11 Best Cat Litters, From Gel Crystals to Wood Fiber

Litter can be made of a few different kinds of materials, sometimes with added scents or baking soda. It will likely take some trial and error to find the right litter for you and your cat. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, when you’re analyzing different types of cat litter, you should identify which factors you consider most important (though your cat may be the decision-maker in the end).

✔️ Material: Most litters are made of inexpensive bentonite clay. When urine hits it, it clumps up to make scooping easier. However, there are several alternatives, including gel crystals, as well as wood, wheat, tofu, corn and paper, that are milled, sawed, ground or cut into fine granules or chunky particles. Litters without clay or silica dust are viewed as more natural alternatives and may come with advantages like being flushable, generating less dust for allergy-prone cats and being less sticky, which means less litter tracked around the house. Litters come in various scents and grain sizes, and most cats seem to prefer a texture close to soil.

✔️ Odor control: Some litters include baking soda or activated charcoal, which can help keep urine and fecal odors at bay. However, these odor-masking ingredients can be a turnoff to your cat, so it may take a bit of trial and error to find the odor control that works for both you and your kitty.

✔️ Clumping ability: Clumping litter tends to help minimize messes and make it easier for you to scoop for easy cleanup. Non-clumping litter is usually cheaper, but it’s difficult to scoop urine or fecal matter without changing the whole pan.

✔️ Dust level: This isn’t just important for keeping your floors and furniture clean; it’s also important for helping to prevent you and your cat from sneezing. But some people are much more sensitive to dust than others. In our list of picks, we have noted litter that, in our testing, produced less dust.

✔️ Tracking: The goal here is for your cat’s litter to stay in the box and not get tracked around the house. Clay litters tend to track more than some other materials, such as paper or wood, and small particles of clay from sand-like litter tend to track more than large pieces of clay litter. A mat outside the litter box (such as this cat litter mat from Amazon) also helps remove particles from kitty’s paws.