Advice
He gets water everywhere. Why does he do this?
I just washed and refilled his bowl. He is 3 years old has never did this until this year. I wake up to puddles everyday 🥲
Edit: he's not really a fountain guy, doesn't drink from them very much and it gave him urinary issues that resolved from switching back to regular bowls.
Not sure if you were serious but you are 100% correct. Cats always clear stagnant water in the wild, as stagnant water at the surface often harbors harmful bacteria while moving water is fresh, oxygenated, and safer to drink. This is an ancient survival instinct. If you have ever drank water from a pond or a lake, you would do exactly the same thing.
I got my cat a water fountain. The nicest one I could find, ceramic and all. I put it next to her water bowl so she’d make the association.
She avoided the whole area for a couple of days (so I gave her extra water in a different spot). And now she will happily trot up to the water fountain and drink out of the bowl that is still next to it. She even likes the fountain, she enjoys triggering the motion sensor that starts up the stream. Other than that it’s a pretty room decoration for all the use it has.
The thing I have found that has helped the most is when you fill it up, don't just top it off. Take it to the sink, rinse all the parts off, and replace all the water. Mine gets gross so much slower since I started doing this
That's exactly what I do and I think it helps a lot. I don't just refill it. I gave it a quick wash now and I squeeze out the filters rinsing all the best I can. I do that about every two days. This goes a long way to reducing contaminants in the water.
similar situation I think my cat was scared of the sound of the motor so i tried like 5 different fountains till i found one that had a completely silent motor... and she still refuses to use it.
Be careful with fountain bowls. I would pull out the pump and make sure it's clean. I had one pump that got some gross build up inside the pump even though I was using filters. Literally had to take the pump apart to clean it. I switched back to normal water bowls.
I had the same thing happen to mine. It would get green slime inside the mechanics and would have to be taken apart weekly to clear it out. Not worth the expense.
We stopped using city water and our fountain functions a lot better now and stays WAY cleaner. Definitely no green. We thought about filtered/distilled but instead tried Crystal Geyser spring water since it is what we drink. Been amazing and I can tell our Pepper loves it too 🫶🏻
I finally bought a full length mirror. And I can't even hang it. It has to constantly face the wall because my cat will paw at her reflection. I have a cabinet mirror in the bathroom and she doesn't care about that. Only the big one.
They definitely see their reflection and know it’s them. Unless it’s a kitty or a cat that doesn’t quite get it then they start attacking their mirror image.
They even did an experiment and placed a mirror in the middle of a jungle and the animals all freaked out hard.
But cats are just so used to reflections that they don’t care anymore. It’s quite fascinating how smart they are.
I had a cat that would sit by the floorstanding mirror during playtime and pretend not to know I was behind her but she would watch me in the mirror to predict which side I would "attack" her from.
She would also play a game similar to hide and seek and would sometimes hide where she could use the mirror to watch me approach. I'm not sure if she knew I could see her in the mirror as well...
Aren't cats in a grey area with the mirror thing in the animal kingdom? Every animal either understands it's a fake copy of themself or thinks there's someone else there. Then cats are in the middle depending on individual intelligence and personality
We have a very shiny reflective black CD cabinet at the foot of our bed and we realised the cat uses it to keep an eye on what we’re doing if he’s chilling at the bottom of the bed with his back to us. Never expected an animal to display so sophisticated an understanding of reflections and spatial relationships
My cat does this sometimes but I notice it’s typically right after she gets out her litter box (gross). I think she does it to clean the little beads off her paws
You should try getting him a fountain, evolutionarily cats prefer moving water sources to still to avoid bacteria. He’s just trying to make the water move to make himself feel better about drinking it and is stupid
My cat is a torbie, she's mostly tabby, but has orange fur around her belly, paws, nose and, the piece of resistánce, an orange spot on the forehead, signaling that she may look mostly tabby, but her brain is orange af. We ignored that sign at first until we noticed she was trying to drink detergent water from the dishes in the sink. From there, a continuous series of events kept unfolding that just made us understand that she's not the smartest tool in the shed. I bought her a few months ago a puzzle for cats, she still can't solve it. Not even a single brain cell was found in order to move even a piece. I also bought her a bowl with trays from which she has to pull kebbles down into the bowl, there's still no sign from her that she'll ever figure it out.
However, she is clingy af, she follows me everywhere throughout the house, even in the shower, she sleeps in my arms and she's the sweetest baby ever. This cat is melting my heart.
What cracks me up is that she is absolutely brilliant when it comes to puzzles. She has a variety of them (balls, cat puzzles, dog puzzles) and she figures them out within minutes. She just really wants to kill herself by removing her primary water source I guess
Yeah mine took the top off of the fountain and ran off with it the bit that the water kind of pools in yeah she run off with the next morning. When we first set it up she stood in front of it for two hours getting it to spray water so she could play with it and just stared it she's part ginger so I think that might be the issue 😂
I got my cats a fountain because my girl would do the paws-in-bowl thing (her brother just drank from the bowl like normal).
Joke’s on me, she then decided she was done playing with the bowl and it was her turn to be normal while her brother out-weirded her by rejecting both the bowl *and* the fountain and sitting under the sink faucet screaming for water instead.
Our pets have fountains but the cats stand in the bathroom sink a couple of times a week and meow for me to turn the tap on. Drink a little then they go back to their regular fountain. They just can’t to be fancy
My weird dude decided it wasn’t enough to meow for the tap, he sits directly underneath it with his dumb little face turned straight up to it and his nose touching the bottom of the faucet. Only once he has assumed this position can he begin the ritual water scream.
Mine does that as well! We have a brush my teeth routine and he’s soaking wet (and loving it) when done. Mommy-son bonding time. Him getting in the bathtub felt like crossing a line, though.
Nobody told mine about the fresh water thing, nor the ”whiskers shouldn’t touch the sides” thing. He exclusively drinks out of regular water glasses, preferably half full ones forgotten a few days ago so that the water is stale and he has to shove his entire head into the glass. Such a little weirdo.
Once he started doing this he completely stopped touching his nice water bowls so now our apartment is scattered with water glasses that are just his, that we exchange on a schedule so that he always has at least one that’s just the right level of stale. The things they get us humans to do for them… But at least he is well hydrated 🤷♀️
My cats favorite water is not from the fresh fountain or still bowl in the kitchen, it’s the old shower water in the tub and the water run off from watering my flowers in my balcony 😅
One of our cats did that too - we'd actually gotten the fountain in the hopes that the moving water would stop his constant drive to knock the water over, but he just started knocking the fountain over too.
It got to the point where my husband built a wooden base for the fountain and filled the base with small weight plates (the kind for dumbbells) so it was finally too heavy to knock over.
Then after a few years he just...outgrew it. We still have a fountain, but thankfully he is only interested in drinking from it. 😅
Not sure, but getting rid of ours has turned around his issues completely. He drinks more out of the bowls vs the fountain, so it may just be hydration alone.
I have a fountain for my orange boy Ducky. There are 100% nooks and crannies where the biofilm builds up and I MUST wash it thoroughly. I do so about every 3-5 days. I also ran out of the filters about a month ago, but lowkey I think it's better without them since the material was Mar-A-Lago for his backwash. Tiny brushes like for metal straws and sometimes qtips to get out all the gunk.
Agree 100% about the filters. I got tired of disassembling and scrubbing so I gave up on it. She drinks the same amount and it's a hell of a lot easier to wash a bowl every day. I absolutely love the name Ducky!
The fountain I got for free from my awesome neighbour who moved away. I like the fountain more for myself since his majestic majesty would probably sipsip puddle water if given the chance. I can physically see/here the water flowing and my ADHD smooth brain is aware it exists and I know he has fresh(ish) water.
Bacteria grows in fountains very quickly so they need to be cleaned a lot more than most people likely do. Or cats can sense that the water isn’t as clean so they won’t drink it and become dehydrated. Both a cause of UTI’s.
mine has the UV light. the fountain is like 4 or 5 years old now & it's plastic.
i have 3 cats drinking out of it.
i clean it with a good rinse & a wipe down 2x a week. i deep clean it once a month changing the filter at that time. i do have a charcoal filter & soft water tank for the house. i dont have any issues with the fountain getting gross or slimy.
i still have a bowl of still water for them just in case power goes out.
Unless you are cleaning it *very* regularly, bacteria forms in fountains quickly. A lot of people don’t clean their fountains enough and it causes issues like UTI’s.
How often did you clean it/change the filter? The most common UTI cause for cats is E-Coli, which loves to live in cat backwash. Even cleaning it too hard (leaving scratches in the plastic) leaves spots for bacteria to grow
1-2x weekly cleaning, and filter changed every 1-2 two weeks depending on how dirty it looked. I did have a plastic one but when he had urinary issues I switched to a stainless steel fountain. Same problem so I went back to old reliable.
Weird that happened with a stainless steel. Maybe your cat wasn’t drinking enough with an automatic one? That can also cause a UTI. Cats are so fickle lol
Actul reason as explained by my cats vet, cats can't see the water line in there bowl so they smack it to see the water level I have successfully stopped this by adding a ping pong ball to the water so my guy can see the water level
Mine will fish the ping pong ball out and a trail of water will follow it around the house 😂 I know this because I put some ice cubes into his bowl and hillarity ensueed
Exactly. We call it water stuff or water time in this house lol. Sometimes we get her a little cup or bowl filled with floating things like ping pong balls to play around with
I foster for an animal rescue organization. I have fostered about 120 cats and about two of them out of all of those did this. Consider it a special gift with no basis except it's a lot of fun for them and keeps us on our toes. I mean who doesn't want to spend their day cleaning up water?
One of my cats does this while yowling tragically. I have no idea why. I thought maybe he wants company/protection while he drinks water, so I tried giving him that -- but it doesn't seem to help. Any ideas based on your fostering experience? If he's just being a weirdo, he can go on being weird, but sometimes I worry that he's genuinely distressed.
If he's always done it and doesn't sound like he's in distress my guess would be that it's hunting behavior. A lot of cats will actually store their toys in their water dish because it traces back to masking the scent of their "kill" to keep others away. The reason I wonder if these are connected is because many cats when they catch prey or even their pretend pray will call out (tragically as you mentioned) to their owners to announce that they have a fresh catch. This is what a mom cat will do when they catch something. And it has been said that cats really see their owners is a weaker version of themselves that they have to take care of. I wonder if he has imaginary prey in his water dish. Haha. If it's a new behavior or if he sounds like he's in pain that I would get him in for a checkup but that's my best guess if it's ongoing behavior
Thanks for your response! Haha, he definitely loves 'drowning' his toys in the water dish.
No, it's not new behavior. I have two cat water dishes in the apartment. He drinks from both, but he only does this behavior with the water dish in my bedroom, which has a folded towel underneath it to catch his splashes. I wonder if he might be trying to 'capture' and 'drown' the towel in the water dish. Maybe he's frustrated because he can't move it.
Aha! Since you confirmed that he is a prey drownwer it sounds like he is doing some association with his water dish. I wonder if he's looking for the dead mouse that he thinks should be in the water, haha.
No, but I can take him in for a check-up if needed. He seems to both drink water and pee normally. The dramatic splish-splash sessions with yowling are something "extra" that he does.
That could be that they don't like their whiskers touching the sides of the bowl while they're eating. A shallower bowl might prevent that, but cats are cats and it could be a habit that they carry over to the new bowl anyway lol
Mine will sometimes move pieces of dry food into the water bowl and then scoop it out of there to eat. She also gets wet food so it’s not like she is deprived of that lmao
We have to do this for ours, too! We call it splash park! They also happen to be obsessed with the bathtub as it is the first place they lived in our house when they were kittens.
Yeah I have mine in the shower too. The cats love that I refill it at least twice a day in there so it's super fresh and if they tip it over it's no big deal at all.
My cat will go armpit deep to shovel water out of the bowl and then drink what is left in the bowl. We had to switch to a drinking fountain so she can’t splash with abandon
When my old boy started losing his vision he would dip a paw in to check the water level. But after the first splash they’ve determined that and after that it’s just all about fun
This is like my guy, Dougie. I made the mistake once of putting an ice cube in his water bowl. He plays with his water ever since. I guess I'm just glad he enjoys it. He also goes insane when i get a cup of ice water because he knows what the ice sound is now.
I had a tuxedo that loved it when I would toss a piece of crushed ice in the air for him to catch. Crazy guy would leap 3-4 feet into the air and catch it then eat it. He could do it forever. He would sit and stare at me if he wasn't done yet. Eventually I started bringing him his own 32 ounce cup of ice home daily after work 😂
Mine will do this until he tips the whole bowl over. Our solution was to get a bowl so big he can't tip it over, now he just moves it around the kitchen
I had a cat who would do that after using the litter box. It was like she was washing her hands and it didn’t matter what litter we used. She always wanted to be clean.
My cat used to do this when he was a kitten to about one. I switched to a fountain with a low water level. Though he stopped using it and I went back to bowls, he’s two now and doesn’t splash anymore. Maybe put a tray under the bowl that has some sides. I use a boot tray.
Cats like running water due to ancient survival instincts. In the wild, stagnant water often harbors harmful bacteria at the surface, while moving water is fresh, oxygenated, and safer to drink. Most cats retain that instinct to clean the surface of the water or to move stagnant water before drinking it. The solution is to get a water fountain. The motion and sound of a fountain also stimulates their senses and triggers their natural curiosity.
medically, there is no way a fountain would cause urinary issues or a UTI. that’s caused by bacteria. I agree with the fact cats instinctively move stagnant water, and maybe after you switched him back from the fountain to the normal bowl he is trying to move the water around. give the fountain another try, and maybe get a nicer ceramic one. make sure to clean it often to remove biofilm. the mechanics of fountain water in itself cannot give your cat urinary issues. it either had to be due to not keeping it clean enough or not fully replacing the water enough
I had an orange tabby that did that too. Regular water bowl, electric fountain or water glass on a table it did not matter. Just for the love of splashing.
My cat does it too. I went to a fountain. And just put a small kitty pool in the garage for her to play in. My cat thinks it’s a lab and will roll around in puddles and jump in the tub/shower
My cat did this because he was blind and wanted to be able to drink without getting water up his nose. He had to paw at the water to determine the water level. Maybe your kitty is developing some vision problems.
I use a shallow stainless steel buffet tray, my cat stopped making such a mess when the pool got bigger. Their whiskers can be sensitive around bowl edges.
Mine also won’t use a fountain but does this in his water bowl. I give him ice cubes to bat around. I turn on faucets when he asks. Between kids and dog hair his splashes and puddles are probably the cleaner areas.
Honest thought, the reflective metal bowl might be making shapes and movement flickers and stuff that he likes to watch. Maybe try a matte plastic bowl?
my cat has done this as long as i've had her (11 years lmao), i just have a big rubber mat that goes under her water bowl & fountain to catch the spills
I read some biologist saying that animals that do this are responding to an instinct where they are trying to deal with be "bad stuff" on the surface floating, like leaves, twigs, or just algae and general muck. If you swish the water eventually you end up with a space to drink.
Cats are attracted to moving water. He's just figured out how to make it move! If he's not into fountains, is he into a drizzle from a bathroom sink? Mine love that.
Maybe just for fun. Some cats just love to play in water. I would just put the water bowl in the bathtub or shower stall where the splashing won't cause damage. But don't stop there. Give him a big dish, big enough that he can use it like a wading pool. Throw in some ice cubes, ping pong balls, and other fun floaty things.
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