Disposing of used kitty litter?
 

I know most of you probably have outdoor cats, but our one cat is a 10 year old city cat, and has never, nor will ever go outside. As a result, we have a litter box. The problem is disposing of the used kitty litter. When we lived in the city, the garbage truck came practically to our door, and picked up twice a week. Now, I haul everything to the dump. The kitty litter is HEAVY!

The question is (finally) Can I just dump the stuff in the woods? We are on 7 acres of woods, so there's no end to places to dump the stuff. I'm just wondering what impact it will have, if any. Will it attract unwanted wildlife like coyotes? Pose any health threat? Forget digging a hole; that's more work than hauling the stuff to the dump.

There's scoopable stuff available that you can flush - though I'm not sure you would want to do that with anything other than a city sewer hookup. There's also litter made of corncobs, and I think there's also one available made from paper. Either of these could probably be composted - especially if the cat is disease-free.

Kitty Litter is mostly nothing more than what is commercial sold as "Floor Dry". "Oil Absorbent"

And how many animals get in contact with Oil Spill Floor Dry at accident scenes, etc. And it also makes a Great thing for ice and snow to keep a person from slipping and also can get a person out of a 'Slippery Spot" LOL

This is talking about using Floor Dry oil absorbent as a kitty litter.
http://www.oildri.net/FAQ.html#anchor12

Correct me if I'm wrong but I have always read to only compost carnivore waste if you wish to use it on non edible gardens.

We use the organic pine litter and I do dispose of it in the woods. I dig a little hole and just bury it. It's poop, and the litter has no additives that will harm the land.

I have used sawdust or shaving bales for kitty litter for years now. I worked at a horse farm and saw their cats using the stalls for litter boxes, and that gave me the idea. I clean it out daily, and it works great and composts fine. One of my cats that I had at the time I started doing this, seemed to have a problem with the dust from store bought litter. Once I changed, she was fine.

Mail it to Oggie. He'll appreciate the fine nuances of passed evil.

:D

We've lived at this place for 30 years and always had cats. Used to use clay litter before the scoopable stuff came out. Dumped the clay litter along the edge of the yard, in an area that would never be used. That 30 year old litter pile is still out there. When it rains it became slicker than owl poo. When it was dry out it set up like concrete. Slowly over time grass and weeds are growing over it. But it will always be there, about like nuclear waste.
I only use the scoopable now. It's small and manageable. Put it in a container that will be going to the landfill and send it off.

If you bury it deep enough, the heat from their father's furnace will take care of it.

Sizzle.

Sizzle.

Pop!

While living in the country, my experience with clay litter was the same as Woolybear's. I suppose spreading it over a somewhat larger patch might help? For a while I put used litter on the edge of a cut line in front of where some cattails were growing. A little swampy area, not directly on or near any flowing water. I figured it might slow the swamp down from expanding. I would just as soon use litter made from paper or corncobs, but it is $$$. I had mice moving that cob litter into a laundry basket in the folds of some old blankets waiting to be laundered. Ick!!!!

Don’t use clay litter. Use the stuff made from newspaper or corn cobs. These will compost. As for putting animal waste in the garden, you can if it is fully composted. This is because you will be digging in it and you don’t want to be disturbing fresh waste. You can put cat litter into your compost, it will help the dry matter to decompose faster. But, as with any compost, don’t use it until it is totally broken down. If you don’t want to put it into your compost, you can dump it anywhere. I’d dump it somewhere that nobody is likely to step in it. Again, use one of the newer ‘organic’ litters that will break down. Read the label.

the scoop able makes a wet sticky mess when it gets wet in the woods after dumping. I only use fresh step extreme scoopable, it makes a never going away wet mess in the woods, so I had the boys dig me a foot deep 3 foot hole that I have been filling in for a year. I scoop and bag and add to the trash when I have trash pick up as well. I dont think other animals pay any attention to my litter pit. when I was using clay litter I would scoop out the poop and then dump the clay in the holes/ ruts in the driveway away from the house cause it stinks for awhile.

If you have a big compost pile, more than 3' high (it needs volume and depth to get hot inside), then tossing in clay cat litter is not a problem. Let the compost sit for 6 months and any disease organisms will cook out of it. The litter doesn't clump and get hard because it gets dispersed throughout the pile. I have sandy soil, so any clay is a welcome addition.

When I bought my farm, the neighbor cat lady had been dumping litter in a pile on my land for years. It was a few ft high and twice as big in diameter. I scooped it all up with the loader, and put it in one of my mega compost piles. That pile was also the final resting place for an otter, a couple of chickens, racoons, possums, and lots of other stuff. A year latter I spread it in my orchard and it was beautiful black earth.

That reminds m, time to do so again....

Wife makes a pile in the edge of the grove, I scoop it up with the loader 2 times a year and spread it in the field. It works in nice, with the farm equipment, and becomes fertilizer and water holding clay.

Now, this is not a garden area, not growing directly human food. I'm spreading it after crop is harvested, or before a full season crop is planted, so it is many months before any seed comes out so not a problem for livestock feed type crops.

I would not do this wih a garden.

In your situation, I would lightly burry it in the woods. The clay will be around a long time as a big lump, but it will slowly break down over the years and mix in with the local soil. I would not find anything toxic at all about it, could be a bit icky if you forget and get into it down the road...

Paul

I live where that stuff is quarried and bagged up. As a matter of fact, our rental house that we raised our kids in sits on a soapstone patch. It dries out like concrete when the weather is dry then swells up and gets saturated and slick when it rains. You should see the crack in the brick house this caused! At any rate, just here to say the litter itself is soapstone clay and will not hurt anything but, the cat poo sure will stink so out in the woods is best place to dispose of it.

It's best to use an organic litter, rather than clay-based. Then you can certainly compost it. Unless you're desperate to recycle things after use, though, best not to let it get within reach of animals that might eat it.

For instance, I've heard of people using poultry pellets as kitty litter. It would certainly be worth your while watching prices on that or spoilt grain, with that use in mind.

Sawdust or shavings plus poop are close to the ideal component mix for long-term compost, provided that sawdust is adequately aerated.

If you're going to use clay-based litter like that oil-absorber, it will end up just like you've been told - a slippery mess when wet, a concrete mass when dry. If you can mix it with sawdust or shavings and maybe grass clippings or fallen leaves, though, before composting it, it will make a useful moisture-holding heavy clay loam.

you may get more responces over on the polical form !:sing:

What about a combination of sawdust and clay litter?

I dumped a bunch of scoop able litter out in the bush once, probably 5-7 years ago. It's still there, sticky and nothing will grow on it.
Bury it would be my suggestion.

we use pine pellet horse beding for litter works great and is cheap if you get it at some place like TSC $5 for 40 pounds just a note stay away from hardwood pellets for pellet burners it is not that absorbent

Cat litter and Oil absorbent are both made from Bentonite, which is simply clay. You will never generate enough from one cat that is already 10 years old to hurt anything, if you simply fling it out into the woods where it just spreads out. Now if you pile it all up, then yes, you will have a big clay pile. Bentonite in and of itself is not harmful, it is just clay. Bentonite is used in all kinds of products from drilling mud, to toothpaste, to cosmetics, to food additives. There are mines in various parts of the U.S. where they simply dig it up out of the ground.

Yep, agreed. In my area of all sand soil, we buy bentonite to seal the pond bottom.

My Dad would dump it in the potholes in the driveway. It filled the holes pretty well!

I can't imagine it being easier to lug a heavy container of cat litter through the woods than it is to haul it to the landfill. As another poster mentioned, cat litter turns hard as concrete and plants find it just about as difficult to grow through as they do through concrete. The caked up mess isn't easy to dig up and move either. If you think it's heavy now just wait until it is exposed to the elements.

We dumped some scoopable litter several years ago. It looks like concrete left over from a construction site. Sure, you could bury it but is buried concrete a good thing?

I think you're better off doing what you're doing now. Of course, you could always teach your cat to use the toilet. Lots of people do. I thought about that for a while but realized I don't want to leave the lid up and sure don't want to look at floaters.

when you put it in the compost pile, it does not turn to concrete, I know this from experience. If you live in a red clay zone, I suppose there isn't much the clay will do for you. But if your soil is sandy, you are throwing away a good resource if you send it to a landfill. Like the manure of any man or beast, it has value in your soil, adds N and micro-nutrients.

Sure, it may be easier to flush it down a toilet or put it in the trashcan, but for me, I reuse, recycle, or compost everything I can think of. If I was your neighbor, I would ask you to save it for me. Fertilizer is fertilizer and I'll take all the freebies I can get.

I am sorry if my next statement offends some. I hope rather than taking offense, it will help make us all think about some alternatives. I drove truck for a lot of years and helped haul material like bentonite mat, bentonite and plastic liner to many of the U.S.'s largest landfills. South of Los Angeles, the outskirts of Salt Lake City, North of Miami, the North East Coast. Anyone who is taking anything to a landfill and think they are "getting rid of trash" is badly mistaken. The trash is not "gotten rid of", it is just out of sight out of mind. No longer our problem, because now our problem is someone else's problem. Spread out and separated trash at home can be dealt with, decomposed, recycled and reused. When taken to a landfill it is simply piled and piled, until they can pile no more. Then it is covered and more acres of land are taken to make another pile. 1000 years from now there will still be a pile of trash there. But, at least it is not in our backyard anymore, right!!

Like I said, I am sorry to get off subject and apologize to the OP. I just find it a bit ironic on a forum where everyone is always talking about going back to the farm and living off the land, no one has a problem with piling trash in someone else's back yard in order to keep there's clean. Not pointing fingers, just something to think about, that's all. Were all guilty at one time or another.

We had two cats in the house and they provided us with plenty of used litter. We piled it up and when we thought we had enough, we filled holes in the dirt road. Fill the hole, pack it with the truck, and finish with a topping of gravel. Worked like a charm and held up really well, even with the oil field trucks running over it!