Most of us don't think about cat litter until we're standing in the pet shop aisle wondering which bag to buy. But the stuff sitting in the corner of your laundry has a longer and stranger story than you'd guess — one that takes in ancient farmers, a 1940s accidental invention, and a quiet shift over the last decade toward something that grows out of the ground.

If you've ever wondered why there are so many different types of cat litter, or which one is actually best for your cat (and your nose), the answer makes a lot more sense once you know how we got here.

What did cats use before cat litter existed?

For most of history, the answer is straightforward: not much. Cats lived alongside humans for thousands of years — there's evidence of domestic cats in ancient Egypt going back 4,000 years, and in Cyprus around 9,500 years ago — but for almost all that time they did their business outdoors. The first cats kept inside weren't given a litter box at all. They were either let out, or, in cooler climates, offered a wooden tray filled with whatever was handy: sand, ashes from the fireplace, sawdust, dirt, or torn-up newspaper.

None of it worked particularly well. Sand tracked everywhere. Ashes made paws filthy. Newspaper went soggy almost instantly. And the smell — well, anyone who's ever opened the laundry door to find an overdue box knows how that goes.

Who invented the first commercial cat litter?

Modern cat litter exists thanks to one cold morning in 1947. A 27-year-old American named Edward Lowe was working at his father's industrial absorbent company in Cassopolis, Michigan, when a neighbour named Kaye Draper knocked on the door. Her outdoor sandbox had frozen solid, and the fireplace ashes she'd been substituting were tracking soot through her house.

Lowe grabbed a bag of fuller's earth — a kind of absorbent clay used to soak up oil spills in factories — and handed it over. A few days later, Draper came back asking for more. Then her friends started asking. Lowe filled small bags, wrote Kitty Litter on the front in marker, and tried to sell them at the local pet shop for 65 cents apiece. The owner thought it was ridiculous; sand cost a penny. Lowe told him to give the bags away free and see what happened.

Within a few weeks the shop owner was placing orders. By the 1960s, Lowe's company was the largest cat-litter business in the world, and an entire industry was built on that one improvised handful of clay.

When did clumping cat litter arrive, and why was it a game-changer?

For nearly 40 years, regular clay (fuller's earth, then plain bentonite) was what cat owners used. It absorbed urine well enough, but you had to dump and replace the whole box every few days because the wet patches didn't separate from the clean litter.

That changed in 1984, when an American biochemist named Thomas Nelson noticed that a specific type of bentonite clay — sodium bentonite — swelled up and stuck to itself when it got wet. Drop it on a urine puddle and it formed a hard, lift-out clump, leaving the rest of the litter clean.

This was a real breakthrough. Suddenly you only had to scoop the clumps, not replace the whole box. A bag of litter lasted weeks instead of days. By the early 1990s, clumping clay was the dominant litter type worldwide, and it still is. Roughly 85% of the cat litter sold globally today is some form of bentonite clay.

But clumping clay has problems too — ones we didn't fully appreciate at first.

Is bentonite clay cat litter actually safe?

Sodium bentonite swells to about 15 times its dry size when it absorbs moisture. That's what makes it clump so well. It's also why some vets have raised concerns about kittens (who occasionally swallow litter) and cats with respiratory sensitivities (who inhale fine clay dust from the box). The dust on a freshly poured bag of clay litter is fine enough to hang in the air for several minutes.

There's an environmental side too. Bentonite clay is strip-mined — meaning the topsoil is removed across large areas to access the clay underneath. Once used, it doesn't break down. A bag of bentonite scooped into your household bin will sit in landfill, structurally intact, for centuries. With roughly 10 million tonnes of cat litter going into landfill globally every year, that adds up.

None of this makes clay litter a disaster — millions of cats use it without issue. But it's why a lot of cat owners, and plenty of vets, started looking for alternatives.

What is silica gel cat litter, and why isn't it the answer?

Silica gel litter — the white crystals you sometimes see — arrived in the late 1990s. It's the same desiccant material you find in those small "do not eat" packets in shoe boxes. It absorbs urine extremely well and controls odour without clumping.

For a while it looked like the future. But silica gel doesn't form clumps (so you can't just scoop), it gets used up quickly (one bag rarely lasts a multi-cat household more than a fortnight), and it's manufactured from quartz sand — non-renewable and energy-intensive to produce. It also doesn't biodegrade. Most veterinary nutritionists today would describe silica as a step sideways from clay, not a step forward.

Why has plant-based cat litter become the modern standard?

The real shift started around 2010, when manufacturers began experimenting with crops that could be processed into clumping litter. The idea was simple: if you could get the same scoopable clumps and odour control from a renewable material that biodegrades on its own, you'd have something genuinely better than clay.

Wood-based litters (pine, cedar) came first, then paper, then wheat, then corn. Most of the early plant-based options had problems — some didn't clump firmly enough, some smelled like a lumber yard, some tracked badly.

What changed in the last few years is the formulation. The current generation of plant-based litters uses combinations of starches — usually corn paired with cassava (also called tapioca) — that, when finely milled and blended together, clump as firmly as clay. They also do something clay can't: the natural plant starches actually trap ammonia gas as it forms, controlling odour at the source rather than masking it with fragrance.

What makes corn-and-cassava litter different from other plant-based options?

Most plant-based litters use a single grain — typically corn alone, or wheat alone. They work, but each has a weakness. Corn alone tends to track. Wheat alone breaks down faster when wet. Single-ingredient pine and paper litters are gentle but don't clump tightly.

The corn-and-cassava blend was developed specifically to fix these trade-offs. Cassava starches add binding strength to the clump, while the corn provides bulk and odour-trapping power. The result is a litter that:

• Clumps firmly enough to lift out in one piece, with no crumbling
• Traps ammonia at the source instead of covering it with fragrance
• Produces very little dust during pouring and scooping
• Is gentle enough on paws for kittens and cats with sensitivities
• Biodegrades fully once it leaves your home

There's also a quiet health benefit: because the litter is pale in colour, urine is easy to see. Pink or red tones can indicate a urinary issue worth showing your vet; dark yellow can signal dehydration. With dark clay litter, those colour changes are invisible.

Is plant-based cat litter better for the planet?

Yes, and noticeably so. Corn and cassava are both annual crops — they regrow each year, unlike clay or quartz, which are mined out of the ground and don't replace themselves. A bag of corn-and-cassava litter breaks down naturally after disposal, returning to the soil rather than sitting in landfill.

Some manufacturers go further. Sustainably Yours, for example, uses packaging that's 51% bio-plastic made from sugarcane, runs key production stages on biomass energy rather than fossil fuels, and donates a portion of every purchase to the Rainforest Trust — which has helped protect more than 42 million acres of threatened forest since 1988.

You don't have to be an environmentalist to appreciate the practical side: a renewable, biodegradable litter that performs as well as clay is just a better product. The fact that it doesn't add to a landfill problem is a bonus.

How do I switch my cat to plant-based litter?

Most cats adjust to plant-based litter without complaint, but a few are particular about texture changes. The reliable method is to transition gradually over a week to ten days:

• Day 1–3: Replace 25% of the old litter with the new
• Day 4–6: Mix 50/50
• Day 7–9: 75% new, 25% old
• Day 10: 100% new

If your cat is moving from clay specifically, larger-grain plant-based formulas tend to feel the most familiar underfoot — the granule size is the closest match. If your cat is fussy or has been previously avoiding the box, the smaller, smoother grains are usually a safer first switch.

Keep the litter at 7–8 cm depth in the box, scoop daily, and replace the lot every three to four weeks. Plant-based litter goes in the household bin — please don't flush it down the toilet, regardless of what the bag says.

Where to start

If you've made it this far, you probably already know more about cat litter than 95% of cat owners. The short version: clay had a good run, silica was a side road, and corn-and-cassava is where most of the industry is heading next — for reasons that benefit your cat, your nose, and the planet.

At Furbaby Pet-AU we're the exclusive Australian distributor of Sustainably Yours, the corn-and-cassava formula that's been named Best Natural Cat Litter by Business Insider and Best Cat Litter by Modern Cat magazine. It's the litter our customers — and Cat Daddy Jackson Galaxy — keep coming back to. We offer three grain sizes:

• Small Grain — the fastest clumping
• Large Grain — the lowest tracking, and the easiest switch from clay
• Mixed Grain — our most popular, balancing both

Free shipping on orders over $99 across Australia.

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