What's your view on little water fountains for cats?

They do require electricity, and it varies as to whether they have filters. I’ve never used one because I worry about how to keep it clean (I also don’t drink out of water coolers for that reason). Some cats seems to love them, some cats ignore them (as is the rule for cats – never be predictable or consistent).

I had a cat that wouldn’t drink out of a standing water dish. This was fixed by placing a clipping of an ivy plant in the water bowl. Problem solved. My cat apparently wanted the nitrates from plants.
Fountains require electricity which has a certain amount of risk since water is involved.

My cats prefer dripping water also, but I haven’t gotten a fountain yet. The brand Drinkwell seems to be the most common.

I use one. I have 5 cats so I have one with an extra reservoir as well. My cats always wanted to drink from the sink, or they would drink our of our water glasses, but they don’t do either of those things anymore. As far as keeping it clean, I put it in my dishwasher once a month and change the filter. Sure it’s an expense, but it makes my life easier, and they love it.

@all:I was just reading about Drinkwell. It requires plugging in and charcoal filters, which seems to generate a lot of work. Are there any gravity-feed bubblers?

True about all containers containing fresh water except the designated Milo ones. He also loves the muddy mini-pools in my creek.

Tiny: Which brand?

Heretic: Real ivy? Didn’t the cutting die after a bit? I bought Milo his own pot of wheatgrass. He snubbed it and I finally tossed it into compost.

My cats loved it when I had one. It is a bit of a pain to keep clean though.

@andrew: Have you switched to bowls now? Or the cats hanging out in LA?

@gailcalled I’ve used the Drinkwell without the filters since I was too lazy to change them—and they get disgusting anyway. It just means you ned to clean the bowl more often.

Cats love to drink from running water. My solution was to get a little decorative table-top fountain, and clean it and fill it daily. Cecil loved it. I got very tired of it, and now I just let him drink from the dogs’ bowls.

I solved it by not fixing the slowly leaking tap in the kitchen sink. The cats loved to play at swatting the droplets as they fell and drank out of the saucer I placed under the drip.

unnecessarily annoying to clean. I just leave the faucet running a little… works great.

Wait, Andrew.. you can use the Drinkwells without filters, as long as you keep the bowl itself clean?

I use a Drinkwell. It requires less cleaning than standing water and you don’t have to use a filter. The diswasher gets the grime out of the little
spaces.

I’ve never once thought that it was a pain to clean.

My cat loved cold water. I would just freeze a bowls of water for her and rotate them.

@johnpowell: Now that is a good thought and may solve the small problem of slight sulphur odor from my well now, due to huge rainfalls this summer. When the water thaws, will it be odor-free?

For those of you with constant facet drips, accidental or deliberate, doesn’t that waste a lot of water?

I had a very good well and my gray water was channeled to the garden so I never worried, it was going back into the soil.

Of course I could have been arrested because you were not allowed to use gray water thusly because some little kid might catch a dreaded disease from it?????

Train the cats to build their own aqueduct. They’ll love you for it. :)

Give a cat a fish, and he can eat for a day. Teach him how to build an aqueduct…

@gailcalled Why, did Milo order one from a “cat“alog?

We had a running fountain and our cat would not go near it, even though he loved watching the toilet flush.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic,
> This was fixed by placing a clipping of an ivy plant in the water bowl.
What in the world made you think of that?

I’ve had a couple in the past. What I have found is that they are annoying to clean all the time, require replacement filters, make loud noises when stopped up or empty, and require electricity. Some cats like them, others try to play with them and take it apart. So, unless you can find a nice one (probably expensive) that was better than mine then go for it.

I prefer to just use a water dispensing unit like this one: Waterer
Cheap and easy to clean.

This is one that I used to have:
http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2751805

Can’t recommend one yet, Would like one for “my girls” too. How about a water faucet with the “electric eye” thing buillt-in like they have in some public washrooms, their little paws could set it off. :)

My grandson’s cat seemed to be too scared of it to even use it.

My ex-bf bought a filtered one that pumped the water from beneath. Neither of his cats, nor my cat liked it. They seemed bithered by the noise of the pump.

Maybe look for a solar powered dripping faucet?

Sorry to come to this so late! Great question. Cat fountains are really important for male cats. Males have a very narrow and long urethra (think needle thin and two or three pencils long), which can easily trap struvite or calcium crystals. These crystals form in the urine of all cats, but it only becomes a problem if they occur in high amounts. So if there are too many crystals in his urine, this will lead to the little guy’s death about half the time (the other half, the vet can save him with much monetary input and increasingly awful procedures). Couple this unfortunate quirk of anatomy with the fact that all cats dislike standing water, and many indoor male cats have urinary issues. Milo is an indoor/outdoor kitty, I believe? Then he probably gets a lot of his water from the outside world, so he may not have as much of a problem as many others.

See this wonderful link on FLUTD. It’s the one that gave me the best info when my friend Blaze almost died from struvite crystals a few years ago. We really didn’t think he was going to make it. It didn’t help that Bloth and I know two other wonderful male cats who died from this.

The fountains all require filters and plugging in. I use a PetMate Fresh Flow. It’s cheaper ($40 at PetCo) than the Drinkwell, and it flows down a little incline instead of splashing out like the Drinkwell does. It’s whisper-quiet as long as it has enough water. The water reservoir won’t require filling more than once a day for one cat (I change it that much for my 2). Many cats get frightened by the splashing of the Drinkwell. Plus, my Fresh Flow has lasted me three years so far. However, my vet (the one that saved Blaze) recommends the Drinkwell. I don’t recommend the domed kind – though cats love them, when you put it back together after cleaning, you can never get the dome to sit straight again and the water comes out in a trickle instead of down all the sides.

Cleaning the fountain takes me about half an hour if I don’t use my dishwasher. You have to do it about once a week. The PetMate filters are cheapish, relative to the others.

@wildpotato Hrm, why do they require filters? The drinkwell filters i had weren’t very scientific—they didn’t even cover the entire flow of water. Seemed to me like a ploy to get more dollars.

@andrew When you pull out the filter after 3 months you can see that it does work.

@andrew Everything I know about the Drinkwell is from my vet – I haven’t used one myself, nor looked at the filter setup. For the Fresh Fow, the filter is necessary to a varying degree depending on what part of the country you’re in – basically it’s up to how the town you live in gets your water to you. When I used to use well water I had greenish gunk all over the filters 3–4 days after putting a new one in. But my parents in PA don’t have to use one at all. If you don’t use one, you’ll notice that the fountain will develop slime faster than if you do use them.

@tinyfaery Oh, I don’t doubt that it catches gunk—but my thought was that if it’s not catching all the gunk, it’s just concentrating it and letting it fester—even with the filter i’d still have to clean the fountain regularly. Do you clean your filters when you clean your fountain?

I found when cleaning the fountain had about the same gunk, filter or no filter—so I figured, why let it fester?

I rinse off the filters when I clean it. I figure if the cats don’t complain it can’t be that bad.

Now that I have seen Milo drinking happily out of muddy pools filled with minnows in my little creek, he and I will drink the same tap water. I do put a sliver of ice in his.

You all persuaded me that it is not worth the effort. We get green moss and slime on everything here during the wet season, including the wood on my decks and the water in my concrete bird bath.