Bad Kitty 2014-W28

I recently read where cat owners are (allegedly) smarter than dog owners.  Before I accept that I'd like more details about how this study arrived at its conclusions, but meanwhile for being a dumdum I have so far done okay for iself.  Or is it myself?  Meanwhile if cat owners are indeed smarter, they should be wracked with guilt if only they knew the environmental havoc wreaked by their indifferent little bird-killing furballs.  Though I'm not talking about how cats adversely impact the populations of migratory songbirds.  Instead, let's go back in time...

The cat became a viable housepet option with the invention of Kitty Litter in 1947, because their terrible smells could at last be absorbed.  But at what price?  Turns out that clay kitty litter is bad for the world.  It is strip-mined dirt, kiln-dried, transported overland via combustion engines, and ultimately destined to wind up in landfills where it never biodegrades.  Never ever ever.

Year after year, four billion pounds of bentonite clay are strip-mined in the American Southwest for domestic litter boxes.  People who like to visualize things, picture this:  the Great Pyramid of Giza weighs about the same as three years worth of clay kitty litter, although owing to its lower density the kitty litter mound would be somewhat larger and undoubtedly less polyhedral.

"But I don't use clay kitty litter!" you say?  Before you mount your high horse, other types of litter are no better.  Clumping litter is strip-mined and clumps in the lungs of your cat (so that's a plus); organic litter doesn’t really biodegrade.  No congratulations if you use silica gel litter or trained your clever puss to poop in the toilet as either method requires solid waste flushing, which spreads toxoplasma gondii into the water supply.  In coastal areas this protozoan pestilence infects oysters, the beloved food of the joyful sea otter — so playful and sleek, and now dead at the hand of your cat.  Well, not exactly the hand but you get the point. Toxoplasmosis also afflicts humans (plus most warm-blooded animals) in case you wondered.

Thus the facts are clear:  your furniture shredding house cat comes at quite an environmental price.  Accept your guilt.

In marked contrast, dog waste management requires no more than small, biodegradable plastic bags and a few daily bursts of exercise on the part of their owner.  This seems better for Earth and better for you, too, but what do I know?  I'm just a less intelligent dog fancier.

Bad Kitty

Portions of this somewhat tongue-in-cheek post were excerpted/adapted from an article by Paul Ford on medium.com, where he goes on (with great humor) to attribute cats as causal to the development of Internet culture.  Is Al Gore aware of this?!  Grammar Police can relax, I have used "wreaked" correctly and "wracked" is acceptable so I elected to use it in lieu of "racked" for the alliterative effect.  Finally, Kitty Litter is probably a registered trademark of some corporation, duly acknowledged herewith alongside my continuing reluctant admission that kittens (but not cats) are indeed the most adorable creature there is.