changing type of litter - Help

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by yingying

...I switched my Meatball from clay to wood pellets in one month. I did the textbook way: Just add a tiny amount of pellets into clay that your cat is currently using, and increase the proportion of pellets little by little, until you can fully switch....

Cats are notorious for resisting rapid environmental changes - which is why the "textbook" is spot on with that recommendation! No choices between boxes...just start sloooooooooowly changing over!

[annegirl]

Thank you all for your wonderful advice and suggestions. Am going to try adding wood pellets to the clay and increasing the ratio as suggested. I'll keep you all posted.

Nicichan - great to see another Dub on the site.

[cinderflower]

Originally Posted by nicichan

- Wood pellet litter doesn't clump and in my opinion it gets messy too quickly because you can't scoop out the pee. I had to dump the contents like once a week. :/

i don't know if you care or not, but there is a way to deal with the sawdust if you don't want to buy a special box where the sawdust falls through to a second pan and you just empty that. they have them here but they're smaller than the ones i have, and aren't fancy but they're really expensive. new zealand and australia have some awesome choices, but by the time i paid shipping from either country, i'd be buying $100 litter boxes so i think i'll just keep doing what i'm doing.

every day or every other day, i reverse scoop. i always flush the poos as soon as i can, but i have two buckets, and i just get a big scoop and shake it until the sawdust falls through, then put the whole pellets in the second bucket. then i toss the sawdust and put the whole pellets back in the litter tray and add a little if i need to. the only thing is that the pellets you saved are a little less sturdy than new ones because they've been peed on, just didn't break apart entirely yet. so i probably throw it all out every 4-6 weeks. it's so inexpensive i could just wait a week and throw it all away, but the problem is that the sawdust will build up in the bottom and then they start tracking it everywhere and i hate that so i take about an extra 30 minutes a day. some people probably don't have time to do that but it's just part of my routine now.

i probably didn't need to be so cautious, but since i had a history with one cat bed-wetting for a couple of years and had finally figured out how to stop it (for an entire year), it made me nervous and i didn't want to tempt fate. i'm just a better safe than sorry person (when i can be lol).

[annegirl]

So I followed your advice and slowly introduced the wood pellets to the litter and fully changed over. Lily and Lola were fine and adapted to the change very quickly with no issues. Problem is I hadn't realised how messy the wood pellets are. There is sawdust all over the place. So here I go changing again. I have changed (today) to corn based clumping litter. Fingers crossed I will be happy with this one and that the cats will change again easily.

[Marcia]

I would try the crystal looking stuff first. I'm thinking it may be the scoopable clay?? If so, you will be MUCH happier with that than the regular litter - and frankly so will the cats. Scooping is so much easier than changing that pan all the time. You won't have an issue with changing IF the crystals are the scoopable litter, but just to be sure, like very one else suggests, I'd use one pan of each for the time being - or mix the two for a week or two. Good luck!