80 pounds of kitty litter

That's what I bought yesterday ($9.99 CA per box of fresh4life). Two persons from the store carried the boxes out to my trunk (17.7 kg/40 lbs each) and I lugged them into the house and down to the basement today. In the last few weeks I have been de-clumping once or twice every day (in the next couple of weeks I expect to develop the hard-wired habit) and refreshing with new litter, sprinkling lots of baking soda on the litter, and spraying Febreze air freshener every time. (My former house mate, during the 2.7 years he lived here, declumped the litter about 6 times, and never once bought litter, the filthy, lazy basterd, even though his nasty cat used it several times a day. But then he never bought detergent or toilet paper either.)

I've spent more money on eradicating the odour (detergent, litters, baking soda, air spray) than I have on person food in the last month. Well, maybe I've spent the equivalent on booze...

Despite everything I've read and heard about cleaning out cat litter boxes on a regular basis (that is, do it every day!), and which I have never ever done, my neighbours have never had a problem with the smell invading their place until earlier this summer (http://diabetes-cats.blogspot.com/2009/08/benign-neglect.html). They renovated their kitchen about a year ago and probably sealed whatever open areas that were left in our common walls (mine were sealed in 2004 during my kitchen reno; I used to be able to see into their basement, and mice travelled around).

So after I changed out all the litter and corralled up the stray poops, I washed the basement floors with Borax and CLOSED A WINDOW. This seems to have helped somewhat, since I've had no calls about it.

But I'm afraid of answering the phone.

UPDATE: The No-Name store brand kitty litter, even the multiple-cat one, isn't worth the plastic jug it comes in. I got a few 7kg containers on sale at $3.99 a week or so ago (regularly $4.99). The fresh4life brand in the 17.7 kg box costs about 64 cents per kilogram. The No-Name also worked out to be about 64 cents per kg---on sale! And it has to be changed out more often.