The Great Cat Litter Poop Off

Disclaimer: I am a consumer with no affiliation of any kind with, or business interest in, any of the businesses that make or sell the products reviewed in this post.

Choosing cat litter turned out to be the biggest challenge of cat ownership, by quite a margin. When our son dropped of his cat at our house because he could no longer have a cat in his new apartment, it came with a covered litterbox that was filled with wood pellets. He thought that this was the best option, inexpensive, and easy to maintain.

We set this up in our basement in a room with tile floor and everything seemed to work fine for a few months. At some point, I noticed that the cat was peeing in a corner of the room while I cleaned out the box. Initially, we though that this was because he had to go urgently while the litter box was unavailable, but eventually we saw evidence of him peeing all over the finished basement, and not just on ceramic tile, but also in a carpeted room. I tried to treat these areas with enzymatic cleaners, but nothing worked and I ended up ripping out and replacing the otherwise beautiful wall-to-wall carpet.

We moved the litter box upstairs into an open area and kept the basement off-limits to that cat. I bought a new open-top litter box so that he had a choice. I bought a bag of traditional clay-based cat litter at the local supermarket to get started.

This product was a disaster. It created clouds of dust, tracked around the house and on top of the piano, and it did not clump at all. Unfortunately I threw the bag away, so it is not covered by this review.

The next bag of cat litter came from a pet specialty store. The packing promised no dust and very little tracking, so I was eager to replace the dusty stuff. The new one turned out to indeed track less (I still find bits all over the house, though) and generate much less dust. The furniture around the litter box was no longer covered in dust. But it clumped very well – so hard that I had to knock the clumps off the side walls if I wanted to remove them (this cat loves to pee against walls, so I got an extra-tall box with tons of wall surface to pee on).
The biggest issue was that the granules were extremely hard and the material was heavy, almost like stone. The old Miele vacuum cleaner with the power brush would not pick the bits up right away and would drag them around the hardwood floor. Deep, ugly scratches started to appear. I upgraded the vac to a $1,300 Miele C4 Cat and Dog and the more powerful model causes fewer scratches, but it still happens.

Needless to say, I did not purchase this product again and I am still on a quest for the best cat litter. Things I am looking for are low dust generation, low tracking, and the least damage to floors. Yield and value are not so important. Clumping capability, which is tied to yield (more clumping – less yield, because you throw out more), and odor prevention are also not super-important for me.

Because online product reviews are completely useless, I decided to test and write this post with my own reviews of all the litter products that I tested.

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Tractor Supply Pelletized Bedding
Cost per pound	$0.16 (40 lbs. bag)
Scented	No
Source	Tractor Supply Co.
Clumping	– –
Dust	+ +
Tracking	+
Things that I liked	It is inexpensive. The pellets disintegrate when they get wet and turn into saw dust. I spread the spent pellets as fertilizer across my lawn and flower beds.
Things that I disliked	The yield is low, we had to get a new 40 lbs. bag every 2-3 weeks. It does not do as good a job with binding odor than engineered litter. If you have your litter box in your living area, you might want to use another product. It worked better in the covered litter box but gets thrown around the room in an open litter box because it is light-weight. Most importantly, this was what we were offering our cat when he started the habit of peeing on the carpet floor. I don’t think that it was because of the wood pellets, but I still has this negative association with the product.
Will I buy this again?	Yes, for the 2nd litter box and as a backup.

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Dr. Elsey’s Ultra
Cost per pound	$0.52 (40 lbs. bag)
Scented	No
Source	Petsmart
Clumping	+ +
Dust	+
Tracking	~
Things that I liked	It seemed to work well at first, there was a noticeable reduction in dust on the furniture. If you don’t have wood floors, this might work well for you
Things that I disliked	Unfortunately, I do have wood floors. The hard granules with sharp edges leave terrible scratch marks from the vacuum (see the close-up photo further up in this post).
Will I buy this again?	No

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Tidy Cats Non Clumping Cat Litter, 24/7 Performance
Cost per pound	$0.29 (50 lbs. bag)
Scented	No
Source	Tractor Supply Co.
Clumping	Well, it says non-clumping on the bag.
Dust	+ +
Tracking	+
Things that I liked	The product is similar to Dr. Elsey’s Ultra at almost half the price. For the 50 pound bag I recommend a strong shopping companion.
Things that I disliked	Still being evaluated.
Will I buy this again?	I don’t know yet.

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Clumping is a matter of personal preference, not a quality of the product. It is much easier to remove pee when the litter forms firm clumps, but does it matter? I find that it does not, because my cat pees 3-5 times per day and as a result, about half of the amount of litter in the box is removed as clumps every week. I replace the lost half with fresh litter from the bag, which means that the entire litter is replaced every other week – but only in theory. The old and new litter mixes during the course of the week, and some of the litter in the box is older than 2 weeks. When the bag is nearing its end, I have to either dump what is left in the box and start the box fresh from a new bag, or mix the products, which is fine if the consistency is similar. For the record, I do clean the litter box in between by temporarily placing the litter into a bucket while I rinse out the box, and then pour it back when the box is dry.
With non-clumping litter, I just dump the entire content of the box and replace it, but I find that I can go a bit longer with a filling before I have to do that. Because of that, I think I like non-clumping litter better.