How can you avoid dusty cat litter?

Do you hate it when you pour dusty litter in a pan, and a large cloud of dust bursts into your face? We do, too. It’s irritating and makes you sneeze, cough, or at least flinch. The same thing happens when you scoop and dispose of the litter, and even when your cat digs in the litter.

Unfortunately, the only solution to this is to switch the litter to a less dusty one. In this article, you are going to learn which cat litter types are non-dusty and can be used in place of dusty clumping cat litter.

How to find non-dusty cat litter

Maybe the solution provided above disappoints you because you were waiting for some “real” solution instead of the obvious one. Well, at least you know there is an alternative to dust, even if it means switching the litter.

So, which litter type should you choose? If the dust bothers you, you should go for pine, recycled paper, or silica cat litter.

Natural clumping litter is likely the least dusty litter out there. It has all the benefits that traditional bentonite clumping litter provides, plus it offers the added benefits of being non-dusty, nicer smelling, and friendlier to the environment.

Pine litter consists of small pine pellets, and it creates no dust (or an insignificant amount of it, at least). The downside of this litter is that its strong pine odor is disliked by many cats. Maybe your cat won’t mind the odor. Or, you can try switching to the new litter gradually, mixing it with the old one at first.

Recycled newspaper litter also creates no dust. We hope to test this cat litter type more in the future so that we can give more insight into its pros and cons.

Silica litter, even though most packages state that it is dust free, still creates some amount of the dust; however, it’s nothing when compared to clumping clay or absorbing litter. Besides, the dust created by silica litter is more appealing to the human nose than is dust from clay litter.

Of course, before you try another litter type, you might benefit from reading our comparison of the most popular litter types to see if these alternatives have other drawbacks you hadn’t considered.

Is there a non-dusty clumping litter?

We know clumping litter is not all bad. It has some very signficant advantages over the others, and therefore some of you might not want to give up the clumping litter. What about trying different clumping litter types until you find one that creates no dust? We already mentioned natural clumping litters above, but if you think that litter type costs too much you can try looking for other clay-based clumping litters.

There is a simple rule of thumb: the larger the particles of the cat litter, the lesser the amount of dust it is likely to create. So, when you are in a pet store, look for one with larger grains, or ask the staff for their thoughts.

You may not find a truly dust-free clumping litter, and the amount of dust created by different brands of clumping cat litter may vary significantly. However, in reality, if the dust is what bothers you, we think you should give other litter types a try.