# Cat Water Fountains -- Who Uses Them? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 7, 2006, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761 "2006-06-07T16:48:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3

**Author:** ![Kiminy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Kiminy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiminy)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2006, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761/41 "2006-06-11T06:01:58Z")

[QUOTE=CalMeacham] Never had a Cat water fountain like that, but: 1.) We had one of those “perpetually full” water dispensers that has the reservoir on top. As your cat drinks the water, it gets replenished. Our cat managed to get it to release the entire reservoir at ionce, covering the kitchen floor. Bad Kitty! no drinking fountain for her! [/QUOTE] We have one of those, too. One of our cats was _fascinated_ by the bubbles, and he figured out that if he drank enough water at one time, it would eventually bubble. So he would be at the bowl lapping away for five minutes or more, keeping an eye on the reservoir bottle. As soon as it bubbled, he would stop drinking and stare at the bubbles. When the bubbles were gone, he left. One day, I accidentally made it bubble by hitting the reservoir bottle in his presence. He’s a very smart cat, and he made the connection instantly–instead of drinking the bowl dry, just tap it with a paw to make the bubbles. What he didn’t understand is that you can only get so many bubbles until someone drinks some of the water. I put the reservoir away the day I came home to find the bathroom floor flooded because he had tapped a little _too_ hard. We still use the bowl part, though, because both cats can drink from it at the same time. I wouldn’t get the fountain, myself. Our other cat (the female) likes to play with water by dipping her paws in and shaking them. We keep the waterbowl in the bathroom for a very good reason. (There’s another one in the kitchen, with their food bowls, but they rarely use it.) She was addicted to faucet drips for a while, but she kept breathing in the water, and we were afraid she would have lung problems from it. She made the switch back to bowl water without too many problems. ---

**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2006, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761/42 "2006-06-11T06:27:16Z")

Dunno, this might come under TMI – Hubby refuses to put dishes into the dishwasher. He claims not to know how to load it ‘properly.’ :dubious: We finally settled on a compromise: he would put any dish/mug/glass he used into the sink and run water into the item so the food stuff wouldn’t harden on it before I got a chance to deal with it. Our cats consider this wonderful. They jump onto the counter and perch with hind legs on the counter and front legs down in the sink, and work their way from dish to glass to mug, taking a few licks from each ‘offering’ until returning to drink their fill from one of them. I can just see the thoughts in their little catty minds. “What have we here?” \ “Hmm. Coffee with cream and sugar. Okay, but ordinary. How about this bowl?” \ “Faint but tantalyzing taste of oatmeal with…” \ “yes, definitely light brown sugar. Excellent! But what’s in the blue mug?” \ “Ugh, orange juice!” \ And so on, as the little gourmets work their way through the wine, er, water tasting. (Yes, all dishes get washed in the dishwasher, full soap and hot, hot water, before making it back to the cupboards.) ---

**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2006, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761/43 "2006-06-11T06:30:03Z")

[QUOTE=Marienee] I used a fishtank pump in a large, shallow dish (like the water catcher you put under a plant. In fact I think that was what it was originally.) for one of my cats who didn’t like standing water. But I am a near obsessive recycler of objects. If I were buying something new \>fans self\< I think that would do as well. [/QUOTE] I was coming in just to post something similar! I used the pump from an old fountain after the paint started peeling. It had suction cups so I just popped it in their ceramic dish. I have to clean it every few days though, so it’s a bitch, but the kitties seem to love it. I want one of those storebought fountains now though. Now if I could just find one with a statue of a peeing man in it, it would fit our decor to a T! ---

**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761/44 "2006-06-11T23:29:30Z")

[QUOTE=jbarro] It lasts a bit longer with the filters in it, but I can’t always find replacement ones. [/QUOTE] Make your own! Save one of the used ones, unpick the thread closing the top, dump out the used charcoal, and rinse out the cloth bag. Then refill it with fish-tank filter charcoal, obtainable at many stores, and much cheaper than buying more Petmate filters. The fish-tank charcoal is finer than the original charcoal, so you have to thoroughtly rinse the filled bag in water before re-installing it in the water fountain. Otherwise you get black/charcoal colored water (which looks awful, though cats drink it just fine). That’s a nuisance, but this finer charcoal should also do a better job of filtering the water for your cats. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cat-water-fountains-who-uses-them/359761.md?page=2)