and pick up a minimal amount of unused litter at the same time.
Do you use Okocat litter? What is your favorite non-clay, non-silica, non-food-based litter? Drop me a comment below…hahaha, this isn’t YouTube, but that sure sounded YouTubey!
