Is Silica Cat Litter A Health Risk For Your Cat?

Cat owners love their pets a great deal. Their love is easily proven by the little things they do for their pets. One of these little things is cleaning their litter everyday. Another is putting up with the stench of that litter. Silica cat litter has appeared on the scene like an answer to a cat owner's prayer! Just an inch high layer of the new silica cat litter is sufficient to dry out the cat's waste and make it absolutely bone dry and completely odorless! Waste removal is now as simple as scooping up some hard, dry pieces of the cat's feces and disposing of it. This is as pleasant as it can ever get!
The wonderful thing about this type of cat litter is that a single one inch layer lasts for two weeks and maybe even a month for one cat. Now you don't have to re-lay the litter everyday and that's really going to get a huge round of applause from all you cat owners! But there are health concerns involved in the use of silica as a litter for cats.
Silica is rather like powdered glass. It can be quite rough on your pet's paws. Not only the bruising it may cause, you should also be aware of the danger that your pet cat may swallow the silica when it cleans its paws. This can have extreme repercussions if taken in large quantities. Even in trace quantities, the silica is likely to accumulate in the cat's intestines over a sufficient period, which is just as damaging to the cat's health.
You'll be surprised to know that the fact that you don't have to refresh the litter everyday or every few days, is itself a source of alarm among some pet owners and experts. They say that keeping the litter in the box for so long will encourage bacterial and microbial growth which will lead to a number of illnesses for the cat as well as for the people in the house.
The main advantage of silica as a litter is its cost effectiveness, $10 lasting you for a fortnight or more. Secondly, it is easy to maintain, since you only have to scoop out the dried poop everyday. Thirdly, you have to re-lay the litter just once or, at most, twice a month.
On the minus side, the cost advantage is countered by the fact that the traditional clumping litter works out the same on a long term basis. The second point against silica cat litter is that clumping litter must be refreshed in a couple of days, which makes it healthier for the cat.
One mustn't forget that silica can bruise your cat's paws. If these concerns put you off of buying silica litter, you can buy the variety which comes mixed with ordinary litters. These are more acceptable to many than the purely silica variety.
Silica cat litter is actually a very good product suffering from some severe drawbacks. The mixed variety can be a bridge between all-silica and all-clumping. This way you get the benefits of both varieties of cat litters. The clumping prevents your cat's paws from damage, and the silica litter prevents the foul odor from pervading the house!

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Another viable solution, but also a more expensive one, is to purchase an automatic cat litter box. Go to www.CatLitterBoxesPlus.com to learn about all your cat litter choices. You'll find out why clumping cat litter remains the most widespread choice on the market today.

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