Today is Earth Day. To celebrate, here are a few things you can do to be a greener cat owner.

Clean up your litter box

The litter box is a big source of waste. Thankfully, there are some easy steps we can take to reduce the impact our litter boxes have on the environment.

Choose a biodegradable, recycled litter

Clay may feel great on the paws, and it’s certainly the most common litter substance on the market, but unfortunately, it’s terrible for the environment. Clay is strip mined and then sits in land fills when it is thrown out.

Fortunately, there are many great alternatives out there, that are much more environmentally friendly such as:

• Paper litters, like Yesterday’s News, made from recycled paper.
• Wood litter, like Feline Pine or Feline Fresh, made from wood reclaimed from the lumber industry.
• Grain-based litters, like World’s Best Cat Litter or Swheat Scoop, made from non-food grade grains or corn cobs.

As a bonus, all these litters are biodegradable and can be composted.

Use a biodegradable bag or box liner

Don’t add to the plastic going into landfills – use biodegradable liners and scoop your litter box into a biodegradable bag. Biodegradable bags, such as the ones made by BioBag, are made from corn, contain no polyethylene and decompose at about the same rate as other organic material.

Compost your litter

If you choose a biodegradable litter then its easy to start composting your litter. Remove the feces and then dump the rest of the box into your compost pile (bonus – the nitrogen in urine is great for your compost pile.)

You can compost the feces too, just be cautious. Because certain zoonotic diseases, like Toxoplasma gondii, can be passed through contaminated feces, you should use a composting toilet or other composter, like a NatureMill, that heats the compost to high temperatures. Don’t put poop into your regular back yard composter – it will never reach temperatures high enough to ensure that parasites are killed. If you have an indoor cat then it’s unlikely they are infected with parasites or disease that will b passed on in their poop, but better to err on the side of caution when it comes to your vegetable garden, right?

Eco-friendly eating

Food animals are a huge strain on the environment, but whether or not we choose to eat meat ourselves, we know that cats require meat to live and be healthy. That doesn’t mean we can’t make more environmentally friendly food decisions for our fuzzy little obligate-carnivores.

Can it

If you feed a commercial cat food, make sure you recycle those cans. Pretty much all municipal recycling programs can recycle tin, aluminum and steel cans, and curb side pick up is available in many areas, making it very convenient to recycle. Most kibble bags should be recyclable,  too.

Reduce packaging by buying larger containers – those tiny, single serve cans of premium cat food might be cute and convenient, but over the course of your cat’s lifetime you’ll save on a lot of packaging if you opt for the larger cans.

Make your carnivore an organic locavore

If you prepare cat food at home, you can reduce the environmental impact of your cat’s meals by feeding locally grown organic meat. While any health benefits from eating organic are questionable, it’s easy to see the environmental benefits of local, organically grown food. Shorter shipping distances reduces the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere through transportation and going organic means that raising those animals didn’t contribute more chemical pollution to our ecosystem (certified organic meat comes from animals that were raised on organically grown feed. Non-organic methods of growing crops contributes to chemical run-off from herbicides & pesticides getting into the water table and impacting native flora & fauna.)

Grass-fed/pastured/free range meat is also good for the environment in many ways. Pastured animals graze on the  plants grown where they are raised, rather than having heavily processed feed shipped in from far away. The ground is covered with green growth for a long portion of the year (or all year, if you live in a place with mild winters), pulling carbon from the atmosphere. Manure benefits the earth by adding nutrients back into the soil where it falls. Grass pasture helps reduce soil erosion…  responsible management of pastured animals has all kinds of environmental benefits.

As an added bonus, pastured meat has health benefits, such as higher levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and is a more humane way of raising meat animals than factory farming, where animals are penned into over crowded or undersized feedlots or cages, where they are unable to engage in normal animal behaviour.

Other things you can do

• Compost cat hair. After brushing your cat, toss the mat of hair into your compost bin instead of the trash.
• Make toys out of houehold items or recycle materials that you would otherwise throw out into cat toys or bedding.
• Use environmentally friendly cleaning products to wash litter boxes and cat dishes (and around the rest of your house.) Not only will they benefit the environment but they can also benefit your cat. Cats tend to be very sensitive to chemicals in their environment. Vinegar and baking soda are great natural cleaning products that are cat- and environmentally friendly.
• Donate unwanted cat supplies to your local shelter or Freecycle them, instead of throwing them out.

What are you doing?

What are you doing to reduce the impact your cats have on the environment? Do you have any ideas or suggestions on being a more eco-conscious cat owner? Share them here.

Cat in the grass photo by Sande Hamilton.
Compost kitty photo by Birrell Walsh.
Free range chickens photo by woodleywonderworks.
Cans photo by N-ino.

One of the intimidating aspects of raw feeding to the uninitiated is ther perceived cost and time investment required – often people express interest in starting on raw but are worried that they won’t be able to afford it or that it will take too much time and dominate their lives.

Time is precious and we’re all short on money, so no one wants to spend hundreds of dollars every month feeding their cat, or hours every day preparing food. In reality, raw feeding can cost less than a high quality commercial diet, and daily prep can be cut down to one minute per meal – no more time consuming that cracking open a can.

My monthly prep

I prepare food in batches, usually once or twice a month. If I choose large or whole bony items, like a whole turkey, pork shoulder or undressed rabbit I’ll spend 3-4 hours cutting, weighing and bagging. If I opt for small or pre-cut items like chicken hearts & gizzards, split chicken wings or chicken drumsticks, monthly prep can be done in an hour or so.

Meat gets cut into roughly 1oz pieces, organs into bite sized pieces and things like chicken wings and legs stay whole. All the meat goes into a big pile on the cutting board or into a big mixing bowl.  I have three cats so one snack sized baggie holds one meal for all three of them (4-5oz) – the food gets weight out and the filled bags get lined up on the counter. Once I’ve filled my space, I seal up all the bags and toss them in the freezer. Repeat until all the meat is packaged up.

I don’t use any fancy recipes or supplements. No grinding, mixing or measuring out extras.

Total prep time per month: 3-4 hours or less

My daily prep

Twice daily feedings are really easy. You can take food out the night before and allow it to thaw in the fridge, but I usually forget and that’s okay. When meal time come around, I grab a baggie from the freezer, fill a dish with hot tap water and drop in the baggie. I ignore it for 10 minutes and when I come back it’s thawed and warmed to body temperature. Each cat gets about one third of the bag, which gets dumped into a dish or directly onto their feeding mats. Then the baggie goes into the trash (or you can rinse and reuse them if you’re feeling really ambitious and environmentally conscious.)

It takes me about 30 seconds to start the food thawing and another 30 seconds to distribute food to the cats. All in all a fast and simple process at each meal.

Total time spent feeding per day: 2 minutes

Cost of supplies

Feeding raw requires very few supplies. All I use are:

• small kitchen scale ($5 at Walmart)
• a couple of good knives, which I already owned
• a cutting board
• tongs and a large serving spoon for scooping portions into bags
• baggies (75 for <$2)

You can invest in a grinder for the transition or other special tools if you feel like spending the money, but other than the scale, I never needed anything that I didn’t already have in the kitchen.

Total cost of one-time purchase supplies: $5

Total monthly supplies: $2

Cost of food

Buying food is probably cheaper than you would think. There’s a wide variety of options out there, providing different costs, types of meat & level of convenience.

My regular purchases are (and keep in mind that these prices are on the higher side, as I’m in Canada and in a city with limited options):

• pork shoulder picnic roast (<$2 per pound)
• chicken hearts & gizzards (about $2 per pound)
• chicken drumsticks (<$2 per pound)
• chicken wings, split, tips removed (<$3.50 per pound)
• beef liver & kidney (about $2.50 per pound)
• beef heart (about $3 per pound)
• whole turkey (<$1 per pound on sale)
• deer & wild rabbit (free, from Freecycle or hunters)
• misc meats (free from Freecyclers cleaning out their freezers)

I occasionally splurge and get the cats a more expensive treat, like farmed rabbit, frozen mice, cornish hen and the like, but they’re not staples and don’t affect my overall budget. Over time, my food costs average out to about $2 per pound. My cats eat 9-10oz per day between the three of them, so my daily feeding budget is about $1.25 for three cats.

Compare this to feeding a premium canned cat food, which usually costs more than $1 per small can (and each cat needs at least one can per day, if not more).

Total daily cost to feed three cats: $1.25

As you can see, raw feeding need not be time consuming, complicated or expensive. Anyone who can find the time and money to feed a good commercial diet can easily fit raw feeding into their life without disruption or hardship.

Watch for more articles on raw feeding. I’ll be discussing benefits, my experiences, why I decided to go raw, and practical considerations. Or, Get started with raw at http://rawfedcats.org/.

What is your daily food budget per cat and how much time do you spend on feeding? If you were familiar with raw feeding, what was your perception of how much time and money it would take to switch?

Photo by Niels Timmer.

For those who feed a raw diet, I’ve created a chart with guidelines for feeding by body weight. It’s recommended to start with 2-4% of body weight per day.

This chart lists body weight in 2oz increments for cats from 3lbs to 22lbs12oz and provides feeding guidelines based on 2, 4 and 6% of body weight. Metric conversions for body weight and food weight are also provided.

Click here to view the spreadsheet as a separate page.

I hope you find this to be a useful resource. Remember – these are just guidelines. Your cat’s individual needs will ultimately determine how much you should be feeding.

Keep watch for more articles on raw feeding.