About
When I was 46 I started writing essays on life, or the state of the human condition as I once called it. Because I was halfway between old enough to vote (21) and planned retirement (72) it was known as the "Halfway Point" series of essays.

Later when I mentioned the essays in one context or another on USENET, I got requests for copies and eventually for future essays. Thus the mailing list was born, and it moved to the Internet when that became widely available. At that time I moved to writing on a schedule, the 1st, 11th, and 21st of the month.

Now the trend is to "blogs," and read on demand. I am therefore making this available as a blog, and we shall see if people read it here, or by mail, or not at all.

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OddLinks - informal comments

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Things that work - cat litter products (19:23)

It always nice to find something that works as intended, so here are two things I've tried and found to work as well as claimed, somewhat to my surprise.

The test laboratory

The test lab for cat products consists of a group (currently five) cats of assorted size, gender, age, and disposition. The lab is an 1886 Victorian house, three stories high, and 14 rooms, not counting various alcoves and walk-in closets which would be called rooms in little modern houses.

Product 1 - Fresh Step "multi cat clumping formula with Carbon odor control"

If you have cats and use something else for litter, you probably have an idea how much I trusted the claim of odor control. A multi cat sandbox (we have two) even on the third floor is likely to make everyone in the house aware that you have cats. I had a business partner who built a room with forced air circulation to the outside and only a cat door in, and declared it the minimum solution. But I tried, I emptied both sandboxes, refilled with the test product, and left for 24 hours. At the end of the test time I took a walk to do the olfactory equivalent of "cleanse my palette," and entered the house. And sniffed. And walked to the second floor and sniffed, and up to the landing and sniffed, and to the top of the stairs and sniffed. Until I got to the doorway of the actual room the cats use, I wondered if it had constipated them, and even then the aroma was barely detectable.

"Well," I thought, "I had cats for years, maybe I'm just used to it." So over the next few days as friends who don't own cats came over, I used them as testers. The verdict was that the new litter works, at least with the minimal isolation provided by a separate room. And I noticed that if one cat failed to completely cover a gift, with multiple cats another cat will soon be along to complete the job, covering litter is apparently a survival trait, so everyone helps.

Notes: this was done in the winter, with the house all closed up, litter odor doesn't seem to be heat activated, so with windows open there should be less problem, not more.

Product 2 - the quick clean litter pan

I can't give you a brand name for this, there wasn't any, but it was sold at national chain Pet Smart for about $20. If that sounds like a lot to pay you like changing the box better than I do.

The product consists of four parts: two litter pans, one screen bottom pan, and a top "fling stopper" guard which reduces expulsion of the contents by enthusiastic burying efforts. The box is large enough to eliminate (so far) the practice of a cat standing in the box with rump outside the box and dropping a few off target loads. It also has prevented anything more objectionable than a few grains of littler from leaving the box and hitting the floor. The object is to eliminate the time spent bent over the litter pan with a little slotted scooper in hand. If you can afford to just dump everything every day, this product won't save you a thing, and you probably don't worry about clumping litter, either.

Hare's how it works. The two identical solid pans nested inside one another, so from the floor up you have pan, pan, screen, blast shield. The litter is poured into the top, the cats use the equipment as normal, and at cleaning time you:

1. snap off the top "flinging guard"
2. lift the screen and full pan off the empty bottom pan
   
3. lift the screen with all gifts and clumps off the full pan
4. dump the screen contents into bag, can, out the window,
   down the toilet, whatever your normal practice might be.
5. set the screen pan in the empty (formerly bottom) pan
6. pour the clean litter into the screen pan
7. set the ready to use pans in the now empty pan
8. snap the guard back on the screen pan