Its use for housecats was... but note the line from the article (remember this was the mid-1940s):
As Lowe tells it in his autobiography, The Man Who Discovered the Golden Cat, his family's business sold sand, sawdust and granulated clay, which were used to absorb oil and grease in factories and machine shops.
So it was in use as an oil-absorber in industry well before the first cat officially "used" it (knowing garages, they had "shop cats", and I'm sure the cats "took their ease" in the piles of clay that had not yet been moved from the floor to the rubbish bin).
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