[SustainableTompkins] cat litter and toxoplasmosis

[Kristie Snyder]

Fellow cat owners (there are a lot of us, eh?):
I might be wrong about this, but I believe you can have your cat(s) tested 
to see if they are carriers of toxoplasmosis, possibly alleviating or 
confirming that particular concern about your kitty compost. I never worried 
too much about toxo. except during my pregnancy, when my husband dutifully 
handled scooping/cleaning/kitty-compost-handling chores.
To give slightly more detail, our current (outside of city) system is: we 
use pine pellet litter, we scoop poops daily and bury in designated hole 
(i.e. "kitty latrine") far from house/garden/well/etc. We empty the rest 
into a cat-litter-designated compost pile weekly, adding enough green 
materials to help it break down, and using the resulting compost in 
non-edible areas (which is somewhat challenging, as we're endeavoring to 
turn our entire two acres into more-or-less edible areas!).
In the city the compost system was the same, but we flushed the poops.
I tend not to be overly worried about pathogens, etc, and I might consider 
using the cat compost in an orchard area or something like that, but I still 
haven't brought myself to using it in the actual veggie garden.
On a related note, is someone out there actually using wood pellets (meant 
for burning) as cat litter? It sounds a lot more economical if it is 
basically the same stuff, which I am imagining it is, just compressed 
sawdust, right?
On another related, though probably wildly impractical note, I have heard 
(probably, tall) tales of cats trained to use the toilet!
-Kristie