Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Using newspaper for cat litter is a great idea. In theory. In practice, not so great. Or maybe in this particular manifestation -- not so great. I probably should have read more reviews, but I thought, "Hey, it's cat litter. I'm throwing it out bit by bit anyway. How bad could it be?" Welp, it's not BAD. It's annoying as all get-out, and I was wrong. After rescuing a kitten, and deciding to keep him inside the house so he would be safe and away from cars, wild forest beasts, and those feral cats out there, I knew I'd have to be scooping the poop. We're not rich folks, so we can't afford to dump an entire tray of litter every day. Daily, I scoop out the pee and poop clumps into a little plastic grocery bag, tie a knot in it, and throw it away. I use my litter scooper shovel and shake it a bit to let the unclumped litter fall back into the litter pan. Even with the so-called "99% dust free litter" there's still some dust. But ya deal, right? I knew the Purina Yesterday's News Unscented Paper Cat Litter came in these compressed pellets. I did look at the pictures included in the description. It’s similar to compressed pellet rabbit food. It never occurred to me the pellets would be so large they wouldn't easily fall through the slots on my litter scooper. The cat didn't seem real impressed with the shape of the stuff either, but he DID keep using the litter box. (Thank goodness!) I think that had more to do with the fact I had both his regular litter and the new pelletized paper litter in the litter box. I think he was trying to cover the paper pellets up with the granular clay litter. When it came time to scoop, I'd have to shake and shake and shake the litter scoop and it took FOREVER for those pellets to fall through the slots. All that shaking stirs up dust. And the little crumbly bits you get that are pee-soaked would fall through. There I was, scooping and scooping and scooping to catch them all. I was perturbed, to say the least. I tried to think of a way to make the paper pellets more user friendly. Breaking them into smaller bits would help, but I didn't want to kneel there and pound away at the stuff, and I sure as heck didn't want to take the clean litter from the bag and run it though my blender! I considered beating on the stuff with a hammer, but that would break the poop pan. Taking it all out to the garage to dump it out, smash it, sweep it up back into the bag, and haul it back into the house just seemed like too much effort. Besides, those pellets are hard. They are not soft like it says in the description. It would take some muscle to crush the big pellets into little pellets. Why work so hard for cat litter when I can buy stuff (and have it delivered to my door) and have it behave as expected? Poop scooping is a not-so-pleasant job and this pelletized paper litter was making it even more unpleasant, making it take even longer, and stirring up more dust. And unlike the description, the stuff does track a bit out of the litter box, so instead of just granules on the litter mat and floor, there are these much larger (up to an inch long) pellets scattered about with the granular litter. Because I paid money for the stuff, I'll use it up, mixing it with the usual clay litter (and even the corn litter because I'll buy some of that when the price goes down a little), but most of the paper litter gets tossed in the trash bag with the poop. It was a waste of money. I do appreciate that it doesn't have an overwhelming perfumy-odor. The bag it came in was sturdy enough. It does absorb the pee, but my cat Pepper doesn't seem to be pleased, and I know I don't like the extra time and work involved in cleaning out the litter box. I cannot recommend the stuff. Like I said great idea in theory. Crappy idea in practice.