Jonny Cat

The Friday Mansion section of the Wall Street Journal can be fun to look through. It is filled with color photos of impossibly priced houses for sale all over the country.  None of the homes featured are next door to us—on either side—or across the street. Not even behind us, or anywhere near us for that matter.

Take the house featured on the second page of Friday's section: $88 million, 11 acres, pool, poolhouse, available in Santa Barbara, California.

The headline for this offering, described over 6 columns with two color photos, is: The House That Kitty Litter Built. Holy shit. Edward Lowe made such a fortune inventing kitty litter that his heirs are looking to reap a $88 million price tag for his digs? Well, no.

Anyone who is a fan of obituaries knows that Edward Lowe is forever immortalized in a Robert McG. Thomas Jr, New York Times obit of October 6, 1995, titled Cat Owners' Best Friend. It is the sine qua non of  all obituaries. 

In 1947, Mr. Lowe, who was Navy veteran, accidently discovered what would turn out to be the basis for a best selling mixture of sawdust and kiln-dried granulated clay to pour into cat litter boxes and absorb he scent of their urine that Mr. Thomas describes in the obituary as, "one of the most noxious effluences of the animal kingdom."

Mr. Lowe went from selling so many sacks of his mixture that he was calling Kitty Litter—that he loaded into his 1943 Chevy coupe—to pet stores and cat shows that it would became a booming million dollar business.  Fast forward to 1990 when he sold his Kitty Litter operation to Ralston Purina for $200 million.

Mr. Lowe started in Michigan, and there is no mention of his ever having a home in California, although the obit tells us "he spent lavishly and had 22 homes, a 72' yacht, a stable of quarter horses, a private railroad and an entire Michigan town." Given that, who needs California?

The $88 million property is for sale from the estate of Betty and John Stephens, who was the founder of the company that launched Jonny Cat. The heiress daughter of the two, Joi, is listing the home.

We've never used Jonny Cat for our litter boxes. We use Fresh Step manufactured by Clorox. The obituary for Mr. Lowe makes no mention of patents, so it is more than likely that eventually several companies reverse engineered his mixture and eventually made fortunes distributing and selling the product. Jonny Cat is made by Oil-Dri Corporation. Ralston Purina makes Tidy Cats, using the formula purchased from Edward Lowe in 1990.

There is no mention that John, Betty or their daughter Joi ever had any cats.

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