Cheap Pellet Cat Litter - Save Big & Breathe Easier - plus a $1 DIY Sifter

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hello people this group besides on mr. spork and knees are mr. sparks hands I'm in the kitchen today but guess what I'm not talking about food nothing even remotely edible I'm talking about or the most glamorous topics on the Internet talking about cat litter yep I'm going to talk about cat poop because I got a couple and you know what the cat scooping cat litter process was just driving and crazy and costing me a fortune even if you don't own a cat you probably know somebody that does own a cat and you can share this idea with them it's incredibly simple the Internet is known about the secret for years and years but I actually heard about it from one of the local cat rescue purveyors they were kind enough to share with me how they did cat litter on the cheap and basically I've gotten away from the scooping bentonite clay cutlery the stuff that clumps up that's heavy it's expensive it's not mine in a particularly environmentally friendly way you got to dump it all into the garbage can because it doesn't really decompose it's a complete mess and my budget for that stuff was anywhere from twenty-five to thirty dollars a month I've got two girls and they were really kind of going through the stuff even that was kind of stretching the budget a little bit twenty-five or thirty dollars a month really adds up quick but guess what now I am using what all the pros are using I'm using wood pellets now a lot of times you'll see people talk about pine pellets or even some of the pine pellets litters guess what the pine pilot litters are generally speaking wood stove pellets in a bag with pretty pictures of cats on the exact same products so buyer beware they're up here in Canada we're lucky enough that we can actually get hard wood pellets and that gets me past some of the concerns a few people have that using pine pines is in fact a toxic ingredient but some people on one side of the argument say hey there's so little contact with the cat in a litter box that it's not really an issue other people say you should never get fined anywhere near their cats I'm not going to try to answer those questions for you because you can go do that reading and research for yourself but for me I was able to get hard wood pellets for the exact same price in fact they're a little bit cheaper than soft wood pellets they were 650 for an 18 kilo bag that's 40 pounds for you folks down in America which is the same weight that most of the cat litter comes in but the trick here is you can almost tell that the hard wood pellets not only are they double the volume by weight but you use fewer to fill and you scoop out fewer so I think my budget instead of $25 is now down below $3 a month using these hardwood pellets the way they work this is how they come kind of polished and smooth but as they get wet they disintegrate down into sawdust and that's what I've got here no I am NOT handling used cat litter in cat peds or something I just soaked in the st. for you guys to see you don't be saying all this sounds a little through good to be true and if there is a catch it's that some fussy cats really don't take well to switching over to these hard lumpy pellets right at first there are some tricks but you know if you start out kittens they don't seem to know any better and they just dive right in my girls are really good too they don't really seem to be that picky about where they poop and they just started using right away but if you need to make a transition you can try to do a mix of the scooping and the pellets you can also try to take some used litter because there'll be a scent cue there for the cats put that in and the other trick that I tell people is that if you'll take a little bit of water and just make some squirts around in the fresh fill as if the cats have used it some of that will of course dissolve into sawdust and the sawdust is obviously a much softer feel feels more right to the cats I think they really like that satisfy that urge to cover well they want to get away from the poop as quickly as you do so try pre dissolving a few of them if you're having some transition troubles but really I got to say I think both the long term gains far outweigh any sort of short-term suffering that you have to go through it's well worth it I've seen people give up after a day you know cats or creatures I have it it's going to take them a few days to get used to the new thing as you can see my girls not have right into it whatever they get the chance um but don't give up and do keep trying try the different transitions but ultimately you're going to need to use a little bit of tough love and say hey this is what we're using now and get there you can of course scoop the solids you need to scoop the solids everyday and if you don't want to sift and bother with it you can dump it out after it's kind of half spent and it will be still a big savings but if you really want to save on the cat litter budget you're going to to go through some sifting what you do to scoop them is actually what I call a reverse scoop that is to say you take your good old-fashioned slotted scooper and you scoop out the good ones put them into a second litter box I don't use cupboard or specialty litter boxes I use these cheap tubs from the Mega Mart they're actually I think four or five bucks apiece and you can get a couple of them so that you can keep and rotated but basically you scoop them out the first time I was doing I was shaking like this half of our problem figured out the trick when you scoop them you hold it up against the side and shake it the sawdust falls down below you take the good pellets and you put them over into your other box top it up with a few extra fresh ones and boom you're off to the races for another few days you do select the scoop the solids every day but for my two girls about every third day I have to go through and do a sifting scoop now before long if you can get your cats switched over to this system you're going to say to yourself hey there's got to be an easier way they're going to go looking at the sifting litter boxes that you find online the problem with those is that most of them really are engineered to use clay litter clumping clay litter and the mesh the holes on the bottom of them can be too big sometimes depending on which way these pellets are shaped they can go this way or that way or they can go through sometimes they fall through sometimes they clog up the sifter it's not really designed for the wood pellets so you need something with finer mesh well guess what I'm going to help you out and I'm going to make it for a buck turns about using pine in the scenario for a cat litter box there's pros and cons some people say doesn't matter at all minimal contact that cats have with the loop okay before I show you my $1 wood pellets sister heck I just talked about safety you really do need to get self some heavy gloves for working with one of the materials I use here I'm not talking flexible gardening gloves it'll go right through that I'm talking seriously heavy thick canvas gloves please don't ignore this I'm not just telling you because the lawyers made me say it I'm telling you because this stuff is incredibly sharp and dangerous if you don't pay attention what you're doing as you can see I switched into nice heavy work pants and as the infinitely wise norm Abram used to always say in New York shop there is no more important step than to wear these safety glasses I am wearing a pair behind the camera I promise you that so what you need to do the project everybody has a cat probably has somebody's nice heavy cat litter boxes laying around that's what I'm going to use I like them because they've got the handles on them and they're about the right size for me but any size box will work what you do is you take the bottom and you're going to take your box knife and you're going to basically cut down all for the bottom flap so I'm going to cut it all about like about like so on all four sides and then I'm going to use some of the handyman secret weapon yet I'm pulling out the duct tape everybody's got duct tape it does a fabulous job use all of your origami practice or Martha Stewart crafting Zen experience and get yourself something taped up that looks like this I've reinforced the side but basically you're leaving about a two inch gap around the whole bottom using your duct tape the trick for making the sifter on the bottom is that we need some kind of sifting material I love you that you've seen my sprouting jar lid video remember this stuff it's plastic canvas this stuff theoretically would have worked great but these holes are a little too small so don't even try that doesn't work all right what you need next or why drive next I should say was some rabbit cage material that my lovely farm neighbor was going to lomi but those holes were a little too big I was looking for that third bowl of porridge just perfect and that's when I found this dangerous stuff it's called a hardware cloth I hope you can see this on camera and I'm telling you these edges it's like juggling a clown car full of razor blades you do not want to work Christmas stuff without your hands protected this whole sheet cost me a whopping two bucks it's enough to make two or even three depending on the size of the box that you're using and so what you do is you cut it down into a size it's going to fit the bottle your block your good box you're going to need some heavy straight shears like this or again get the guys at the hardware store to cut it down for you but please when you're working with it you keep gloves on your hands so you flip the bottom over and here's if there's a little trick to it I bend it so it's a little bit of a curve like that I've got it push this stuff I can hold it with my knees and push it right down into the bottom of the thing a little bit oversized but that's okay because we want a nice tight pressure fit and it goes and in some of my prototypes if I was using a particularly wide box I notice that I might need a little bit of cross support horizontal support so you can use your handy dandy Chinese chopstick it's we need it but if you keep the box size reasonable you don't really need that at all and though you've got yourself a $1 sifter using this hardware clock the specific measurement on the grid is 1/4 inch if you go and measure your manual cat scoop you should be able to get that same kind of measurement if you forget quarter inch but again 1/3 inch 1/2 inch doesn't work they're too big and the other materials would like you to find like a plastic canvas we're too small for that sawdust assist out so there you go that is your $1 sifting hack I'm going to go grab the dirty cat litter and just show you again one of the more glorious parts of the Internet I'm going to show you the sifting in action okay so here's the used litter the partially user I guess to say this is the unexpanded pellets and some sawdust we're going to beat this into the 5th or so find it a need to have two or maybe even three of these blue plastic tubs for your litter boxes that way you can kind of do it in smaller batches if you're using a particularly big fill but kind of depends on your circumstance so it goes to grab the old sorry you're going to grab the handles and there is this spent sawdust that goes out into the compost heap use a dedicated compost heap don't use it for your food crops even a couple years for the rain to soak it down the still good litter goes in here and of course I'm usually going to do this outside rather than in the middle of the living room but the lighting outside is terrible take in some fresh pellets put them on top spread it out and you are back in business I do hope this saves you a bunch of money I hope you stop using that crazy scooping cat litter I appreciate you thumbs up and and lichen and pretty Facebook cramming and all that other instant media social media stuff that you do as always if you need anything from you just check out that blog up there in the corner I've got a little article about all the different materials I tried when I was going through this process as well as recipes and crazy ramblings from Canada again I appreciate your watching until next time I'm mr. spork these are mr. sports hands and this this little bug you just can't wait to type in for a new round of the litter box we'll talk to you soon Cheers say hello to the Internet you
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Channel: Mr. Spork's Hands
Views: 637,227
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: cat, cats, cat litter, litter, scooping, clay, clay litter, wood pellets, wood pellet litter, cat litter alternatives, pine, hardwood, bentonite, bentonite clay, dust, scoop, clump, clumping, litter alternatives, stove pellets, wood pellet, wood, pellet, pellets, cheap, softwood, cheap cat, cheap cat litter, cheap litter, natural, natural litter, inexpensive litter, inexpensive cat, kitten, kittens, pine pellet litter, pine litter, sift, sifter, litter sifter, litter scooping, litter scoop, DIY
Id: uStGMGvOXYI
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 11min 56sec (716 seconds)
Published: Tue Jul 25 2017
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