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Thought 18 - Cat Boxes

Point one today (from the wife):
Does it seem odd that we wrap up cat and dog, poo and pee into plastic bag to be effectively preserved for millions of years. Just think of what future archeologist will think.

I guess this does stem from the fact that cats and dogs, and well just about every other animal on the planet as been peeing and pooping, when ever and where ever they please. Granted we'd have a bit of a smell problem if everyone went where ever, but we developed sanitation for a reason! Further most animals poo is beneficial to plants as fertilizer. Well, not really dog and cat poo, but why not just flush this stuff? or compost it in a 'hot' compost pile.

Well it turns out we're not that bad, they do make flushable/compostable kitty litter. Oddly they charge more for them despite using things like ground corn cobs, pine pellet, wheat staff, i.e. other industry waste products, so why more expensive? or better if you have a yard why not grow corn, wheat, and a pine tree and have both food on your table and biodegrable cat litter for the compost pile? Just wondering if we are forgetting simple things the more complex the world tries to get?

Point Two:

Anyway the whole pee/poo thing came from cleaning the cat box, and was thinking again using plastic to line the boxes and then just throwing that away. Again why? I find that the plastic is there to prevent the pee of sticking to the sides of litter box. We do not use the plastic cat box liners (mostly seen as an expensive 'colored' trash bag). However the pee clumps stick to the side making it necessary to scrape the sides and bottom to get all of clumps. Wait, why am I scraping this? Did not modern science provide as teflon? Why does there not exist a cat box with a teflon coating and eliminate the need for anyone anywhere to use the plastic cat box bags. Emptying the cat box would be a breeze, everything would just slide right out. And it's not like your going to put it in the oven... are you!?

Oh well, time to clean the cat box.

Comments

CJ said…
Hans, You need to invent a dog poop scooping robot like roomba maybe call it pooba.... Set it down and it goes around your yard picking up the poops for you and is solar powered so it recharges it's self in the sunlight too.
May 18, 2009 at 8:09 AM
Hans said…
I like this idea. I wonder if you could use methane to power the robot. Then simply "hunts" for it's own fuel source, with backup from solar power.
May 19, 2009 at 7:33 PM
CJ said…
Oh man! You better get working on that and I want to be your first customer!
May 20, 2009 at 8:45 AM
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