Recently I was down the pub with my friend Ciq and he asked me whatever had become of this blog. Rather embarrasingly, I was forced to admit that I’d neglected it horribly for no good reason other than my own laziness. It could have been worse, though: I could have switched to buying Tesco Value.
Best to remedy this sad state of affairs with a product review, I say! Let’s start with a less-than-a-pound gem that the feline of the house uses daily: Sainsbury’s Basics Cat Litter.
Before you alert the animal cruelty authorities to this, make no mistake that this is a decent quality cat litter and it’s clearly Chloe’s preference. I once tried to upgrade her to the £4/bag posh stuff and she pissed on my bed in protest. Perhaps she didn’t want to damage her street cred by using a prissy piss powder and have the other cats think she’d gone soft. One mattress flip and a quick run down to the Camden Sainsbury’s later and the little princess was back peeing in her box, though temporarily banned from the bedroom.
What you get here is the sheer essence of cat litter, nothing more. It’s a giant bag of chunky, somewhat absorbent gravel. There’s no odour-cancelling aspect nor any fancy clumping action here. One might say there’s something retro about its simplicity. This is litter that any cat from the 70s would proudly poop in, whilst the modern kitty can delight in a lack of pretense that sets them free to pee without worry of overstepping their station in life.
One crucial caveat does, however, exist. Due to the coarse nature of the litter, your cat will be able to kick up a fair bit of dust as they paw around in it. This isn’t a concern for open top cat boxes, but ours came with a cover and a cat flap door. In that closed environment, Chloe kicked up such a cloud that she sometimes emerged wheezing and coughing. We ditched the cover and now just leave the box open, but if that’s unacceptable to you, you probably want to avoid this and try something slightly more refined.
In summary, I declare this to be a Basics bargain. You get a massive sack of litter for less than a pound and it does exactly what it says on the tin (or, er, paper bag): it “does the job”. Could you do worse? I suppose you could try to shred the London Lite and see if your cat will give that a go, but I’d make sure the bedroom door is shut tight beforehand.