My family doesn't have a cat. The last time I had one was in 2002. So it has been 19 years since I bought cat litter. That changed a couple of weeks ago and I now firmly believe everyone should have a bag of cat litter.

For the record, we did not get a cat. I would love to get one but my son is allergic and my wife says "no" regardless of family health history.

My need for cat litter arose after I spilled gas from a gas can that didn't quite have the cap tightened all the way. Not the kind of thing you want lingering in the garage, neither the liquid nor the smell. So ran to get cat litter to soak it up.

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Not knowing what would work best I got clumping litter. I don't know if non-clumping would have worked better or faster, but I swept up clumps of gasoline and the smell went away after running a fan for a few hours.

This is the first gas spill I have ever had in my garage in almost 14 years so that isn't the big reason I think everyone should have cat litter. The big reason came this past Friday when we got around ten inches of snow.

I have a 4-wheel drive pickup truck with decent tread on the tires so it was pretty easy to get around in the snow. On Saturday morning, when people tried to go about their weekends, they got stuck. I was going to help my neighbor's son get his car unstuck with my truck and tow rope, but there was no good place to attach the rope. I thought of the cat litter I had from the previous weekend and ran back to the house to get it. Worked like a charm to get the spinning wheel to gain some traction and get him out.

Saturday night I came home with my son from a birthday party he had attended and found a young woman stuck at the end of my block in a little car. I didn't have the cat litter in my truck. Again, I had to run back to the house to get it. I used the last little bit I had under her spinning wheel. A passerby also stopped and after I put the litter down, together we pushed the car away from the low spot of the intersection and she was able to get going again.

With my cat litter all expended in the span of two weeks, I picked up a 20-pound bag of the non-clumping stuff yesterday, along with a bucket to keep half of it in while it rides in my car's trunk for the winter in case I need it, and the other half will ride in another bucket in my truck in case someone else needs it.

Results-Townsquare Media Sioux Falls Most Read South Dakota Stories of 2021

The end of the year is the natural time to take a look back at what has happened over the last 12 months.

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