Spanish Shipwreck Reveals Evidence of Earliest Known Pet Cats to Arrive in US
8 comments
·May 7, 2025TMEHpodcast
I’m surprised there would be any skeletal remains at all after 400+ years. The article is light on science but the original paper mentions Isotopic analysis which is very interesting.
pandemic_region
I love cats but I cannot deal with the inevitable cleanup of the litter box.
drooby
I've spent a lot of money trying to solve this problem.. including buying the $700 litter robot, etc.. (that thing is not worth it at all btw)
The best litter box is the Tidy Cats Breeze (if your cat accepts it)
Bad smells (usually) (mostly) come from urine mixing with feces.. this litter box separates urine from feces, and the pellets and pads are engineered to control odors. Plus, the pellets are easier to cleanup than other boxes..
If you use that litter box, and feed your cat foods that it digests well - which in general usually means feeding your cat healthy food.. then cleanup is going to be very easy and painless.
the_third_wave
Move to a farm and get some outside cats, they shit in the woods but come home overnight. If they don't they get eaten by foxes etc. so they better. We never had a litter box until the cat turned 15 and started to become less willing to go out in the snow.
Ok, moving to a farm just to get some outside cats might be slightly overdoing it but there's loads more reasons why you want to live on a farm, preferably somewhere out in the woods so you might as well enjoy the cats which come with the territory.
"Additionally, they’ve discovered the remains of several critters, including cockroaches, rats and at least two domestic cats."
The idea that we've recovered identifiable cockroaches that have been submerged for almost 500 years breaks a few ideas I had about reality.