AKICOLJ: cat fountains

[muuranker]

I don't know what has happened over the last couple of weeks, but our cats are now insisting that they drink out of the tap in the kitchen. Which is sort of OK, but the kitchen surfaces are supposed to be Verboten. They have not been interested in water in bowls. And someone stole the bowl I put outside so they could have rainwater (not that it

Comments

[inamac]

Avoid the Hagen Catit water fountain - the one with three very pretty blue domes, over one of which the water cascades. Our cats loved it, but it takes up lots of space, it's mains-powered and the protective case over the very thin cable may not survive a determined cat, and it's hell to keep clean.

The gravity ones, where you upend a water bottle into a moulded plastic bowl are very good - though prone to be tipped over by a large and enthusiastic cat who is not prepared to wait for a trickle but wants a gush.

I've always meant to find something simple and battery/solar powered - but it's just as easy turning the tap on for Zara when she hops up on the bathroom sink and asks. The problem is remembering to turn it off when she's finished.

[muuranker]

Thanks - the gravity ones I've seen seem to fill a bowl rather than provide a trickle / movement. I imagine I need something rather like the one our guinea-pig had?

[lil_shepherd]

Cats like water fountains but they are high maintenance. They need very regular cleaning, they have to be somewhere where you can run a cable and the cats won't be able to chew it, and the filters need changing on schedule. (I suspect it is different for different fountains - mine needed changing every ten days or so.) In areas with hard water you may need to either use very cheap bottled water or to use a Brita filter for filling as the usual limescale will clog things up.

I ran mine for about a year, then gave up on it. The cats didn't seem to mind...

[muuranker]

Chewing cables doesn't seem to be an issue for us (even Broggy, who will eat anything, hasn't gone for them).

If I can find one that works by gravity, that would be better, as we have very hard water here.

[curiouswombat]

We had one of the small decorative ones on our hearth especially for the cat. The original one was a present to me from my daughter when she was about 10 - and it took the cat abut 10 minutes to conclude that is was, actually, a gift to him. And to complain, loudly, if it was ever switched off.

When it died we had to go and get him a new one. Actually, as we have a flagged stone hearth, it looked a lot better than a cat specific one would!

[muuranker]

That sounds like a very good idea! Did it matter that it didn't have a filter (or did it?)

[curiouswombat]

I don't think it had a filter. To be honest, as his other preferred option was a stone bowl in the back yard full of all sorts of murk and dead leaves, I never worried about it too much. I used to top it up every two or three days, and switch it off and give the bowl a good wash about once a month.

The cat lived to 16 and died of heart failure, so the lack of a filter in his water supply certainly didn't seem to do him any harm... If you live in a hard water area you might want to put the water into a filter jug before filling the fountain with it so that it doesn't slowly clog up the pump.

[muuranker]

The filter is to protect the motor, not the cats - ours, like yours, are happier with scuzzy than with nice Corporation Pop (as we used to say in the UK - tap water). The problem is they live in a maisonette (flat/apartment with its own front door to the street) which means lots of steps they object to, and there has been no rain here (until this weekend) for long enough that they haven't been able to drink off the vegitation. We have communal gardens.

I have not found, online, an indoor fountain I'd want to buy, so have bought the cat one that muninnhuginn uses as an interim solution.

I am very happy with this solution, as it means when I go to crafty places from now on, I am going with a buying mission: I want to buy an indoor fountain, with a steady drip or free falling stream. I might spend a long time finding The One, or it might be at the next place I visit. It is so nice to have a definite lack in one's home.

[muninnhuginn]

After a month of using ours, I can safely state that they all three have come to like it; it's no more annoying noise-wise than the background noise of the pump in the fish tank and we don't have cable-chewers; but I still have two cats queueing in the bathroom for me switch on the magic drip.

We bought this one: Drinkwell Mini. My only concern is its capacity: with three cats using it, I don't think it'd go a whole weekend without requiring a top up. But, with two cats who specifically like drips, we went for the most running tap-like one.

And, yes, cleaning it just adds another pet maintenence task, along with litter trays, hen houses, fish tanks....