This is what I came to recommend. Spruce pellets are cheap and locally sourced, and they disintegrate to sawdust when wet. (They’re compacted sawdust to begin with, so that makes sense.) You get a litter box with a tray full of holes over a bin, then when you school the poop, you just jostle it around a bit extra to encourage any lingering sawdust to fall through the holes.

We use puppy pads underneath to catch the sawdust, so the clean up takes no time. We empty and refill it every week or so, with 2 small cats.

Not all cats are happy to switch, apparently, but we didn’t run into that. Our cats were rescues, and they only use wood pellets at the SPCA to reduce costs and because it’s healthier for cats (they breathe in less dust).

Some wood pellets are treated with chemicals of some kind to affect how they burn, so we get ours from a horse supply shop since they only get animal-safe pellets.