Hello fellow cat people! **This is a very long post**
Now I know we all have picky cats when it comes to certain things but this pickiness with my cat's drinking behavior has moved on to obsessive. Let me explain...
Our cat has always liked running water (blame that on the new cat owners we were who thought it was SO cute when she drank out of the sink) but we have since weaned her off that and back to a regular cat bowl (with a fountain of course!) and it has been 2 years since her strong desire to only drink out of a sink (even though she still bugs us to turn it on). We originally had the green circular water bowl with the flower in the middle. She did not like the flower so we took it out and she drank water but always tried to drink in the bathtub after a shower or out of cups which isn't that odd, I've heard of many cats who do that.
Fast forward... that bowl broke, we got another fountain water bowl, a plastic skinny sort of single spout bowl. It was fine for about a year until the filter started getting backed up very often. Even with changing it weekly, it eventually kept getting worse until the spout would just stop flowing water after about an hour of us changing and cleaning it. Of course she didn't like drinking out of it and would resort to drinking out of my plant water when she thought no one was looking. (All my plants are cat safe! and the ones she was drinking out of were water-rooted of course - she wasn't just licking soil) but we didn't want her drinking out of those because that's not the freshest water plus she would try to pull the plant up and sometimes knock over the vase/pot resulting in broken glass if it landed on the floor.
So we ended up getting another bowl. This one was great! It's a very large metal bowl (almost the size for a medium-large dog), with a great big fountain and a super easy filter to change that was very large and didn't look like it would pose any issue of it getting backed up like the other one. Our cat must have drank out of that for a solid 15 minutes (which was, yes, very concerning that she was that thirsty) but we were just glad she liked it well enough to use it. We had planned on changing the water within the week just to keep it fresh but after no more than 2 days, she was back to her old ways to trying to find any other water source. So we changed the water right there (it didn't look dirty - we usually inspect it to make sure there isn't any food or an abundant amount of cat hair or debris in it) but we changed it because obviously there was something she wasn't liking about it. She came to it, drank a little, and we found her later still trying to drink plant water. So we thought maybe she doesn't like the charcoal filter that is supposed to be used with it?? Literally the only other thing we could think of. We had tried the whole cold water, ice cube trick, we had moved it away from the food bowls because we read that some cats don't like water next to their food, pretty much anything you could find online about cats and water bowls. So we took the charcoal filter out, put fresh water in it, put it down and waited...
I had put a scat mat down around the plants she was trying to drink out of but later heard a loud clash in the sink. It turns out she was trying to get my avocado pit out of it's container to then drink out of that... and I'll be honest that water is not the cleanest, it had a bit of a film on top just because I hadn't changed it in a couple weeks. So what the heck??? I'm really not sure what to do at this point, I plan on scheduling a vet appt when they open up (unfortunately the ones around here aren't open on the weekends) but I am posting to all you cat lovers and specialists in hopes of finding an answer. Also I would like to say that I do have another cat who has never had any issues with the water bowls and I myself have been continually tasting the water out of this new bowl just to make sure it didn't taste awful or like something was wrong with it.
Sorry I know this is a very long post, I'm just trying to get all the info I can in there... but I would also like to note that this cat knows when she is doing something wrong and will try to be sneaky about it. The past 4 days though, she has jumped up on the counters & stuck her paw in the pots right in front of me and my husband. Also to note, she's never really messed with the plants before. This seems to be like it's starting to turn into an obsessive behavior & we really don't know what's up with her water habits. Any advice or feedback would be immensely helpful - thank you so so so much! Also we do currently give them dry food - should we change to wet food to try and keep her hydrated more?
Now I know we all have picky cats when it comes to certain things but this pickiness with my cat's drinking behavior has moved on to obsessive. Let me explain...
Our cat has always liked running water (blame that on the new cat owners we were who thought it was SO cute when she drank out of the sink) but we have since weaned her off that and back to a regular cat bowl (with a fountain of course!) and it has been 2 years since her strong desire to only drink out of a sink (even though she still bugs us to turn it on). We originally had the green circular water bowl with the flower in the middle. She did not like the flower so we took it out and she drank water but always tried to drink in the bathtub after a shower or out of cups which isn't that odd, I've heard of many cats who do that.
Fast forward... that bowl broke, we got another fountain water bowl, a plastic skinny sort of single spout bowl. It was fine for about a year until the filter started getting backed up very often. Even with changing it weekly, it eventually kept getting worse until the spout would just stop flowing water after about an hour of us changing and cleaning it. Of course she didn't like drinking out of it and would resort to drinking out of my plant water when she thought no one was looking. (All my plants are cat safe! and the ones she was drinking out of were water-rooted of course - she wasn't just licking soil) but we didn't want her drinking out of those because that's not the freshest water plus she would try to pull the plant up and sometimes knock over the vase/pot resulting in broken glass if it landed on the floor.
So we ended up getting another bowl. This one was great! It's a very large metal bowl (almost the size for a medium-large dog), with a great big fountain and a super easy filter to change that was very large and didn't look like it would pose any issue of it getting backed up like the other one. Our cat must have drank out of that for a solid 15 minutes (which was, yes, very concerning that she was that thirsty) but we were just glad she liked it well enough to use it. We had planned on changing the water within the week just to keep it fresh but after no more than 2 days, she was back to her old ways to trying to find any other water source. So we changed the water right there (it didn't look dirty - we usually inspect it to make sure there isn't any food or an abundant amount of cat hair or debris in it) but we changed it because obviously there was something she wasn't liking about it. She came to it, drank a little, and we found her later still trying to drink plant water. So we thought maybe she doesn't like the charcoal filter that is supposed to be used with it?? Literally the only other thing we could think of. We had tried the whole cold water, ice cube trick, we had moved it away from the food bowls because we read that some cats don't like water next to their food, pretty much anything you could find online about cats and water bowls. So we took the charcoal filter out, put fresh water in it, put it down and waited...
I had put a scat mat down around the plants she was trying to drink out of but later heard a loud clash in the sink. It turns out she was trying to get my avocado pit out of it's container to then drink out of that... and I'll be honest that water is not the cleanest, it had a bit of a film on top just because I hadn't changed it in a couple weeks. So what the heck??? I'm really not sure what to do at this point, I plan on scheduling a vet appt when they open up (unfortunately the ones around here aren't open on the weekends) but I am posting to all you cat lovers and specialists in hopes of finding an answer. Also I would like to say that I do have another cat who has never had any issues with the water bowls and I myself have been continually tasting the water out of this new bowl just to make sure it didn't taste awful or like something was wrong with it.
Sorry I know this is a very long post, I'm just trying to get all the info I can in there... but I would also like to note that this cat knows when she is doing something wrong and will try to be sneaky about it. The past 4 days though, she has jumped up on the counters & stuck her paw in the pots right in front of me and my husband. Also to note, she's never really messed with the plants before. This seems to be like it's starting to turn into an obsessive behavior & we really don't know what's up with her water habits. Any advice or feedback would be immensely helpful - thank you so so so much! Also we do currently give them dry food - should we change to wet food to try and keep her hydrated more?