This morning my daughter was running around looking for peroxide. When I asked her what she needed it for, she told me Spike had pooped on her bed and she wanted to clean it up. Where she got the idea that peroxide was a good cat poop cleaner-upper, I don’t know.

I told her to strip the sheets and bring the mattress pad out so I could take it outside to air. Then I got on Google to make sure the advice I know about why cats poop on the bed was the same as the internet’s advice.

Because, you know, when in doubt, ask Dr. Internet.

It was the same. I went in and looked at the cat boxes and found there was not much litter in the boxes at all. "Ah ha!" I thought, "The cat boxes are low on litter. I’ll get some more litter and see if that keeps him from pooping on beds." Really, when I think of it, it makes sense- Spike is a fastidious cat and my daughter is the box scooper. I think he’s letting her know in his own way that the box is low on litter. Wouldn’t life be a lot easier if cats could talk?

Of course, if he keeps doing it after I’ve fixed the litter boxes, it’s off to the vet for Spike.

When I came back, I started surfing around the links about cat litter and found some disturbing news. Cat litter is bentonite clay, which is strip mined. I always assumed cat litter was some byproduct of some other thing, but it’s not. It’s mined specifically, and strip mined at that, which is a process that’s not good for the environment.

I started looking around for what kind of cat litter is a good alternative, but I’m coming up a little bare. An alternative people are suggesting is "Swheat" but I’ve seen a lot of people say it tends to clump into concrete cat pee and wheat messes at the bottom of the box, and besides that, have you seen the price of wheat lately? No thanks.

There’s Yesterday’s News, which I used a long time ago and my cats despised, so that’s out. I saw some corn cat litters, but the price of corn is way up, too. I think the best idea I have seen is what Melinda at Elements in Time is doing- she’s using her backyard soil as cat litter. My own hard clay soil may not be appropriate, but it’s got me thinking about the top soil bags you can buy at Lowe’s or Home Depot.

For now, I think we’ll be sticking to the litter we’ve been using, but I definitely think this warrants some looking into.

Now it’s your turn, Animal Shak-ers: Do you use an environmentally friendly cat litter that both works well and isn’t horribly expensive? What about the top soil idea? Can you see any problems with it?