When we moved to our smallholding and inherited its two resident cats, we carried on using the same bog standard clumping litter that the previous folks had used.
Howevever, I then found out that it's produced by strip mining bentonite clay soils:
So let me get this right - we dig up rock, crush it and ship and truck it hundreds of miles just so we can let our cats poop in it, before sending it back to landfill? Modern life really is crazy, isn't it?!
So, my quest for a better solution began.
First I tried standard compost. This worked ok, but tended to be a bit damp, and thus not very absorbent. I then dried some in trays in the greenhouse, but it went really 'crusty' and lumpy - not ideal. Also, when I tried to break up the lumps, it went very dusty.
Next I tried soil from the garden. This was better, but again not very absorbent, so needed to be changed all the time. Also, the cats tended to 'track' it around the kitchen floor a bit too much for my liking.
I then tried a commercial wood-pellet litter. This is a bit more eco friendly than the clay stuff, but still has high energy input costs, and is itself very expensive.
Dry beech leaves from under the hedge were a surprise hit. However, there were only a couple of places I could gather them from, so I soon ran out. Also, urine tended not to be absorbed, but pooled in the bottom of the tray. Still, this was by far the best 'free' solution I found.
And finally, the holy grail of cat litter? (well, sort of!) Believe it or not, it's Aubiose horse bedding! We've been using this for years for all our poultry, so the answer was staring me in the face really. For the uninitiated, Auboise looks a bit like chopped up pieces of straw, and is made from the stem of the hemp plant. It's really cheap (about £10 a bale from a farm store, which if only used for cat litter, will last for at least a year I'd think), and is readily compostable.
The cats do track it out of the box a little, but only dry bits, which are easily swept up. This would be easily fixed by using a top-entry litter box.
For disposal, I've set up an old 'Dalek' compost bin in the far corner of the garden, well away from anywhere we grow food. The bedding and poop will eventually rot down in there, but of course I won't ever use the compost for growing anything, due to
Toxoplasmosis risk.
So that's us sorted I reckon! We have three cats here now, and I shudder to think of the environmental impact of a lifetime's worth of clay cat litter. So, especially if you already use it for hens or horses, I'd strongly recommend you try out Auboise instead. If you do, please post below how you get on!