In the beginning, there was dirt. Cats roamed freely, scratching a "cat hole" wherever they pleased, then covering their business to avoid detection by predators. The really lucky cats roamed near a house with children, where there was often a sandbox for the tykes to play in. This sand was the luxury dirt of the early days -- dirt that was easy to dig in, easy to scratch over, and easy to shake from the paws.Then cats moved indoors, and it was people who decided where they should do their digging and dumping, and what they should do that digging and dumping in. The first litterboxes held the familiar dirt or sand. The cats were happy enough with the familiar materials, but people tended not to like the odor or mess. It just didn't absorb very well and had to be completely changed every day.In 1948 Ed Lowe, a dealer in industrial absorbents gave his neighbor some absorbent clay material for use in her cat's litterbox. It worked much better than sand, and soon more people wanted to try it. Lowe developed and refined the product, selling it as Kitty Litter, a brand name that has become a generic reference to any cat litter. The commercial cat litter industry was born.Clay Cat LitterClay litters have been the standard for many years. They are very absorbent and offer moderate odor control. Clumping types form a consolidated mass when wet, and are easily scooped out of the box for disposal, leaving the remaining litter for further use. Some people worry that clumping litters could cause digestive problems if a cat, especially a kitten, were to ingest it, as the particles would swell and form a mass in the digestive tract.
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