The cat litter project

So a little while back I posted that I was making a digester for my cat litter.  Here are the results so far.  My first batch that I put into the hole in the ground never really disappeared.  But within a few days of dropping them in, I knew why.  The water in my digester was being absorbed into the ground far too quickly for the enzymes to work on what was already a very dry lump of feces.  Since the poop dried out in the cat litter, it would need time to rehydrate then liquefy.  It simply wasn't getting that time in the digester.

So I thought about trying to flow the rate of water absorption in the digester by putting something in the ground like clay cat litter or something like it to retain the water longer.  But I didn't like that idea, since it might be possible that it wouldn't actually slow the water absorption, and that would leave me scooping out the litter from the hole in the ground, mixed with all sorts of yuckiness.  I then thought of just putting a plastic bag under the entire thing, and maybe a pipe sticking out of it to aid in water absorption.... essentially turning the digester into a miniature, but simplified, septic tank.

But then I returned to the problem at hand.  I wasn't giving enough time for the water and enzymes to break down the poop.  So a simple solution presented itself while wandering the halls of Home Depot.  The Kingsford Charcoal dispenser.  It was a simple and elegant solution.  Fill the bucket with some water and add the enzymes.  There's a handy easy to remove lid and flip top hatch to make adding water, used litter, enzymes etc, or complete removal for dumping.  The one I got was black, so I don't have to see the waste, and it heats up from the daylight sun, helping the enzymes work a bit more efficiently (I might have to worry about it getting too hot in the summer though).

So I put another bag of waste into the dispenser and a couple of days later, mostly liquified poop, with quite a bit of litter.  The litter I'm using is a mix of pine based litter that clumps, and wheat clumping litter. I'm betting what I saw was mostly the pine. 

Last thoughts:  My digester has basically turned into a hole in the ground for me to pour some really nasty water out.  But I still needed it and it'll be interesting to see what happens in there as things continue to degrade (like the biodegradeable bags that I used to transport the litter to the digester).   I feel like I'm using more water in eliminating the waste this way.  You win some you lose some.  But for all intents and purposes, I'm getting free water from my rain barrel, which will offset all the water use during the rainy season.  I only need about 5 gallons of water in the charcoal dispenser a week.  Once I get this down to a more efficient system, I might need less.  Its not all that much more work for me.  The only work was an initial investment of digging a hole in the ground.  Everything else is pretty much the same.  Scoop the boxes, bring it to a can, and drop it in.  I just have one extra step of dumping out the can maybe every week, after the enzymes get a chance to break down the litter.

Dogs are worse than SUVs part II

image from live life veg blog

My very first blog post here was about Dogs being worse than SUVs for the environment.

One of the arguments for vegetarianism is that it lightens our carbon footprint, and since dogs (and cats) are carnivores, they have a heavier carbon footprint than a vegetarian pet like a parrot.

So it stands to reason that there are really three options that we have with our carnivorous pets:
1.  Continue keeping them, and ignore or try to rationalize the environmental impact of our pets.
2.  Don't keep carnivorous pets.
3.  Continue to keep carnivorous pets, and change their diet to a vegetarian one.

There might be a few more options I'm missing, but I think these are the most obvious choices for most people.  So what should we do?  In my original post, I suggested that I might have to move towards 2, out of concern for the environment.  But rarely are things so cut and dry.  Many pets would exist regardless of people taking them in or not, and in my case, both of my cats were kidnapped from litters that were given birth to by stray cats.  However, my taking them in has guaranteed a particular impact on the environment, whereas, if I left them, they may have died to a car accident or starvation, or animal control.

So now we're balancing animal welfare against carbon emission.  To say that one is more important than the other is odd, since one of the reasons for concern about carbon emission is the welfare of the animals that would be affected by global warming. 

I don't think option 1 is a terribly rational position, so I'm not going to defend it much, or give it much analysis.  But I do want to point out that when I first posted the original entry, this is what most people seemed to opt.  Either the carbon footprint is negligible or there are other benefits that we get from keeping animals that outweigh the harm done to the environment.  But arguably, I could make the same arguments about SUVs.

Now the third option is a questionable one as well, because if we turn our carnivorous pets vegetarians, they may not be very happy.  So we'd be trading a portion of their happiness for a large portion of carbon emissions (I say a portion because I'm assuming that the vegetarian pet food out there undergoes significant processing which would make it less carbon friendly).  And lets not forget that some pets have special dietary restrictions/formulas that they need.

None of the obvious options seem like a very good solution, and well probably be getting another cat when one of my two die eventually.   So in actuality, I'm in camp 1, but I don't like being there.

Goth Kitties

Okay...  First read this article.

So did Holly Crawford do anything wrong?

The defense's argument is an interesting one.  We allow parents to pierce their children's ears and such, why not allow us to pierce our pets?  Why have a higher standard for the animal and a lower standard for the human?

I think there are two things wrong with this line of reasoning.  First, the piercings of a human's ears won't necessarily affect coordination and mobility, but they may affect them on a kitten (espescially on the tail).  But I don't think this is a heavy consideration.  Assumedly the kitten could learn to adapt to the piercings.... Afterall they have to learn to adapt to their four legs too (kittens are sooooo wobbly!). 

The second problem, and I think the more pressing flaw is that there is a higher standard for animals and a lower standard for humans line of thought.  There should be higher standards for the treatment of animals in some cases I think, precisely because we don't know what they are experiencing.  Erring on the side of caution is reasonable.  For children, we can simply ask them how they feel about being pierced (assuming they are old enough to be communicative).  We raise standards of treatment for less abled people, it stands to reason that we raise the standards to a similar height for animals.  Not because they're more important, but because they need the protection from exploitation.  We treat adults and children differently for the same reasons.

But these are just the flaws in the defense's argument.  Presumedly they can be wrong, and Crawford still hasn't done anything wrong. 

Ultimately the piercings are for aesthetic purposes.  The difference between the child and a pet, is that the child can appreciate the piercings.  They can make the the choice to remove the piercings in the future if they do not like them.  Pets can't do that, or worse, they will try to do that and tear out the piercing.  So the wrongness here isn't the harm thats been done to the cats (I'm not sure if the harm of the actual piercing is negligible, but I'm willing to concede the point).  But rather that it endagers them to future harm.  A piercing gets caught on a fence or on a pillow, and the cat will expeirence a great deal of unnecessary pain, so that we could amuse ourselves with having a pierced cat.  The tradeoffs of benefits here doesn't hold up. 

Dogs are worse than SUVs

According to this article here, dogs have a larger carbon footprint than an SUV, largely due to their diet. Now, one of the many arguments that people use to argue for vegetarianism, is that it is less taxing to the environment. Michael Pollen says that a vegetarian in a Hummer has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eater in a Prius. I think the research is pretty conclusive about the heaviness of meat in a diet.

However, since dogs and cats are obligate carnivores, they will consequently have a larger carbon footprint on the earth, than say myself, a vegetarian. Should I get rid of my two cats?

There's some scoffing in the article where Williams-Derry says that a dog would have to eat twice as much as a human does.... But I'm not sure if the math works out, since most people don't eat mostly meat, whereas most dogs do eat mostly meat. Compare a person on atkins to a dog, sure the person will have the bigger footprint. But the average american with all of the carbs included, I think would be equal to a dog's carbon footprint solely in food consumption (assuming a relatively large dog not those things that people try to pass as dogs that resemble more like rodents).

Whats keeping me from getting rid of my cats, besides that they're abnoxiously cute and lovable, is that the carbon argument is only one piece of a larger argument against meat. I'm primarily concerned with the cruelty that is involved in factory farming. I'm also concerned about the carbon cost of meat, as well as my vegetables, but I think in the grand scheme of things, the carbon cost is secondary to many other important concerns (only begrudgingly secondary).

Dogs also help people appreciate the environment more, I think. When people have fun with their dogs, its often at a park, in nature, etc, and at the very least helps us feel empathetic with other animals, which is lacking in the other spheres of animal interaction.

But it does give me serious pause. Maybe I shouldn't get a replacement cat when my cats inevitably die.