Should the roses stay or go? A study about cats and their litter

I recently went to St. Louis and saw half the arch. 

That’s what happens when you fly into a city on a Thursday and out on a Saturday -- you don’t have time to visit the local attractions and instead, you catch a glimpse from between two large buildings. I have to assume from what the internet tells me that the other half is exactly the same.


Regardless, I wasn’t in St. Louis to see the arch; I was there to present my dog “guilty” behavior research at the 2011 Veterinary Behavior Conference!

Veterinary Behavior Conference 2001

Various professionals convened at the conference -- veterinarians, trainers, vet technicians and researchers -- and the talks were not only about dogs. Horses, cats and parrots made an appearance. One study in particular piqued my interest as it pertains to one of my favorite topics, animal eliminations! 

While some dogs perform their digestive duties on wee wee pads, the majority of house-dwelling dogs rely on outside walks as the proper place to relieve themselves of urine and feces.

How can he possibly see straight?
http://blog.petsolutions.com/blog/2011/06/dogs/using-wee-wee-pads-with-a-puppy-or-adult-dog/

On the other hand, most cats are not outfitted with a leash and taken for a morning constitution. Instead, cats find bladder and colon relief with the help of a litterbox placed within the home environment.

A determined kitten makes her way in the world.

A quick walk around the Internet finds there is nothing straightforward about a cat and her litterbox. These are just a few of the widely discussed topics:

- Structure of Litter Box (top on, top off)

- Type of litter (regular clay, clumping cat litter, biodegradable etc.)

- Placement of litterbox

- Size of litterbox

Pet companies often speak on behalf of cats, informing owners that cats love this product and surely hate that one. Obviously, their "information" should be taken with many grains of salt. 

Dr. Jacqueline Neilson, on the other hand, looked at cat behavior to let cats “do the talking”. At the 2011 Veterinary Behavior Conference, Dr. Neilson presented her study, Litter Preference In Cats: Scented vs. Unscented. Here's what happened...

Methods

The study included 35 neutered adult cats living in colony rooms at the Oregon Humane Society Animal Shelter. On four consecutive nights, cats were presented with two litterboxes, one box contained clay-clumping, floral-scented litter and the other contained no added flavor (this sounds like a cereal commercial). The two litterboxes were placed next to one another, their placement was varied from night to night and an overhead camera captured cat litterbox usage.

Data collected

- Cat identity

- Elimination type - urine or feces

- Elimination location - scented or unscented litter box

Where do they go when they go?

277 elimination events were considered in the results.

134 eliminations went to the Scented Litter

- 84 urinations

- 50 defecations

143 eliminations went to the Unscented Litter

- 90 urinations

- 53 defecations

Population level results

This population of cats did not exhibit a preference for either scented or unscented litter.

Individual level results

At the same time, there may have been individual preferences for one litter over the other, although not necessarily statistically significant.

- 16 unscented preference

- 12 scented preference

- 7 no preference

And the study limitations?

In the world of research, you consider the limitations of your study. In this case, the author mentioned that prior excrement deposits in one of the boxes could have influenced later deposits.

Dr. Neilson notes, “If a cat deposited an odiferous fecal deposit in the unscented box, the next cat needing to eliminate may have been driven to use the scented box simply to avoid the malodor associated with the fecal deposit”.

Possibly, when a cat faces floral-scented litter and unscented litter that is now home to a massive poop, floral-scented wins. But, if the massive deposit were absent, the cat might have selected the technically unscented litter. (The human comparison might be walking into your favorite bathroom stall at work and being smacked in the face by someone's  steak dinner. You would certainly retreat in a flash).

Also worth considering -- study subjects were shelter cats with unknown histories. As a result, this study does not know the types of litter cats were exposed to early in life, nor whether that could make a difference in their litter usage during the study.

What this study does show, and what is not commonly thought, is that when presented with both scented and unscented litter, cats are not averse to using scented. 

Regardless of how much we investigate the placement of cat urine and feces, we will probably never surpass a dog's insights in this area.

Just enjoying a mid-afternoon snack.