Since my cat suite is in what was a two car garage, the furbabies don’t have access to the bathtub anymore. That was their preferred watering hole in the old house. When I was converting the garage, before we moved the cats over from the old house, I started looking for a new watering system - my cats have always disliked drinking from a bowl, and I didn’t want any of them (the boys especially can be prone to urinary tract problems) to get ill from not drinking enough water. I decided on a Petmate brand fountain - with 8 cats, I got the dog-sized one. It holds about a quart of water and has a reservior which holds about another quart, so I only have to refill it about every other day. The water flows down a little ramp, which is where the cats tend to drink from. I clean it once a week, and use a turkey baster (reserved for that purpose only) to remove cat hair when I see it. The cats love it. It’s a bit of a pain to disassemble for cleaning, but only because I don’t have enough hands to carry all the parts in one trip! I highly recommend it.
I have this one. It took the cat a few days before he’d trust it, but now he loves it and won’t drink bowl water. I have to clean it every two weeks or so but the parts fit in the dishwasher so it’s fine.
Also, I had a very good experience with the company, as described here.
I have the Petmate one, which works fine (though a bit hard to clean). And my cats drink from it regularly.
But it does NOT stop them from jumping up onto the sink and wanting you to turn on a small stream from the faucet. They’ll still do that.
I think this is really a way of demanding attention from you, since I’ve seen them drinking from the fountain, and then as soon as I come into the room, jump up to the sink and meow for water.
Sometimes the “office watercooler” style cat bowls don’t work. One of our cats felt it was important to attack the bubbles that would appear in the bottle when the water level settled, and usually managed to knock the bottle right off and spill all the water. Of course, if none of your cats is a 22# tabby, it might work for you.
I have one of those Drinkwell fountains. We’re actually on our second one. It stops our cat from trying to drink out of the faucet, and it works for both the cat who likes running water and the one who only drinks out of the bowl.
My dear departed Rocky, who was The Best Cat In The World, Ever, got in the habit of wanting only water from a dripping faucet. He would get into either the tub or the kitchen sink and sit there imploringly until you turned the water to provide the just exactly right dribble of water. Because he was TBCITWE, we did. It was a very sad thing when he became to ill to jump up on the counter any more.
We have the same water fountain that the OP linked to. The cat really likes it and uses it, but he still begs for water from the bathroom tap whenever I am in the bathroom. I think it’s an attention thing.
I’ve been pretty happy with it for the most part, but it’s not exactly quiet. You probably wouldn’t notice the sound at all if you had room for it somewhere very out of the way, but we have a small apartment and you can always hear ours running if you are in the kitchen or living room.
I clean it once a week, and use a toothbrush to get into some of the narrow parts.
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.
The exact same thing happened with our first cat – she jumped up to the bathroom sink while I was using it, started playing in the water and drinking from it, and insisted on drinking from the bathroom sink from then on. However, she didn’t so much seem to care if the water was actively coming from the tap or not, she just decided that that’s the location she preferred to drink from. I suspected that it might have something to do with one of their wild ancestral traits still hovering in them, in that standing with their back feet on the sink ledge, while their front feet are down in the sink and they have to lean over to drink, mimics the position they’d be in if they were leaning in to drink from a lake or stream.
The sink in the house I lived in at the time would hold water all day when I pulled the stopper, so it was no problem to plug up the sink and put a little water in it every morning before I left. Eventually I moved to a place that didn’t have a stopper in the bathroom sink and she was none too happy to have to drink from the floor. So I put a bowl of water down in the sink, and voilà, problem solved, believe it or not!
Like this, this, or this. They can’t duplicate that position when drinking from a bowl on the floor, but that was pretty much her stance when the bowl was down in the sink, so it kindof made sense to me.
I too purchased one of these fountains because of my cats weird drinking habits. For the longest time, they would jump behind the fish tank, knock the pump cover off, and slurp up the fishy water. As one of the furry butts gradually increased in size to +20 lbs, I began to worry for the fishies wellbeing as the cats would pause on top of the tank cover before jumping to the other side. So I bought a fountain. They ignored it, and continued to knock the cover off of the fish pump. I ended up rubber banding the lid shut, and they migrated, reluctantly to drinking from the fountain.
I liked the fountain, and so did they, but it died after about 6 months, and I discovered that they were just as happy drinking from a shallow bowl placed in the shower, that would catch the very slow drip from the bathtub faucet. 
I’ve stuck with this system for the last few years, and also include a bowl of water by their food as a backup.
I keep my toilet lids closed with a religious fervor… my furballs would climb down in it, paws just barely in the water to take their drinks- and it only takes a couple of times of wet paws on your lap before you realize “hey, the shower is dry… .where did you get your paws wet…? …ewwww…”
I would never drink after a cat.
I also have the Petmate one (in blue) for my cat, who loves it. If she catches me when I’m cleaning or refilling it she’ll watch me closely until I put it all back together, as if she’s expecting me to run away with it or something.
Roughly once a month I’ll do a careful cleaning: run vinegar through it to clear out the mineral deposits, rinse everything carefully, and let it air dry before putting it all back together.
And if the pump ever croaks, they’re just the simple little water pumps that can be found relatively easily.
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That is the kind I have. After I thought the pump had died and was about to order another one, Mr. SCL discovered the pump itself comes apart for cleaning. Of course, it was clogged with cat hair. Once he cleaned it out, it worked fine again. I’ve had this one for two years with only that one (correctable) problem.
See… that’s where I’m thinking that maybe we just have incredibly hardy mutant mold colonies down here in the swamps, because what you had to do once in two years, I had to do every week. The entire pump mechanism would get so clogged with gloop weekly that all those tiny bits and pieces had to be prised apart, swabbed with cotton swabs dipped in rubbing alcohol, rinsed well, put back together, in addition to the entire unit being cleaned. That’s why I gave up on the thing.
I have the Petmate water fountain for my cat too. She loves it but also enjoys drinking out of a mug full of water that we keep on out nightstand for her and refill fresh each day. I also have to clean my fountain about every 3 weeks, because it gets moldy and disgusting. It lasts a bit longer with the filters in it, but I can’t always find replacement ones.
One tip for the PetMate - never let it run low on water. If it does and the pump starts making a sucking noise, it will likely fail very soon (learned this the hard way - I am on my third fountain).
Basically, they’re great for the cats but a giant pain in the neck to maintain. I like the idea of just using a fish pump in a shallow dish. It would be so much easier to clean.
My sister got one for her family’s cat, and the kitty now drinks far more water than she used to.
StG
My pair of monsters were a nuicense at any sink I used. They are about three years old now and I bought them a fountain and they love it.
We’ve got a Catit fountain and the cats really seem to like it.
Albert the stupid, however, likes to wedge his fluffy body between the globe (which is wet) and the wall. So he’s regularly fairly damp.