The power of cat litter
More than fresh scent!
Today I’m doing an entry in the journalists’ version of the file-drawer problem: The Story That Wouldn’t Sell. We’ve all got loads of story ideas, and often, it’s just about finding the right home for them! But sometimes, you just can’t seem to get editors excited about your idea. What to do? A lot of times I just forget about the idea.
But some of them just won’t let me go. And so, we come to this, my own newsletter where I do what I want.
And so today you’re learning about the power of cat litter. Not its power over cats. But its power over people. And its power to change where we think animals belong.
A few years ago, I started feeding stray cats. It started innocently enough. A poor, ragged tabby came slinking through my yard. I felt for her, and left out some food. After a few weeks, it became clear that the thing keeping the tabby ragged was not lack of food, but three kittens, who she began to bring to my now-open cat diner. (For more on this, please check out my book. It has cats in it.)
Over the next year, the perils of outdoor cat-dom began to make themselves apparent. The first cat, who I called Lady Jane, was hit by a car, and died in my arms that summer. Bird carcasses began appearing. I quickly began to feel just as bad about keeping the cats outside as I did seeing them go hungry in the first place. I lured one into a carrier, another into a trap. After trials and travails involving one cat living in my ceiling for five months and a surgery to remove almost all of her teeth, two cats are now happy indoors, batting catnip toys and snoozing on the catio (the third continues at my neighbor’s house, where she has a heated outdoor cat house, and more food than she can possibly eat).
In the United States, scientists, bird lovers and cat owners alike would agree: Cats belong indoors. Outdoor felines may kill between 1.3 and 4 billion birds per year. And cats themselves are prey for animals like coyotes. It seems downright irresponsible to let them out.
Only 70 years ago, though, such a life with a cat—carrying it around in special backpacks like little hairy astronauts, letting them out only on leashes—would have been considered preposterous. One thing has made it all possible: Cat litter.
Before about the mid-1940s, what did you do with a cat that needed to poop? As a child reading fantasy novels I would read cute little allusions to trays of sand. But trays of sand, or boxes with wood shavings or ash were never popular, says Henry Buller, an animal geographer at the University of Exeter. Ash ended up tracked all over the house, and sand, wood shavings or ash did nothing whatsoever about the smell. Wow does cat pee smell.
The solution? Let the cat out. We first valued cats for their pest control abilities, and only later for their companionship. Cats were, and in some places still are, working members of a household. Their work was at night, outside, and so their toilet was, too.
Then came 1947, and a man named Ed Lowe. During a freezing January, his next door neighbor had to keep her cat inside. Her sand pile froze, and she asked Lowe if he had any sand. Lowe did not have any sand, but he did have Fuller’s Earth, a clay material used because it absorbs liquid.
The neighbor loved it. It absorbed the liquid, and it neutralized the smell. Lowe figured out pretty quick what he had, and started hand-filling bags of Fuller’s Earth, calling it Kitty Litter, and selling it to pet stores. Apparently, when told that no one would pay for such a thing, he told them to give it away until they were hooked. It worked. It worked so well that when Lowe sold the company to Purina, he walked away with $200 million.
Now, the prosaic, often smelly, ability for your cat to pee and poop indoors has become a 4 billion dollar industry. But it’s done more than that. It changed where we thought the cat belonged. Before cat litter, cats were most common in places where they could live mostly or entirely outdoors—barn cats, farm cats, suburban cats. Cat litter brought cats into prominence as the ideal pet for urban environments—a pet that didn’t have to be walked or let out, that could be left home all day while you worked. Before cat litter, a cat in a city wasn’t ideal. You had to let it out to pee and poop, and with little green space, it was likely to go in lots of places nobody wanted, and the busy city streets made for a short life. But with cat litter that made sure the cat’s emissions didn’t smell, cats became ideal for small spaces (exhibit A: Breakfast At Tiffany’s, 1961).
Spaying and neutering also increased the cats popularity. And with our ability to keep cats entirely indoors came a change in our beliefs. For a while, indoor or outdoor became mostly a matter of personal choice. Some people had indoor-outdoor cats, some outdoor, some indoor only (and often in the 1980s and 90s, declawed. Please don’t do that.*)
Having options changes people. It changes what we value and how we calculate risks. Consider cell phones. Before them, people went out, and planned ahead, and met up, and no one knew where they were til they got home. Now? The very idea of someone being untraceable, unreachable at any point, seems like science fiction. With cats, though, having cat litter changed our risk calculations.
When there was no choice but to let the cat out to poop, people were inclined to accept that those cats might not come back from their nighttime forays. They couldn’t be protected during those times. But with cat litter, you can protect your cat from cars, coyotes, and whatever else is out there all the time. Cat litter gave us control over that risk. Control over the cat’s environment. Control is human catnip. The risks of letting cats out began to seem less acceptable when they could stay inside.
And then the birds died. Over the past two decades in particular, scientists began to sound the alarm about the harms of outdoor cats on native species, particularly birds. Findings began to point fingers at cats killing not thousands, not millions, but BILLIONS of birds. Suddenly, it was no longer just the risk to the cat that was involved. It was the risk to native wildlife.
Now, keeping a cat indoors has started to have a moral valence to it. How can you say you care about wildlife, if you let your cat out? People willingly shame cat owners who let out their cats, no matter how responsible those owners might be.
Now, when Americans hear about, say, the cat lovers of New Zealand, who firmly believe it’s bad for a cat to keep it inside all the time, or the UK, where letting the cat out is a strong cultural norm, they often respond with horror. How could anyone be so irresponsible as to let out the cat!? Think of the harms to the birds! The harm to the cat!
Would we even be calculating those harms, if the option to keep cats inside never existed in the first place? “It enables people to rethink the whole idea of the domesticated animal,” Buller told me. In this way, he says, a single technological advance changes where we think those animals should and should not be.
Where have you been?
Is it reading about the other, other side effect of Ozempic: Malnutrition? I’m reminded of weight loss surgeries, where malnutrition is also a very common side effect and takes a lot of work to avoid.
don’t narrow people down to their gametes. First, it’s a terrible way to categorize anyone, but second? It’s not remotely scientific.
Remember that time when drinking wine was good for your heart? Yeah, not so much. Really appreciate this piece from Slate that does not shy away from the real scientific complexity.
Where have I been?
Doing a set of really fascinating interviews for Science for the People on ancient migrations! I spoke with Radu Iovita on the earliest, earliest evidence of humans on the Silk Road. Don’t think 2,000 years ago. Think 40. 40,000. And I spoke with Alisha Gauvreau and Elroy White about doing archaeology in conjunction with First Nations, and using modern science to confirm oral history.
I also got to write a fascinating piece for Sierra, on what happens when wolves and cougars share space with coyotes and bobcats. The smaller predators steer clear of the big carnivores…but at a cost. Because in doing so, they end up close to humans. And we are not kind neighbors.
Finally thank you so, so much to Greg Gbur, who wrote a lovely review of my book! “I found Pests to be a really thoughtful book with many new insights for me, and one that gave me a new perspective on humans and our place in nature. I highly recommend it!”
Citations (oh yeah, this newsletter has citations)
Grier, K.C., & Peterson, N. (2005). Indoor cats, scratching, and the debate over declawing: When normal pet behavior becomes a problem. In D.J. Salem & A.N. Rowan (Eds.), The state of the animals III: 2005 (pp. 27-41). Washington, DC: Humane Society Press.
Martell-Moran, N. K., Solano, M., & Townsend, H. G. (2018). Pain and adverse behavior in declawed cats. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 20(4), 280-288.
Loss, S., Will, T. & Marra, P. The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nat Commun 4, 1396 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380
*A lot of vets do it improperly, causing bone fragments, and the alterations in stride can cause cats back pain. It can also increase other behaviors like biting. Declawing is also accomplished by cutting off the last joint of the toe. It’s not great.
In summer my British cat goes out for a few hours during the day (never at night) and sometimes comes back inside just to use the litterbox (Which really wasn't necessary. He's allowed to poop in the garden, but okay then).
We let our cats decide (and only find feathers once a year or so). They come to us then guide us to the door of their choice and reach for the handle to show us what they want us to do. They'll rule the world before AI.