The granular ice-melt products that have Calcium Chloride in them are just a cheap way to lower the effective temperature of the product without stepping up to the best stuff: straight CaCl2. Years ago I learned a trick from MoDOT. They were putting one bag of calcium chloride into each loader bucket of salt. When the calcium chloride hits the pavement at 10°, it still melts the ice and makes a tiny puddle of water. At that point, the salt gets into the mix and starts working too.
The modern systems just dissolve the calcium chloride into a water solution, then spray it onto the conveyor before it hits the street. It works much better, because each little pellet of salt is making it to the ground with a built-in water droplet to interface with the ice.
Kitty litter is made of clay, corn cobs, stuff like that. It is great for pedestrian traffic; because it isn't such a mess as sand when it get tracked in. Unfortunately, when it is wet enough, it just crumbles up and becomes useless for traction, particularly when car tires are grinding it up. Kitty litter is generally the same stuff as oil dry, which works about the same but costs 1/2 as much.
Smart cat owners buy oil dry: it has far less dust in it than kitty litter, and absorbs just as much moisture.
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