One day in 1947, Ed was approached by a neighbor who was tired of using ashes in her cat's box and dealing with sooty paw prints.
She asked for some sand, and Ed suggested clay instead. Soon the neighbor would use nothing else, noting that the clay was much more absorbent than sand and didn't track all over the house. Ed had a hunch that other cat owners would love his new cat box filler, too, so he filled 10 brown bags with clay, wrote the name "Kitty Litter" on them, and called on the local pet store. With sand available for next-to-nothing, the shop owner doubted anyone would pay 65 cents for a five-pound bag of Kitty Litter Brand. "So give it away," Ed told him. Soon customers were asking for more–and were quite willing to pay for it. The rest, as they say, is history.
This was the first large scale use of clay (in the form of Fuller's earth - a usually highly plastic, sedimentary clays or clay-like earthy material), in litter boxes. Clay litter is much more absorbent than sand also, and its larger grain makes it less likely to be tracked from the litter box.
The Many Uses Of Cat Litter:
- As a Bonsai soil substitute, you can use kitty litter to plant those awesome bonsai trees into, instead of those costly, (inorganic) soil components which can be difficult to source.