The Cat Thread

Do you keep the water in a different place to where you feed him?
I found that if the water bowl is on the other side of the room its used more.

The water fountain is in a different room from where they are normally fed. I tried putting other water bowls out, but the second cat loves to play with water and just flips them over whenever she gets a chance.

mixing some meat juice with the water?

Why does he need to up his fluid intake? You thoughts or vets advice?

One of out cats never seems to drink from the water we put out but never seems the worse for it. Our guess is she prefers to find water when she's outside. We've seen her drinking from outdoor plant pots and other collected rainwater. The other seems to prefer bisuits to meat and drinks a little from the bowl. However her favourite source is running water from the tap in the bathroom sink.

Some cats really don't get on with treated water and it may be they can taste the chemicals in it that we're used to. Rainwater might taste more natural to them, particularly if they're an outdoor cat. Ours seem quite happy if there's some algae in the water and our previous cat actively preferred it.

He had an emergency trip to the vet over the weekend with some problems with his plumbing :( So far the diagnosis is idiopathic cystitis, so we've been recommended to get him on a more wet food based diet and to try to get him to drink more.

@ExTra when you say meat juice, do you mean just juice from raw meat or cooked meat?

I haven't personally tried, but I remember someone here mentioned they regularly put some cooked meat juice into the water bowl and their cats loved it. I guess it's cooked otherwise it'd just be blood? That said, I can't see why you can't try both? After all, they eat raw meat as well as cooked.

Gibbs seems to enjoy drinking water from my glass.

Well, that's the other trick. Get a pint glass of water, have a few sips in front of the cat and then put it down where they can reach it. The little fecker will have their head in it like a shot.

We leave water in the bathroom sink during the day, cat likes to drink and clean in it.

You could also try putting water on the kibble, cornflakes with milk style. He might hate it, but he might tolerate it. Or might even like it, as cats are weirdos.

You might be able to persuade him to eat more wet food if you mix things into the wet food. Kibble, for eg. One of my cats used to like a sprinkling of brewer's yeast on her food, and it's my understanding that brewer's yeast is part of the crack cocktail that pet food companies put on kibble to make it tasty, so you could try getting creative with that. I used the stuff from Holland and Barrett: http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/holland-barrett-brewers-yeast-powder-60002270

my cats have decided they will only drink from the kitchen tap

Motty in bucket..

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Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I'll try some out tonight. His sister likes to sit in sinks, so it will be quite exciting for her if we leave them filled with water.

Their mother absolutely loves cat milk and would probably jump into a bucket of it.

Do you give them filteredtap water?

Can I ask why you feel another cat would satisfy you?

why does one need more than 1 bike? Same difference. Only joking. I just think I am not giving enough time to entertain the cat and if she had a play mate, then when I am busy they could play with each other, but guess this only happens if they were born a pair / been paired up since kittens etc...

Sorry if that comment comes across slightly hostile, I blame the cheeky cheap red ;) I am wary of adding animals(cats) when there are a settled animal. It can be worse than children;)

...and you might find this becomes the ONLY way they'll drink thereafter.

Fussy buggers.

I've got one of these. You mean, Patch was chasing a LIVE mouse around it?!

I hope you get this sorted quickly. I would try adding a bit of water or gravy to the kibble, and if you don't already, try using a really wide water bowl, or show him a very slow dripping tap he can access.

They are funny though - I found Maia drinking rain out of a leaf once!

Cool fact. You know all the things, Boffers!

I wonder if a sprinkle of nutritional yeast would work too?

Just leave clean fresh water around the house on a mat or something that can be wiped easily. They will drink. Give them the water from a tuna can they will do anything for that.

Might well do - think it's the same thing, except the brewers stuff is still activated? No more than 1tsp a day.

I know the brewer's yeast trick because my sister and I used to feed our cats (half a billion of them, it felt like) a raw food diet, but you need to take a bit of care over the nutritional components of a raw food diet because just flopping a raw steak into a bowl isn't really going to cut it. Brewer's yeast was one of the additions, ostensibly because it provides vitamins, but it turns out it's also really tasty.

You know those videos where somebody is on a farm and they have a bucket full of feed and they're trying to put it down for some goats, and the goats have surrounded them and they're all like "give us the feed, worthless human, no, not the way you're doing but BETTER and FASTER, goddamn you"? Getting the brewer's yeast out was a bit like that.

I tried putting some kibble on top of his wet food this morning, and that seemed to start him off okay. He's also lapping up the cat milk, so that's a good sign. I think his sister is getting frustrated with all the special treatment he's getting though.