PRODUCT REVIEW: GLITTER CAT LITTER

I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked on all those gold hunting shows on TV, like “Ice Cold Gold,” “Bering Sea Gold,” “Gold Rush,” even non-gold, treasure hunting shows like “Prospectors” and “Gem Hunt.” If I didn’t have preternaturally pale skin that keeps me indoors or an aversion to getting dirty, I’d be out there with the rest of the hunters trying to strike it rich.

One of the benefits of writing a cat-blog is that I get notified of new cat-centric products before they hit the marketplace. It’s a lot of fun, but not very lucrative—that is, until now.

There’s a new cat litter about to hit store shelves and I could just KICK MYSELF for not coming up with the idea first. It’s the only litter I’ve EVER used that makes me look forward to scooping the litter pan every day-heck many TIMES a day!

It’s called Glitter®

Glitter is the brain child of Ima and Walter Jester, a cat-loving mom of 6 cats and her husband, who retired from a major corporation where he was Director of Development of brand of cat litter (I’m not allowed to say which one, other than it rhymes with Hidey Hat). Walter, happy to be away from the clumping game, planned on spending his “golden years” (pardon the pun) as a gold prospector in the famous Klondike region of Alaska, which is famous are for producing gold.

Shortly after the Jesters moved to Alaska, Ima suffered a near fatal wolverine attack (She tells me this never would have happened if she’d only had a lanyard for her eyeglasses! She then would have had her glasses and been able to distinguish the beast from her beloved cat, Orlando, but she'd left her glasses by a cup of tea on the kitchen table when she heard a ruckus outside.). Her buttocks and back legs were so badly injured it made it painful for her to squat down and scoop her cat’s 6 litter pans. The job fell into the capable hands of her husband, but after 36 years of testing, smelling and re-engineering cat litter he was loathe to touch the stuff ever again.

But the couple loved their cats and in that devotion was also the solution. Ima played a prank on Walter. She snatched a small gold nugget from her husband’s stash and dropped it into the cat litter bag and shook up the contents. The market value on it was almost $500.00 so she knew it was a big risk if it would be lost.

The following day, Walter refreshed the litter pans with new litter after he begrudgingly scooped each soiled pan. The cats immediately used the pans, as they so often do and of course big boy Orlando, as he so often does, dropped a big “Stink Bomb” into the pan Walter had just cleaned. Vexxed, Walter knelt down to scoop the pan again. As he lifted the feces, something caught his eye. Could it be? No. There was NO WAY it could be a gold nugget..in the dirty litter next to the feces? Walter jumped up to call his wife, breathless with excitement about his discovery.

Ima, who had been quietly observing pretended to be shocked. Her prank was a success, but how could she afford to keep the prank going?

Unable to keep a straight face, Ima finally admitted what she did. Walter was angry at first, but then she noticed a particular gleam in his eye—a twinkle of mischief laced with discovery. She asked him what was going on and he replied, “You know honey, that was the best prank ever, because now I think you’ve just figured out a way to make us millionaires!”

What Walter had realized in that moment was that everyone needed a reason to scoop the litter pan, so why not make it EXCITING? What if you knew that one day you’d scoop the pan and you’d actually find a treasure instead of a turd? Something priceless instead of piss? An idea was born.

Of course it would be easy to place a nugget or two into boxess of litter, BUT the costs would be outrageous. Being a prospector, Walter knew that to keep costs down he could add gold dust to the litter, which would not only make it tougher to rip open a box and steal directly, but it would also make it more FUN to get the gold out of the box. Being familiar with marketing also meant that Walter could create what are called “line extensions”…meaning more products that could be purchased in addition to the litter so the company would make even MORE PROFITS!

Walter contacted his old employer and asked for a meeting. Let’s just say it must have gone well because Glitter was born.

Here’s how Glitter™ works

Glitter is infused with minute particles of gold. Each box can contain between one (troy) ounce to only a trace of gold, depending on the box and your own luck, so there’s a bit of gambling involved in this purchase, too. The boxes are only sold at fine jewelers and are only in a 7 lb size so if you have a multiple cat household as I do, you'll have to get a lot of boxes. The cost, I hope you’re sitting down, is $174.99 a box, BUT you COULD make up to the market rate of gold, which last checked was $1285.00 per oz.

But how do you get the gold out of the litter?

If you watched any of those gold hunting TV shows then you know the answer-you have to get a Litter-Sluice™. Just like prospecting gold in Alaska, you have to run the litter through a sluice, which by definition is an artificial channel for conducting water, often fitted with a gate (sluice gate) at the upper end for regulating the flow. The water flows over the litter and the heavier particles settle into a mesh which is later panned to uncover any gold particles or nuggets.

What’s cool is that the litter doesn’t clump very well so it doesn’t choke up the sluice AND once it’s already wet with cat urine, it falls completely apart, so really you’re only washing wet litter and feces and hoping the gold dust separates out from the granules.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a Litter-Sluice™ due to low supply so I can only show what a gold mining sluice looks like. For my review that meant I had to pan each litter pan full of waste, which I have to say was a bit messier than I would have liked, especially if there was a lot of feces in the pan, but the excitement about finding gold kept me motivated.

Glitter has an earthy scent and is chunkier than the cats might like. Some of the cats wouldn’t use it, but it was so much fun to hunt for the gold, I didn’t care. I even ended up panning a few boxes that I didn’t let the cats use! I never thought I’d get gold fever from litter, but by God I did.

Glitter is truly amazing. I love to hunt for “color” in the pan each morning, though most of the time the only color I see is brown.

It makes scooping litter a financial risk, but it’s not without reward. Supposedly every 1 millionth box will have at least 1 or 2 pea-sized or bigger nuggets, along with the gold dust, so I have been investing in boxes of Glitter and have a nice stockpile going. I can’t pay my bills but the hope is that I will luck out and find gold in them thar boxes and be able to retire to the life of leisure I am so accustomed to.

Due to the cost of this litter I am unable to do a giveaway! Sorry! If you’d like to know more about where you can get Glitter™ and enjoy 24K fun scooping your litter pan or how you get a coupon to save $2.00 on a box of Glitter simply visit: www.areyoukiddingme_aprilfools.com