Inventions for Pets

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, you're a pet person.
Uh huh. Many of our listeners are pet people. We

(00:21):
know because they set us pictures of their adorable animals.
So if you step into any pet store today, you're
kind of inundated with so many clever products to make
caring for your animals easier or to improve their well being.
But this is actually a pretty new industry. The idea
of a pet store didn't really exist until the late

(00:43):
nineteenth century, and that was when Victorian England started to
be more and more interested in keeping animals in the
home instead of as livestock were like an outdoor collection.
And then from there this idea of companionship pets as
sort of something to be acquired spread to the US
and the rest of the world. But even so, those

(01:05):
early shops were really about selling the pets themselves, with
a few care products like that you would need to
support that thing to live. So the idea of a
store filled to the brim with merchandise that's engineered expressly
for use with pets did not really happen until the
mid twentieth century, and perhaps the most well known story

(01:26):
of an invention intended to help pet lovers and make
their lives easier is kitty litter. This one has some
problems in modern thinking that we will talk about, but
kitty litter, it could be argued, was what kicked off
an entire new industry. So today we are going to
talk about the origin of cat litter, as well as

(01:47):
other products that many of us probably have in our
homes right now. And we're going to start by talking
about the man who is credited with the invention of
kitty litter, and that is Ed low So Henry Edward Lowe,
who who went by ED, was born on July tenth,
nineteen twenty in Saint Paul, Minnesota. When he was still young,

(02:07):
his family moved to Marcellus, Michigan. Ed was not a
good student. He'd had to repeat the fourth grade. He
later attributed this to not being interested in his coursework.
Ed's father was a serial entrepreneur. That's seer ial. In
case you think we're about to talk about breakfast food.

(02:27):
ED learned to value the idea of figuring out ways
to make money for yourself rather than working for someone else.
This was something that Ed embraced early on as a
way to have money for his own purchases, and so
he found all kinds of ways to generate an income,
including newspaper delivery, scrap, metal sales, and pest control. And

(02:48):
then as he got older, he worked in his father's businesses.
As a young man, Ed served in the Navy during
World War II, and when the war ended, he returned
to Michigan and started working at his father's company in
the town of Cassopolis. This was a business that sold
sawdust and wood shavings for a variety of industrial absorbency uses,

(03:09):
so things like absorbing oils, spills, and machine shops, et cetera.
There are multiple versions of the story of how he
invented kitty litter. According to the most common one, cold
January day in nineteen forty seven, twenty seven year old
Lowe was working at his father's shop and a woman

(03:29):
named Kay Draper came in. She had an indoor cat,
but according to this story, the sand filled litter box
she used for this cat had frozen. She hoped to
purchase some sawdust from low to use as a litter
box substrate. Okay, if you're like me, the frozen sand
story immediately brings up questions, But there may be an

(03:52):
answer if we look at the state of litter boxes
at the time. One a lot of people were not
yet keeping their cats indoors with the litter box, so
it was kind of a new thing. Using plain sand
and sawdust was pretty standard at this point for those
rare houses where people did keep their cats inside, So
none of those substrates were clumping. So a box that

(04:13):
used sand or sawdust could potentially retain liquid and freeze
if it were in a cold enough spot. It is
very possible if it were kept somewhere like a garage
or a utility room, that it could easily get cold
enough in Michigan in winter to freeze. In any case,
Lowe later claimed that he had a bolt of inspiration

(04:34):
in the face of Draper's dilemma. For a long time,
his father had offered bags of sawdust for soaking up
oil spills in places like mechanics garages, but the company
had just introduced another material that did the job better,
and that was granulated clay. This was clay that had
been dried in a kill to the point that it

(04:54):
would crumble, and with all the moisture removed from the
naturally porous clay, it became really absorbent. This was great
at handling oil, so Ed thought that it might also
work for k Draper's cat. She took a bag of
it and went home. Then, according to this version, a
week later, Draper was back asking for more of that clay.

(05:16):
She found that it worked way better than sand or
wood shavings, and she wanted to switch her cat over
to it completely, so Low sold her another bag, and
then he decided to try selling more bags to see
if other people liked it. He loaded up ten sacks
with the granulated clay labeled them. Sometimes this is written
as or described as him using like one of those

(05:40):
oil crayons that get used for marking things in shops
and labeling it as kitty litter. And then he tried
to get a local pet store to carry these bags,
and the store was not interested, so Low asked if
maybe they would be willing to give them away to
customers to try, and those ten customers were the start
of his new business. Uh I didn't find any claims

(06:01):
as to the number of how many of that ten
returned to the store asking more of the clay litter.
But according to a story that Low told many times,
enough of them wanted more that he figured out how
to launch a division of the family business around it.
Another story came up in a newspaper from nineteen fifty five.
That article, published in the Kalamazoo Gazette, was all about

(06:24):
how low had expanded his business beyond cat litter. But
that article also includes this excerpt, which makes it sound
like a lot less of a scrabbly spur of the
moment idea quote. Lowe's kitty catering all started because some
friend of his wife's asked him to crawl under the
front porch in the dead of winter and get sand

(06:44):
for her beloved cat's box. I got it, but I
did a lot of thinking afterward. I knew there must
be a better product than sand for that job. There was.
It was a clay once used to filter impurities out
of petroleum products. Low and his chief assistance, Tony Friesel
and Bob Bollett started bagging it by hand. We called

(07:06):
it kitty litter at the time. We had to almost
give it away. Now there is a big demand we
have about ten men strip mining the stuff for us
near Perry, Tennessee, and it's all packaged automatically. I'm not
sure if that's really supposed to be Paris, Tennessee, where
there is some mining in the area. But Perry is
what it says in the article. Yes. In a nineteen

(07:29):
eighty five version of the story that appeared in the
La Times, the details were once again a little different.
This one stated quote in nineteen forty seven, a neighbor
asked him for a cat box filler. She had been
piling ashes in her cat box and was tired of
a house full of sooty paw prints. She asked for sand.
He suggested the absorbent clay quote more to get rid

(07:52):
of her than anything else. So that sounds very different.
But from there his story was its more or less
the same as the one in which he said he
labeled the ten bags of clay himself and took them
to a pet store. Then one more story, which appeared
in the Washington Post in twenty fifteen. That version states, quote,

(08:13):
one day in nineteen forty seven, his father received a
sample shipment of a new clay product, but he was
already loyal to a different brand, He would have nothing
to do with this order of clay and left it
in their storage garage. It sat around until one of
Edlow's acquaintances, Kay Draper, asked him if he knew of
any good absorbents for pet waste. So, according to this version,

(08:36):
the problem was not a frozen box of sand or
ash footprints. It was silica dust because Draper's cat was
tracking the dust all around the house, and Lowe suggested
that she could use the fuller's earth that his dad
had not been interested in using. So, regardless of which
of these stories is accurate, and it's possible none of
them is actually how Low's invention happened, Kitty Litters start

(09:00):
did not last long. Ed started driving around with stock,
taking it to pet stores and attending cat shows as
an exhibitor, and then over the course of several years,
his business grew to the point where he actually needed
a warehouse in a distribution process as a wholesaler. He
acquired that warehouse from his father's company. In a nineteen

(09:21):
forty nine write up in the Delaware County Daily. There's
an interesting writeup that cites another man that we mentioned earlier,
Robert Follett, who I think was called Bob in the
article that Tracy mentioned just a moment ago, and this
article mentions him as being Lowe's partner. The men are
listed together in that nineteen forty nine write up as
originators of kitty litter. It's a bit unclear what happened

(09:45):
to that relationship, but the two gave a joint statement
to the paper at that time saying quote, all we
need is good business, science, write, promotion, and the cooperation
of a few million cats. The cats definitely seemed to cooperate.
Kitty litter was available in supermarkets by nineteen fifty four
by the time that nineteen fifty five article that we

(10:06):
cited earlier was written, so just a little more than
eight years after its invention, kitty litter sales were expected
to top one point five million dollars. Even so, it
was still a new enough product that ads continued to
explain what it was. One in nineteen fifty five stated quote,
kitty litter is a specially produced material which provides a

(10:29):
new and better solution to a problem confronted by owners
of cats. In short, it does away with the daily, unpleasant,
messy sandbox routine. Unlike sand, it dries and deodorizes, and
unlike sand, it is not harmful too or pets, and
it's inexpensive. Lo soon recognized that if people were willing

(10:50):
to spend money for kitty litter, they were probably willing
to spend money on other items for their cats. And
we'll talk about how he expanded his business based on
that idea after we pause for a sponsor break. In

(11:11):
the mid twentieth century, cats were not generally pampered in
the ways that are very commonplace today. Once cat later
caught on quote, we made a list of every conceivable
item a well groomed cat could use and rated them
as to importance. We keep our cats at the local
veterinarians and test each product on them first to determine acceptance.

(11:34):
Lowe also cited one particular cat as the true determiner
of whether a product moved forward from testing to production.
Though there was a group of cats cared for by
a veterinarian, there was also a cat at the low offices.
Those offices were run out of a home that had
been converted to business use, and that cat, a red

(11:55):
Point Siamese named Impi, got to test and approve a
lot of the innovations that are probably in your home
if you have a cat. Mp tried out cat toys, catnips,
scratching posts and cardboard scratch pads, and other potential products.
By the mid nineteen fifties, thanks to IMPI's hard work
as a tester, Low had introduced his own dry shampoo

(12:17):
for cats, flea powder disposal trays, and something called a
kitty castle, which was not a multi tiered cat condo
like the name seems like it might be. It was
a small, cozy, decorated box for a cat to curl
up in. All of this was apparently in line with
Low's own adoration of cats. A reporter in nineteen fifty

(12:38):
five claimed to have been riding in a car with
Low when a stray cat wandered in front of the vehicle,
and said that quote Low came to a quick halt,
hopped out, and escorted the feline across the road. By
nineteen eighty five, sales of kitty litter and cat accessories
through Low's company hit one hundred million dollars. At that time,
his Low's branded kitting litter had twelve point six percent

(13:02):
of the market share. Tidycat had surged passed it to
twenty two point five percent, but that still put ed
Low on top. Because he also invented Tidycat, it was
launched as a supermarket brand, while he kept Kitty Litter
as a brand for specialty pet stores. But he was
also willing to spend money on research and promotion. He

(13:23):
started spending a reported four million dollars each year in
research and development alone. That budget was used to both
develop new products and refine the cat litters that the
company already sold from the time competitors entered the market
with their own versions of kitty Litter, Ed worked diligently
to make sure his outperformed any others. This included building

(13:47):
a research facility that employed a full team to test
litter for oder management, absorbency, and weight. He also built
a cattery with a full time population of one hundred
and twenty cats to use all of the products while
they were monitored and cared for by a team of
veterinarians and behavioral researchers. In that La Times article we

(14:08):
cited already, Ed stated that all of his expenditures and
the expansion of his product line were parts of a
long term business plan with massive goal stating quote Low's
will not be sold. Low's will go on forever. Low's
will become a billion dollar company. We know that we
can't become a billion dollar company as a cat box filler. Surprisingly,

(14:32):
five years later, he sold the company. On September thirteenth,
nineteen ninety, the New York Times ran a brief statement
about the company changing hands, which read quote Edward Lowe Industries,
the maker of kitty litter catbox Filler, agreed to sell
its marketing and manufacturing operations to an investment group. Terms
of the sale were not disclosed. The buyer is a

(14:54):
group led by the Good Capital Company of New York
and night Spreads Incorporated of Chicago. Philip L. Smith, the
former chairman and chief executive at Pillsbury and General Foods,
will become chairman of the new company, which will be
known as the Golden Cat Corporation. Edward Lowe, who invented
kitty Litter in the nineteen forties, said he would retire

(15:15):
from day to day operations, but retain an equity interest
and be a director of Golden Cat. Later on, it
was revealed that Lowe had sold the company for two
hundred million dollars plus stock in the new company. It
was eventually acquired by Ralston Purina before being purchased again
by Nesley. Preceding the nineteen ninety sale of the company.

(15:38):
It seems as though Edlow's personal life got a little
bit complicated. The year before his interview in which he
said he would never sell the company, he and his
children had a massive falling out. He had four kids,
and all of them plus three of their spouses, had
been working for the company for some time, and in
the early nineteen eighties they started to claim that his

(16:00):
behavior had become erratic. Low grew up poor, and once
he was successful, he beat up for lost time by
spending his money as he wished, sometimes on relatively impractical
things like at one point he bought an entire town.
But his kids claimed that he had become more than
just impulsive, and they attributed the behavior to alcohol misuse.

(16:22):
Low in response denied those accusations and accused his kids
of trying to steal the company from him, and he
fired them all. So this whole family was estrange for years,
but they did eventually make up. After he sold the company,
ed started the Edward Low Foundation in Big Rock Valley, Michigan.
This is an organization that offers education and seminars for

(16:45):
entrepreneurs that are past the startup phase and need to
build their existing business. Ed died in nineteen ninety five,
but the foundation continues. In addition to its original mission,
the Foundation now also leads programs to research the best
ways to manage land stewardship. In the last several decades,
there has been increasing concern about the long term viability

(17:09):
of clay based cat litter. According to the American Veterinary
Medical Association, as of twenty twenty four, there were seventy
three point eight million cats kept as pets in the US,
and while not all of them are indoor only cats
with litter boxes, a lot of them are. And that
has made cat litter a multi billion dollar market. But

(17:30):
where is all that clay coming from and what happens
to it after it's used. Well, there are eleven states
that have open pit mines that extract clay for cat litter,
and that clay is a finite resource. And there's an
additional issue. Seventy five million tons of Fuller's earth, which
is the clay used for cat litter and other absorbent

(17:53):
applications was mined in twenty twenty four. According to the
US Geological Survey, that clay gets us once and then
thrown away, which would theoretically mean that it was returning
to the earth. But usually these clays have been treated
with chemicals to help them clump and resist odor, and
things like fragrance have also been added, so all of

(18:15):
that is just going into the nation's garbage jumps. Per
a twenty fifteen Washington Post article about it quote, the
rise of commercial cat litters may even explain why indoor
cat populations grew so quickly, to the point that felines
have overtaken canines is America's most popular pet. At the
same time, cat litters made consumers dependent on a supply

(18:37):
chain that converts a natural resource to waste. Aside from
environmental concerns, one of the lasting legacies of the invention
of cat litter is that it helped expand the number
of households that were willing to keep cats as pets,
and that opened the door to other inventions. The next
one is brief because there's not a whole lot of

(18:58):
information about the enter readily available. But on January eleventh,
nineteen sixty eight, a man named Frank L. Crow filed
a patent for the first cat tree. His patent, which
was granted on November twenty fifth, nineteen sixty nine, starts
with the following quote disclosed herein is a cat tree
embodying a plurality of cat landing stations or platforms carried

(19:23):
by a sectional pole adapted to be mounted in a
vertical position in a selected room of a dwelling, with
a base engaged against the floor to hold the tree
against rotation, with a spring loaded plunger engaged against the ceiling,
and with the platforms covered with a rough textile material
which provides a scratching claw sharpening surface. Crow's patent notes

(19:46):
that his invention is designed to solve two primary problems,
cats ruining furniture by clawing it and cats climbing the curtains.
He notes that his cat tree is a decorative accessory
as well as a function, and that it can be
matched with any decor. I have thoughts on this that
any cat person that owns a cat tree might be

(20:07):
having as well. We'll talk about it on Friday. The
application that crofiled touted the ease of assembly and how
much this tree could be customized to fit the space
and needs of a cat, including the addition of dangling
toys to the platforms. The platforms, per Crow's design, were
intended to be replaceable, so you could update worn out

(20:28):
pieces without having to buy a whole new cat tree
each time it showed wear and tear. Crow also wanted
the placement of the platforms to be thoughtful to enable
rapid movement by a house cat from one to the other. Quote.
The invention is characterized in that the cat landing stations
or platforms are of crescent shape or equivalent non circular configuration,

(20:51):
and are arranged and angularly displaced steps succession, such as
to facilitate ascent and descent from one platform to a
six platform. A preferred shape being a crescent shape developed
by a scalloped cutaway of one side of a circular
platform so as to attain a maximum aesthetic effect in

(21:11):
the assembly and cass rejoiced. Coming up, we're going to
talk about another invention that became hugely popular very quickly,
in helping people deal with pet messes. Dog people were
coming for you. But first we're going to hear from
the sponsors that keep the show going so the last

(21:38):
inventor we'll talk about today was like the first, we
talked about, a man of many inventions who did very
well for himself in the pet products industry. In nineteen sixty,
Alan Simon opened a chain of stores in Brooklyn called
Puppy City, and like most modern pet stores, these sold
food and pet accessories and also offered grooming services. But

(22:00):
then in nineteen seventy, Simon decided he didn't just want
to sell pet products. He wanted to invent them, and
he invented a lot of them. But one of his
original set of inventions became hugely popular and really served
as the corner stone for a new business, and that
was the Wei Wi pad, similar to the way sand
was supplanted by kitty litter. Alan Simon had noticed that

(22:23):
while working in the pet retail business that the newspaper
that people often used to keep accidents off the floor
while house training a puppy was not all that effective.
In an interview he gave in twenty nineteen, he said
the dogs would urinate on the newspaper. So one day
I got the idea of using a hospital pad, and

(22:44):
we chemically treated a hospital pad, and I came up
with a seven pack and we had a TV ad
for ten seconds. It was free house breaking Wi pads
with every purchase. So it went from a seven pack
to a fourteen, to a twenty five, to a fifty,
to one hundred, and then it went to like twenty
five million dollars in we Wei pads. Simon's invention did

(23:07):
make cleanup from housebreaking puppies a whole lot easier, and
soon it was used for a lot of other things too.
People use these absorbent pads under litter boxes, under food
and water dishes, in carriers, and the list goes on.
Their utility in so many uses helped boost their steady
adoption among people with pets. Simon often gave interviews to

(23:30):
the press in which he summed up his impressive business
history succinctly, but also making it clear that he had
achieved a lot. And a quote he gave to DuJour
magazine while talking about the launch of the newest business,
he said, simply quote, I manufactured and invented over two
hundred products, including the original and world renowned we Wei
pads and the Alan Pooper Scooper. Over the years, we

(23:54):
grew into one of the largest manufacturers in the pet industry.
To manufactur make sure we wee pads, Simon founded a
new company called four Pause, which also made the other
pet products that he invented. He held so many patents
for various items. One of the interesting things about a
lot of his patents is that they are completely void

(24:16):
of the florid language and over explained design and function
that we often see in patent application documents. Most of
them follow a very simple template style of writing, with
a very basic name for the invention, and then a
description and a claim that basically add up to just
look at the pictures. They didn't all go that way.
One particular invention was an improvement on an automatic pet

(24:39):
food dispenser, and it had a lot of supplementary writing
to explain it. It started out by explaining the pet
food dispensers that preceded it by noting quote. A typical
device of this type includes an elongated serving tray which
is adapted to rest on a flat surface, such as
the floor. A hollow storage container is secured to the

(24:59):
tray at once end of the tray and is raised
above the bottom wall of the tray. An opening is
provided in the bottom wall of the storage container to
permit a dry or liquid pet food placed inside the
container to drop down into the serving tray by force
of gravity. As the pet consumes the food from the tray,
it is replaced by fresh food from the storage container.

(25:23):
But to Simon, the problem here was that you couldn't
take the apparatus apart, and as his patent application goes
on to explain, loading it was a messy process. His
dispenser could be taken apart, and it had a screw
top lid for filling the food reservoir. These kinds of
auto feeders are still common today. I have one. In

(25:44):
nineteen ninety three, he received a patent for a new
type of cat litter scoop. This is simply called scoop
for cat litter, and the claim section simply reads the
ornamental design for a scoop for cat litter as shown
and described. So this is more like what I was
talking about. How there of them tend to be like?
None of that's none of that's spending time writing a
long descriptions. This cat scoop is unique because it has

(26:07):
prongs on its underside, so the part that would touch
the litter boxes, you're scooping, presumably to help dislodge any
clumped material that might stick there. One from two thousand
and eight is simply called dog toy, and the claim
and description are almost comedically brief. They read quote the
ornamental design for a dog toy as shown and described.
Figure one is a front view of the dog toy

(26:29):
in accordance with the invention, the rear view being identical
there too, and figure two is a top plan view
of a dog toy according to the invention, the bottom
plan view being identical there too. The toy that's not
really being described here is a ball. It's common enough
to find in a pet store today. It looks like
a round knot of multiple strands of some kind of material,

(26:51):
presumably plastic. I had to say presumably, because that's not
outlined in the patent doesn't really say. Another that he
applied for in twenty ten, but which wasn't issued until
twenty fourteen for some reason, was a bristled grooming glove.
As the name implies, it is a glove with spines
on it to groom and animal using a pet motion,

(27:14):
so sort of a glove and a brush had a baby.
Simon's version because others had invented similar things, but his
had a closure band around the risk to keep it
securely on the groomer's hand. This and the others that
we mentioned are just a handful of the hundreds of
designs and inventions that he came up with and manufactured.

(27:34):
From the start of Four Paws, Simon was able to
grow the company to a business that made thirty million
dollars in revenue each year. It also acquired other companies
that made pet products, including Cosmic Pet and Mustang Pet Products. Then,
in nineteen ninety seven, he sold Four Paws to Central
Garden and Pet for fifty five million dollars. In twenty fourteen,

(27:57):
Alan Simon launched a new venture, Pet Products dot Com.
This was an online aggregator that connected small local businesses
like his first pet store, to customers online. The company
also has directories so people could find veterinarians in their area.
One of the reasons the company cited for its business
approach is that while large online retailers had driven a

(28:20):
demand for consumer convenience, when it comes to pets, people
still need a local resource they can turn to for
care and community, and there was a recognition that some
of those small local businesses were going to struggle if
there was not a way for them to simultaneously have
online sales offerings. Watching interviews with Alan Simon and they're

(28:41):
a number you can find online. He was very obviously
a straightforward New Yorker. Uh. He has exactly what you
think of in your head when you think what does
a guy from New York sound like. He reportedly was
very generous. He gave both to charity and just to
individuals who needed a hand. He is also quoted as saying,
with determination and hard work, anyone, even a kid from

(29:03):
Brooklyn like me with a learning disability, can be successful
and make their dreams come true. Alan died on January sixth,
twenty twenty two. It kind of seemed like he worked
right up to the end. And that is our discussion
of pet products today. I have listener mail, sort of.

(29:23):
I tried to read this listener mail and I cried
too many times. So you're going to get an abbreviated,
abridged description of a listener mail from our listener erin
and I just wanted to acknowledge Aaron, your email is beautiful.
I am sorry for your loss. That's literally all I
can say, because I keep falling apart. So just know
that I have read your letter and it touched me deeply.

(29:46):
Then Aaron says, thank you so much for all you
do to entertain and educate. You keep me company on
my runs and my way to work. It makes me
miss my history classes at college. When I dreamed of
being a teacher, life had other plans. As a pet, Ta,
I give you Sailor, my dad's dog, but he loves
me best. He's a nine year old Standard Schnauzer that
loves to play catch, can jump straight up and down,

(30:08):
and is just a good boy. Thanks. This dog so cute. Listen,
Schnauzers can be so much because they are very high energy,
and I think Sailor is the same. But they also
are some of the sweetest, silliest dogs with just the
most beautiful little faces. So thank you, thank you, thank you, Aaron.

(30:29):
I'm sorry I could not read your email too much
for my little heart, but I really appreciate you sending it.
If anybody else wants to send an email and make
me cry, it isn't that hard, but I beg you
be gentle. You can do that at History podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show
on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your

(30:51):
favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of ihe art Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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