Hello Sheri and Nancy! Bokashi does work with pet poo. Heck, EM will devour just about anything. There are so many ways to go about doing it from bokashi soup (immersion) to bokashi
lasagna (layering in soil) that I think the trick is learning how to do it and simply adapting it to a system that works best for you. I've come to think of bokashi as a supplement to biodigestion, composting and vermiculture. Bokashi can jump-start degradation that will speed up the next step. It significantly holds down odor in any system.
I have a friend who degrades cat and dog poo via composting/biodigesting before feeding it to worms. If you want to read a funny and thoroughly scientific cat poop vermicomposting study, check out
http://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/young-naturalist-awards/winning-essays2/2005-winning-essays/got-cats-get-worms. It was done by Eric, a 17-year-old who won an American Museum of Natural History Young Naturalist Awards for his
project. Skip the metrics if you want and check out how he got worms to clean litter boxes
. Kind of labor-intensive for people, but charming! He found that the worms reduced the coliform count drastically. No mention of toxo since his cats were all tested and found to be pathogen-free from the get-go.
Speaking of taxo, the CDC estimates that in the United States 22.5% of the population 12 years and older has been infected with Toxoplasma (it is also acquired by eating undercooked, contaminated meat), though adults with a healthy immune system who become infected often do not have symptoms. The key to controlling toxo is keeping it away from water sources where it thrives. Don't flush or biodigest cat waste or bury it in run-off areas. You can destroy toxo it you compost cat waste at high temperatures and cure it sufficiently to produce finished compost.
Bentonite clay cat litter as an excellent soil additive is a new one on me! I'll have to read up on Coleman's thoughts. From what I've gathered, clay litter is strip mined, which is not an environmentally cool process. And clay doesn't compost.
Pee is almost always a plus for composting, however, which is why animal bedding works well with manure. A great, cheap litter is small animal bedding (pine pellets) available at
feed supply stores. Takes a bit more finesse to clean the litter box. But cats seem to like it and the pine cuts odors. Of
course, you might have the world's most persnickety cat!
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