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Ed Lowe and the Evolution of the Cat Litter Box

AIn honor of the birth anniversary of Ed Lowe, the inventor of cat litter, I’m sharing the history of the litter box. Lowe was borne July 10, 1920.

Ed Lowe came up with the idea of cat litter by happy accident in 1947. Photo courtesy of the Ed Lowe Foundation.

I know most of us grumble as we pick up the litter scoop and approach the cat box. What a pain in the tail! But we do it because we love our kitties, and cleaning the litter box is a necessity just like changing a diaper or washing the dishes.

No one really gives much thought to the impact that cat litter has had on our daily lives. Without it, our day would go very differently.

Cats prefer large litter boxes and we no longer have to sift the litter with a fry strainer. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.

I learned how differently while researching my paranormal mystery, Death Under the Crescent Moon (Yard Dog Press, 2013). The story is set in 1939, almost a decade before the invention of KITTY LITTER®.

Have you ever thought about the Litter Box Process? I don’t mean the process involving the alimentary canal. I’m talking about custodial maintenance. Today’s clumping and silica gel litters allows us to simply scoop and toss. But our grandparents had to put a great deal of effort into keeping an inside cat.

According to Katherine Grier, Ph.D., professor of history at University of Delaware, most cats lived outside until after WWII. They did their business in backyards and neighbors’ flower beds. They lived separated from the people who loved them because of the elimination issue and also because few people altered them. (Intact kitties express themselves in ways not conducive with civilized indoor living.) But it’s a dog-eat-cat world, and increasingly, cat lovers wanted to keep their cats safely inside the home.

People couldn’t help but notice in a natural setting most cats relieved themselves in loose ground, then covered their waste. This tidy nature hid their presence from predators and protected them from disease and parasites. Unlike dogs, cats didn’t require housebreaking; they simply needed loose material.

People began providing inside kitties with “sanitary pans,” usually a 12” by 18” enamel baking pan or 22” by 4” deep galvanized iron roasting pan.

The original litter box was a 9″ by 12″ baking pan. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.

To these dedicated ailurophiles, the sand man had nothing to do with sweet dreams. His dump truck delivered a fresh supply of cat box sand. According to cat care books published between 1885 and the mid-1950s, inside cats might also find fireplace ashes, dirt, absorbent newspaper cat pads, shredded or folded newspaper, or sawdust in their pans. These books recommended changing and washing the sanitary pan twice daily, or once-a-day at the very least. 

A commercial precursor to clay cat litter came from an innovator named “Poppy” George Plitt, who sold Kleen Kitty, a cat box filler made from wood ashes. Between changings, cat owners removed the poop with a kitchen frying strainer. Just as today we can tell cat lovers by the telltale cat hair on their clothes, in the 1940s you looked for soot.  I imagine gray apparel was quite popular among cat fanatics.

Our kitties may have had to do their business in a turkey roaster. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.

In January, 1947 Kay Draper, a cat lover from Cassopolis, Michigan, couldn’t reach her cat sand pile because of a deep layer of snow, so consequently her Angora cat was tracking sooty paw prints all over the house. She asked her neighbor, Ed Lowe (who sold sand and clay granules), if she could purchase some sand. Fortunately for cat lovers around the world the snow also prevented Lowe from accessing his sand reserves. He suggested she try Fuller’s Earth, kiln-dried clay granules he’d been attempting to sell to chicken farmers as nesting material.

Like a stray cat who found a full food bowl, Kay returned for refills and brought her cat lady friends with her. Lowe wondered if other cat owners would be as enthusiastic. To test the market, he filled 10 five-pound sacks with what he called KITTY LITTER™ and asked a local pet store to sell them for 69 cents a bag. The shop owner  doubted his customers would pay that much. After all, in 1947 minimum wage was $0.43 per hour and a gallon of milk was $0.67. But within a few weeks the shop owner placed an order for more. By the early 1950s KITTY LITTER (which later became Tidy Cats™) became widely available in pet stores.



Today’s cats have abundant litter box options. Photo by Weems S. Hutto. Copyright 2013.

So what did cat care look like in the 1930s? In Death Under the Crescent Moon, Eva Dupree travels to a sanitarium with her cat, Ivan. Her maid, Rose, arrives at the clinic every day to bring Ivan minced chicken giblets and fresh ashes.

While a few brands of canned cat food were available in 1939, most people fed their cats table scraps and bread, and of course cream. (Imagine the smell of that litter box.) Despite the horrible diet provided by their people, I believe cats stayed healthy because they supplemented their diet with rodents.

What goes in must come out. In order to tend to the cat’s bathroom, every day Rose must collect cooled cinders from the fireplace, dispose of mushy used ashes, wash the enamel baking pan, dry it thoroughly and refill it. Of course, where there’s soot, there’s grime. As Ivan exits his sanitary pan he deposits dark paw prints all over the white bathroom tile floor. Daily mopping is just one more step in the process. Ash residue also migrates to the carpet and bed linens. Keeping an inside cat was truly a labor of love.

In the book Rose reveals that she learned about cat care from a real book, A Practical Cat Book for Amateurs and Professionals(Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1939), written by a particularly enlightened biologist of the day, Ida Mellen. Mellen, it turns out, gave me peek into the past while she kept her eyes firmly on the feline future. Mellen encouraged keeping cat indoors, altering pets, going to a humane vet who uses anesthesia for surgery and even gives instructions on how to leash train a cat—trailblazing for 1939.

I have to admit it was fun and sometimes horrifying to look into cat care practices of the past. It certainly makes me grateful for my massive polypropylene litter boxes and my efficient Litter-Lifter scoop and especially my odor-controlling Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract Litter. I will never take the litter box for granted again.

So next time you feel tempted to complain about litter box duty, think about those cat-loving pioneers who made your life more convenient and the air in your home more pleasant. I doubt that the task at hand will seem quite as bad.

Firehouse Cat Fired for being a Cat

Fire station cat, Edna, has lived with the firefighters since she was a feral kitten

IN THE MEWS  — SAN FRANCISCO by JeffyJeffyBadBoy

Employees and firefighters at a San Francisco Fire Station 49 are devastated after their beloved mental health specialist, firehouse cat Edna, was fired by San Francisco Fire Department administration for simply being a cat. Edna came to the station as a feral kitten and was part of the firehouse family. However, after five years of helping firefighter deal with stress, the department removed Edna from the facility because of an anonymous complaint.

A spokesperson for the department said they banished Edna due to concern about “the animal’s own safety and well-being.” Yeah, right. The statement claimed, that since the facility contains “medical supplies, equipment and pharmaceuticals,”the department stated that “having the cat in the facility compromised the sterility” of the supplies and equipment.

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SF Fire Commissioner Joe Alioto Veronese is fighting to return Edna to work at station #40

Despite the #ednastays campaign, Edna was taken away from the station on Monday. One of the firefighters is stepped up to adopt her. SFFD is planning a “pet adoption day specifically for First Responders” so they can adopt a pet to cope with their stress. Wow, amazing compassion.

According to Dion Lim a reporter for ABC7 in San Francisco, SF Fire Commissioner Joe Alioto Veronese is fighting to return Edna to her rightful post. Apparently Commissioner Alioto knows fire station animals provide vital for emotional support to first responder. He will present a new animal policy to the fire commission at their meeting today. Commissioner Alioto says other stations have animal mascots. One station has a rooster. (And we know how sterile bird crap is.)

What would you like to say to the San Francisco Fire Department? Tell me in the comments below.

Check out Edna’s Instagram page fire_cat_edna.

Don’t forget to read important cat news at dustycatwriter.com, and Jeffy’sDailyMews on Instagram and Facebook.

Animal Cruelty could become a Federal Felony

JeffyJeffyBadBoy, acclaimed feline journalist, wants you to support this animal cruelty bill

JEFFY’S DAILY MEWS          FLORIDA   If two congressmen from Florida have their way, animal cruelty could finally become a federal felony. The two Floridians reintroduced a bipartisan bill making malicious acts of animal cruelty and bestiality a felony under federal law.

The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, was sponsored by Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Boca. Humans convicted of the crime could face up to seven years in prison. The bill does contain exceptions for normal veterinary care, hunting and humans protecting their lives.

Decades ago, the FBI recognized the between animal cruelty and escalating violence toward humans, so it’s not just we kitties who have skin in this fight.

In the past, the Senate unanimously passed the PACT Act. That bill earned 284 bipartisan House cosponsors and over 200 law enforcement endorsements in the last congressional session. But former House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., blocked the measure from coming to the floor. (Who in their right mind would block that? What is wrong with you and who are you taking money from?) Fortunately, Goodlatte  is no longer in Congress. 

Contact your congresshuman and urge him or her to support this bill.

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Study Suggests Kitties and Their Humans have Similar Purrsonalities

IN THE MEWS 

LIVERPOOL, UK. Ever noticed that dog owners and their pets look alike? (It’s the stuff of nightmares, isn’t it?) Well a recently study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, found a correlation between cats’ personalities and their humans’.

Researchers asked 126 humans to score their own personality traits as well as the questions about Fluffy’s temperament. (I’m somewhat offended that they didn’t quiz the kitties themselves.) The questionnaire asked about three of the human’s Big Five traits (agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism), dominance, impulsiveness, the Dark Triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy). It also asked about human satisfaction with their feline housemate. The cat section assessed the Feline Five (agreeableness, dominance, extraversion, impulsiveness, neuroticism). Humans who showed to be highly dominant were more likely to live with dominant, impulsive, extroverted, and neurotic cats, while impulsive humans frequently saw their own impulsivity in their Fluffies.

Like Their Kitties

Cats described by humans as dominant, neurotic, and impulsive were more likely to live with humans who scored higher on the Dark Triad traits.
“Dominant cats are greedy, defiant, and aggressive and bullying towards people/other cats, which could be attractive to potential owners who have similar tendencies in their own social interactions,” the study suggested. “Impulsive cats are excitable and erratic, which could be pleasing to impulsive owners.”

The researchers concluded that humans are drawn to cats who reflect their own personalities, or are more likely to keep a kitty who’s similar to them.
If this is true, why won’t my human go rat hunting with me?
You can read the study, “The purrfect match: The influence of personality on owner satisfaction with their domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus)” at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328430244_The_purrfect_match_The_influence_of_personality_on_owner_satisfaction_with_their_domestic_cat_Felis_silvestris_catus

About the Author

JeffyJeffy BadBoy is a rescued kitten with a nose for news. His unique talent has qualified him to be the official journalist for Stupid Gravity Press. Follow Jeffy’s Daily Mews on Facebook and Instagram.