Shaving gel verdict and "greening up" my cat!

Firstly, yesterday morning was the big shaving gel test for DH - he pronounced it "quite good" even though it didn't lather. He certainly didn't cut himself, and I suppose that is the biggest consideration, LOL. I didn't get any complaints this morning either. Success :-)

Secondly, I have been going through as many "green living" tips as I kind find in an attempt to do a mini-audit on our progress so far, and to find areas that we can work on, now that we have addressed quite a number of areas in our home and life. One of the areas that I haven't looked at so far is our cat. He is an "inside" cat as I don't like the fact that cats are so destructive to our native wildlife, and we specifically bought a breed that is fairly people-oriented (as far as cats go, LOL) for that reason (he's a Birman). He does however, have a pretty sensitive tummy, which limits what we can feed him - over the years we've found there is really only one brand of food he will eat without making him ill, and only four flavours out of that brand that he will eat! Two of which are tuna and salmon, and I'm not keen on supporting non-sustainable fishing practices. So I am going to be researching some alternative food sources for him in the next few days, including looking at making our own. I currently make our own dog food, using pet-quality kangaroo mince (I will post the recipe another day), but I am little paranoid about making our own cat food, only because I know cats in general require certain amino acids, and in particular, our cat is pretty fussy. Anyway, I'll see what I can come up with.

Another area I want to look at is cat litter. We've tried many different types of cat litter over the years but he refuses to use anything that is pelleted - which rules out the large majority to litters made from environmentally-friendly products such as lucerne or recycled paper. I have health and environmental concerns about some of the clumping types litters, and they are currently going into our bin (and then landfill), whereas I would prefer something that can be composted (after the solids have been removed) or is at least biodegradeable. Anyway, I'll report back with my verdict after I've done some more research and trialled a few new things :-)