Question for Cat People

[Belinda Barfield]

With Matt's post about his new family member I was surprised to see so many friends of cats. I can't get my cats at home to drink water as often as I think they should. Supposedly a 12 pound cat should drink two small saucers of water a day. They each get a can of wet food twice a day, but they don't always eat all of the wet food either. One cat likes to drink from the bathtub faucet but I can't leave that dripping all day. The other cat likes to drink out of my hand from the sink faucet but she is really skittish so the times she does this are few and far between. They won't drink from a pet fountain. We don't have a fish tank Any suggestions/ideas?

Oh, and while we're on the subject of cats - a yuck question. Is there anything you can mix into food to help with hairballs? They don't like the squishy stuff in the tube.

[John Coloccia]

They're probably drinking out of the toilet.

[Michael Weber]

Can't make a cat do anything My wife's cat Miss Purtle will only drink out of a measuring cup we keep in the tv room. Even though we keep a water bowl next to her food bowl she won't touch it. If the water is low in her measuring cup she will sit beside it and yowl until it's filled rather than drink from her bowl. There is hair ball formula dry cat food.

[Belinda Barfield]

They're probably drinking out of the toilet.

Nope. Toilet lids are always down around our house. SO's rule, not mine. Kinda' nice though because the seat is always down. One of the few arguments we don't have to have.

Can't make a cat do anything My wife's cat Miss Purtle will only drink out of a measuring cup we keep in the tv room. Even though we keep a water bowl next to her food bowl she won't touch it. If the water is low in her measuring cup she will sit beside it and yowl until it's filled rather than drink from her bowl. There is hair ball formula dry cat food.

Love the name! Measuring cup . . . haven't tried that one yet. My cats have a water bowl also, fresh twice a day. They won't touch hairball formula dry food (brands I've tried so far). Skittish cat will only eat dry food if she is absolutely starving.

[Mel Fulks]

We have noticed that even when our cats ask for milk they often won't drink it.The toilet thing made me wonder if the height of the water might be a factor .Where in nature would a cat find a water surface that is ABOVE their paws? I think I will try sinking a bowl into a shallow inverted cardboard box.

[Stephen Tashiro]

You can mix small amounts of water with wet catfood. I used a few spoons of bottled water for that purpose. I only do this to help fill them up by using less food since they are overweight. I've never heard a vet declare that its important for cats consume a certain quota of water per day. Instead they emphasize that water should always be available. I've read sad stories about cats that died from kidney stones etc. and adequate water consumption is supposed to help humans with that problem.

Plopping an ice cube in the water bowl attracts some cats to drink water. I don't understand why.

Cats don't like water that's been sitting in the bowl for a long time. (A long time = 1 day) Many don't like tap water but eagerly drink from rain puddles, so chlorine may be a factor. I think many dog and cat owners fail to realize how quickly water and dry food become stale. Animals slobber on dry food when they eat from a bowl and they get particles of food into water when they drink from a bowl. The fact that Fido has food and water in his bowls isn't evidence that going to be pleasant for him to consume.

[Chad Bender]

I've read that cats are suspicious of water sources near their food source because in killing an animal they might have contaminated the water supply. So they prefer sources that are geographically isolated from the food. Even though they are (hopefully) not snacking on dead critters (at least inside the house), this paranoia persists. My cat much prefers to drink out of a second dish that is located in the bedroom. She will drink in the kitchen (next to her food bowl), but only out of desperation, and not coincident with a meal. She will sometimes eat, and then run to the other side of the house for a drink.

In short, try putting a bowl somewhere else.

[David G Baker]

I always have water available for our cat in a large dog food bowl. I change it every other day. I have found that if your cat is trained from when it is a small kitten you have a better chance at having it do things you want it to do. If you acquire a cat as an adult cat it will train you to do what it wants if you pay attention to it. There are cat foods that provide hairball formulas but you may have to search for one that the cat will tolerate. Our cat drank out of our toilet until I installed the 17 inch high bowl toilet then it went back to the water dish.

[Jerome Stanek]

My daughter's cats will only drink out of a cat drinking fountain. If your cat likes running water I would try that.

[Jim Rimmer]

We give our cat "Greenies" to aid in digestion. Don't know if they help with hairballs but she is a Persian and we get the occasional hairball. We give her those because she doesn't go outside; outside cats nibble grass to aid with hairballs (or so I'm told). Greenies are available at WalMart and PetSmart.

As for the water, mine likes ice cubes in her water and will drink from my glass (it's a large diameter glass so she can get her head in it) if I leave it on the coffee table unattended. I may try bottled water to see if the chlorine comment holds water, so to speak.

[Lex Boegen]

Two things: most animals (and especially cats) prefer moving water over still water. In nature, moving water is far less likely to be stagnant and is probably safer to drink, so animals will prefer it. I have two water fountains for my cats (no I don't have a house full of cats, but one cat prefers a different room in the house from the others, so I feed and water her there. Anyhow, I use the Drinkwell Platinum Fountain. One of my cats prefers to drink from the water stream coming from the top of the unit (she also likes drinking directly from a faucet), and the other two drink from the bowl at the base of the unit.

The best cure for hairballs is prevention. The one cat that I brush daily never gets hairballs. The other two are OK with being brushed, but they get bored after a couple of minutes and scoot away, so they still occasionally get hairballs.

[Sam Murdoch]

I've read that cats are suspicious of water sources near their food source because in killing an animal they might have contaminated the water supply. So they prefer sources that are geographically isolated from the food. Even though they are (hopefully) not snacking on dead critters (at least inside the house), this paranoia persists. My cat much prefers to drink out of a second dish that is located in the bedroom. She will drink in the kitchen (next to her food bowl), but only out of desperation, and not coincident with a meal. She will sometimes eat, and then run to the other side of the house for a drink.

In short, try putting a bowl somewhere else.

Didn't know this but it might have merit - though I've never noticed the proximity to food to be a problem. I have however noticed, and read something somewhere that confirmed this notion, that a bigger water bowl is more attractive. That is, a wider diameter that is not deep. We use a flower pot tray 8" dia. or bigger.

[Jerry Thompson]

Long ago a I asked a man about figuring out where the wood I was working on would move the most. He said, "Wood is gonna do what wood is gonna do." A cat is gonna do what a cat is gonna do. Having had herds of them over my 70 years that is what I know about cats.

[Belinda Barfield]

Thanks for all the advice. As I noted earlier, they don't like a drinking fountain. I used filtered or bottled water because our water here, in my opinion, is pretty highly chlorinated. I'll try putting the water in another area of the house, and possibly elevated. Interestingly enough, according to the Vet the skittish cat is half Bengal. She doesn't meow like our garden variety cat, she sort of chatters. Before drinking water from a bowl she sweeps her paw across the surface. Keep the good advice coming!

[Bill Cunningham]

If you put the squishy hairball stuff from a tube on their paws, they will lick it off whether they like it or not. Mission accomplished