If cats are angels created by God for humans, then cat litter is probably the most miraculous invention since Pangu opened the world and human evolution.
01 The origin of cat litter
Cats now live under the same roof as humans, but before the 20th century, humans and cats were only in a "nodding relationship" and were not led into the house.
One of the biggest reasons is that cats have the most indescribable EMMs in the world... Excrement, I believe that all shovel officers must have a deep understanding. Cats are pure carnivores, and their ancestors lived in the deserts of Africa, which were extremely dry, which made it necessary for them to lock water in their bodies as much as possible.
As a result, they excrete high concentrations of urine, while feline feces are fermented, incompletely digested high-protein products that taste very overwhelming and unpleasant. But cats love cleanliness and are very "knowledgeable about etiquette", they will choose a hidden place to "go to the toilet" and bury their excrement in sand. But although cats are good cats that love cleanliness, the sand is very unclean, which makes it impossible for humans to turn cats into pets on a large scale.
It wasn't until 1947 that cat litter was born, and the human-cat cohabitation plan took a turn for the better. It was one day in January 1947, and it was freezing so cold that the road surface was completely frozen. Ms. Kay Dressa mourns at home, there is no sand digging outside, and the family cat has become a problem to go to the toilet. Finally, she knocked on the door of her neighbor's house Ed Roy for help.
Ed Roy runs a factory that produces sand and wood chips, and Kay wants him to order sand to toilet the cat. Ed generously gave her a natural clay with very good adsorption. Kai gladly accepted, the effect was surprisingly good, this clay has a certain water absorption, can absorb cat's urine. What's more surprising is that it can cover up the smell of cat poop to a certain extent. Since then, cat litter has been born and quickly swept the world.
02 The birth of bentonite cat litter
Although the original clay cat litter absorbs water, it is quite sticky and has to be thrown out of the whole pot when changing the sand.
It wasn't until the early 1980s that biologist Thomas Aelson discovered a new type of clay, bentonite, which was better at absorbing water and agglomerate, allowing people to simply shovel the clumps out each time they cleaned up.
Since then, humans have been happily running wild on the road to inventing new cat litter. For example, although bentonite cat litter is convenient, people quickly questioned it on the grounds that it is dusty and destroys the environmental hygiene of the home. Subsequently, humans created a series of new cat litters: such as tofu cat litter, crystal cat litter, pine cat litter, corn cat litter, wheat cat litter, etc.
In fact, bentonite cat litter of all cat litter, foot feel is closest to the original natural, cats with bentonite cat litter, just like returning to nature. Therefore, they are completely unresistant to bentonite cat litter. But until now, many shovel officials for bentonite cat litter label is "dusty", in fact, with the continuous development and progress of cat litter production technology, some high-end bentonite cat litter has been able to reduce the dust rate to a very low level, almost dust-free.
03 Classification of bentonite cat litter
Bentonite is divided into calcium-based bentonite and sodium-based bentonite. However, the hardness, adsorption and wrapping of calcium-based bentonite are far worse than that of sodium-based bentonite, and most of the raw materials of high-end bentonite cat litter on the market are sodium-based bentonite. 04The domestic bentonite cat litter market is caught in a price war.
On the one hand, the domestic market is dominated by bentonite sand, tofu litter consumption is growing faster and faster, and other market patterns supplemented, cat litter price war has seriously hurt the entire industry. Taking bentonite sand as an example, there are dozens of bentonite cat litter enterprises in Ningcheng County, Inner Mongolia, plus Chaoyang, Jinzhou, Hebei in Liaoning, large and small manufacturers close to dozens and close to hundreds, the price has dropped from 3000 yuan to 1500 yuan a ton, and the production enterprises have almost no profit. Although the tofu sand factory has not been specifically investigated, the price has dropped from 9,500 yuan per ton to about 5,000 yuan, which is close to the current situation of bentonite cat litter. This year, due to the epidemic, the market of foundry soil manufacturers and pelletizing soil manufacturers has shrunk, and some of these factories will switch to cat litter, and the trend of oversupply in the market has increased. On the other hand, from the perspective of the international market, the price war in China's domestic market has been transmitted to the international market, and the price of the international market has shown a straight downward trend.
Post time: Dec-20-2022