Easiest litter to clean up so far: pine pellets.
 
They smell great, the ferrets adjusted to them right away, and the cats
prefer them to their own clay litter.  But I did not like scooping out so
many unused pellets to get all the sawdust out (the pellets dissolve to
sawdust when wet) and I was afraid that sawdust left in the box would begin
to smell.  Visualize a lightbulb over my head.  I now keep the collander I
never used for cooking (it fits inside a large pot and has no legs) with my
scoop.  First I scoop out the poop.  Then I dump the entire box of litter
into the collander which I am holding inside a plastic wastebasket bag.  I
shake the litter around in the collander, and all the sawdust goes into the
bag.  Then I dump all the nice, clean, unused pellets back into the litter
box.  Quick, easy, frugal.
 
Do ferrets pant?
 
Yes, they do.  I saw Eloise panting when my know-it-all husband left her in
the cage in the car for 15 minutes the first month we had her.  The day was
not all that hot, but the car was too hot for the girls, and Eloise was
standing there panting and looking for help (and water).
[Posted in FML issue 1739]