"Jake" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:34:52 +0000, stuart noble
wrote:

On 13/01/2011 12:40, Jake wrote:
On Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:15:35 +0000, stuart noble
wrote:

Now that our cat is getting ancient, I've got to provide a litter tray.
I'm using the fuller's earth type litter and the urine soaked clumps
I'm
digging into one of our flower beds, which is a bit on the stony/sandy
side at present. As you'd expect from clay it certainly makes the soil
stickier and more moisture retentive, but I'm wondering if it has any
benefits nutrient wise. One thing's for sure, I'm not putting it in the
dustbin after paying good money for it and humping it about!

I dispose of used cat litter in my "black waste bag" (around here it's
then taken to a processing plant and converted into something useful).
I don't dig it into the garden as (a) it can contain bad bacteria - a
definite don't dig into your veg patch - patricularly with solid waste
and (b) I've read in many places that the scent will atttract other
cats to use the area as a toilet - the smell that seeps up through the
soil is unlikely to be smelt by humans but cats sniffing around will
detect it. On the other hand, I have read that disposing of urine
soaked litter down a mole hill acts as a deterrent as moles cannot
stand the smell.

I don't think you can convert clay to "something useful". Most people
round here just dump it in the non-recyclable bin that goes to
landfill, but I'm too much of an eco warrior (and a scrooge) to do that.

We have loads of recyclable collections each week and a black bag
collection every fortnight. We used to have wheelie bins but the
council decided to discourage the "easy option" by switching back to
bags. The publicity says that our black bags don't go to landfill but
to a processing plant where everything is converted into bio-fuel or
something similar or incinerated.

Apologies to Jake, if he gets this message, I intended it for the forum, so
here it is:

Since the snow we are now having this same problem with an elderly cat who
refuses to go out. Even though we now only have rain.

We bought the 'clumping' kind of cat litter and then the Co-op ran out of
that. So we bought another kind that looked like pumice stone, however,
even when I removed the, erm, solids before, when we put the litter in the
black bin last week ours was the only one black sack they didn't take away
(maybe too heavy for their arms, about 3 lbs + other rubbish).

I would prefer to put it all into my compost heap if it were not for the
fact that some of the litter seems to be clay-like. I don't have a
problem
with bad bacteria, since our generations of cats have been doing their
business in our garden and no doubt on our neighbours' as well for the
last
thirty years.

Roll on Spring when hopefully she can go outside again.

someone