Opinion: Litter, water slaughter otters
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You may have missed it. I did. Times Sacramento Bureau reporter Nancy Vogel did not: a bill last year by Assemblyman Dave Jones is now law and requires containers of cat litter to include warning labels about the effect of the business end of a cat—no, the other business end—on sea otters. The Jones bill has become the subject of some discussion in Southern California among people who find both cats and otters cute enough to warrant special attention and are troubled to find that felines are killing otters without ever actually encountering them in person.
The February issue of the Angie’s List Los Angeles magazine included an article on training cats to go to the bathroom. Literally. See, you can train your cat to use the toilet instead of the litter box. No, really. There is some thought that the idea originated with jazz legend Charles Mingus. No, really. Reader mail appearing in the May issue criticizes the magazine for not giving enough information on this ‘very difficult process,’ and for an ‘obsession with toilets,’ but especially on the sea otter question. Which we’ll get to in a moment.
If you’re an environmentalist, do you applaud keeping all that cat litter and, well, the stuff in it, out of the landfills? Not if you know your otters and your Toxoplasma gondii.
As it turns out, T. gondii is a parasite carried in the stuff that comes out of the back end of cats, and is strongly resistant to the sewage treatment process. So it survives the trip to the ocean, where it becomes deadly to otters. Jones’ bill does not purport to regulate the personal habits of cats or their human companions, but instead requires the warnings in the apparent belief that people who love cats will love otters too.
The state Department of Fish and Game has reported in past years that otter deaths were caused by many parasites, including but not limited to T. gondii. One particularly bad die-off was attributed to bacteria that come from opossums, which don’t generally use indoor plumbing.
The Angie’s List magazine reports on Jones’ bill in the May issue. By the way, the problem would come not exclusively from the increasing population of cats who are toilet trained, but also from people who buy their cats flushable litter for their litter boxes. And then flush it.