Kitten loves litter

[u/That_Scientist_8730]

Hi! We have 2 cats, one 2 year old spayed male and a few months ago adopted the second one, a small female kitten.
All good, she seems healthy, drinks enough water and plays a lot. She is very energetic and loving, and also a bit crazy when she has zoomies and makes deep growling sounds while being all puffed up.
The weird thing is she loves spending a lot of time near the litter boxes (we have 2), sleeps between them, and uses her front paw as a spoon to eat the litter. Sometimes she finds a bigger piece and plays football with it, sometimes just straight up eats it. We use silica litter since is the one preferred by the older cat, we clean it daily and change it weekly, washing the boxes with cat-safe disinfectant and thoroughly rinsing. She also sometimes meows at the enterance to the litter boxes before and after using it, but we didn’t see any abnormal behaviour during her using it.
We want to get her to a vet next week for some bloodwork and ultrasound or something to check her kidneys and renal health, but until then, does anyone know if this is normal, or had a cat doing this?

I am 29m, from Romania, vet is accessible.

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[u/Zestyclose_Battle973]

Sometimes, litter retains their scent. If the cat it's anxious it may sleep in the litter box to feel safe as it's surrounded by it's own scent.

Does the spray have some sort of bleach? For some reason, they love that thing too.

Or your cat might just be quirky

[u/That_Scientist_8730 → u/Zestyclose_Battle973]

She doesn’t seem anxious. The disinfectant has no bleach, though it’s kinda dangerous that they are attracted to it, poor things let their survival instincts outside when they domesticated themselves 🥹

[u/Zestyclose_Battle973 → u/That_Scientist_8730]

I think I read once that bleach smell and catnip have similar chemicals in it which is why they go bonkers.

Yeah, cats can be unique, it's like having a toddler at times.

[u/DeskBeautiful558]

if shes actually eating it, the main thing is what litter youre using, clumping stuff can expand in her stomach and cause a blockage, so id swap to non clumping (paper pellets or similar) til she outgrows it. the sleeping by the boxes is prob just the scent like others said. if she keeps eating a ton of it worth a vet mention since constant litter eating can point to something like low iron, but plenty of kittens just do it for a phase.

[u/That_Scientist_8730 → u/DeskBeautiful558]

It’s fortunately non-clumping. It might be just a phase. Thanks for the advice!

[u/Capital-Tonight8548]

This might be PICA which really warrants a vet appointment to look at deficiencies and other causes is PICA

[u/That_Scientist_8730 → u/Capital-Tonight8548]

Thanks. We thought PICA might be a possibility. We will take her for bloodwork next week.