Perhaps this question was posted before, or answered in one of the books (by the way, is there any Spanish edition??), but…
Why do cats hate water?
Please forgive my english, and thank you
That might be a self-fulfilled prophecy type urban legend that all cats hate baths, etc. The person anticipates that the cat will hate water/being wet and prepares for a struggle, the cat picks up on the tension and decides the water must be the boogie the owner’s getting upset about and it goes from bad to worse. That’s my personal theory though, don’t quote me.
The few pages that came up in google say they evolved from desert animals, which may play a part in them not actively seeking out water to play in or liking the “wet” feeling (could also have something to do with their fur being matted and sticking close to them… like putting on a wet pair of jeans?).
It also might have a lot to do with their personal experiance. My husband’s first cat jumped in the bath with him… so did my mom’s… mine have never liked it. I chalk it up to my bad technique. 
It might also have something to do with the type of cat - some seem to be more comfortable with water than others.
Lucy (our current cat) isn’t real keen on the tub (too deep/big for her I think), but we can’t keep her out of toilets and sinks. 
She’s fallen in the toilet a few times & that still doesn’t keep her out of it.
One thing I’ve heard consistantly is that putting a towel down in the tub/sink before bathing a cat will help them feel better about it since they’re kinda skeevy about insecure footing.
Meg
In my experience (having cohabited with 3-4 cats for 90% of my life), it’s just a matter of the cat not liking to be wet on somebody else’s terms. They’ll happily go out to prowl about in the rain, so long as they’re the ones making the decision to go out. If you get them wet and they haven’t chosen to be wet, though, it’s another story.
By the way, Zapper, welcome. Your English looks perfectly fine to me… Remember, nobody can hear an accent online.
Not all cats hate water. Supposedly there’s a population of cats in Turkey that like to swim. I’m not just saying all Turkish Vans like water because it’s a learned behavior and not genetic.
Also, I think Megaira is onto something. Most people, including me, just assume that cats loathe water, so I’d imagine a lot of people just never even try to take them swimming. It’s possible a few of them might enjoy it, but my idea of a fun afternoon isn’t trying to get a cat to do something it may not want to do.
It might be interesting to take a kitten and introduce it to water in a friendly fashion and see if it became a water cat, but I don’t especially want the cat in the tub with me when I’m taking a bath, and I don’t think all the chemicals in a swimming pool would be good for kitty either.
Oh yeah… Tigers love water.
-fh
My cat Salem loves water. She gets in the wet shower after someone has been in it and skids around on the wetness, and she loves to play in the water bowl. She will also get up on the kitchen counter when the water is running and bat at the stream with her paws.
I had to get a heavy ceramic big-dog water bowl for the cats, because she kept tipping over the plastic water bowl, just to play in the water.
She’s a little goofy, though.
Tigers like to swim.
I’ve known cats that liked water. Our cat used to play in mudpuddles when she was little, but gradually stopped.
I think it’s not that they don’t like the water itself. It’s their fastidiousness about clean and dry fur.
“Gee, I’d love to jump in that mudpuddle, but it’s too much work to clean myself afterward.”
Nobody can deny that cats are also the laziest of domesticated creatures. Or at least mine is.
Damn, why didn’t I get a swimming cat? On the other hand, it wouldn’t be nice that kitty interrumpt relax time suddenly jumping into the tub, jeje.
Well, thank you all for these funny anecdotes, sincerely I’d never hear of water-lover cats, despite the fact that I’ve grow up playing around with all kind of kittens. I guess they had too many traumatic experiences involving water hoses and angry grannies.
Thanks for the welcome, Chronos. I like to learn all kind of things and I love this site. Besides, I improve my english
My best to you from Argentina.
My cat, Ramses, loves the water. He sits on the ledge of the tub while I take a shower and then plays around in the wet tub when I’m done. Occationally, he will hop into the tub while the shower is running and he just takes it all in stride. He’s always found playing in the toilet and sink. My cat also enjoys baths. I started my cat playing in the water when it was a kitten. When I first got Ramses, he was a pathetic little stray kitten and was quite dirty. I gave him a bath and did it in a gentle nonthreatening way. I really think that some cats hate the water because the owner expects the cat to freak out and can be a little too firm and tense when trying to bathe their cat. After my cat’s bath, I always wrap him up in a warm towel and sit on the couch with him in my lap to dry him off coddling him all the while. It seems like it’s just a matter of method to me.
I saw on a nature show a species of fishing cat in the jungles. They dunk their paws and sometimes head in little streams when they see a swimming meal come close enough. I have also seen tigers swimming and cooling off in big puddles. I think I also saw another medium-sized jungle cat (jaguar or something similar) on TV doing some swimming and bog-trotting through puddles and mud holes catching stranded fish, frogs, lizards or snakes. For house cats, I agree that those who seem not to like water probly just don’t like getting wet without it being their idea; same as ‘sitting’ or ‘rolling over’. I know my cat develloped a dislike for flowing water when the kitchen taps were turned on when she was close (they’re rather loud and splashy in a metal sink). The same cat will drink out of fish tanks when you hold her up there.
Bengal cats also love water. They’re pricey, but I hear they’re worth every penny.
Classic Warner brother animator Chuck Jones writes about a swimming cat of his acquaintance in his book Chuck Amuck.
Two of our cats love water – to watch it, that is. They’ll watch falling drops all day, play with a stream of water. Midnight regards the Washer and Dryer as her territory, and will lie atop the dryer watching the washing machine work, especially when it empties out. When the engineer came to install the new water heater, she sat on the dryer and watched his every move. It freaked him out.
I have taken to giving her baths/showers. These are necessary, because her tail is paralyzed, and it sometimes gets so dirty that we have to wash it. She doesn’t love it, but she tolerates it, especially because I hold her down forcibly (NB: We don’t declaw our cats). As noted above, it helps to put down a towel first (I also saturate it with catnip, which helps calm her down).
The most common reason I’ve heard is this–they don’t hate water. It’s like a human swimming in chocolate pudding. It would be fun, but it’s not worth the cleanup. All they have are their tongues, ya know.
I lived in Turkey when I was a child, and we did have a kitten that would actually swim in the ocean. Years later I learned about Turkish Vans.
Cats generally can tolerate extremes in temperature because their fur insulates them. Once wet, they lose that protection. (I read that in a book about feral cats.) Anyhow, I have three cats. Two hate any sort of water. But my old black cat Taz will stroll through the sprinkler, sit on the edge of the bathtub & play with bathwater, and likes to sit in the kitchen sink & watch the faucet drip.
My cat (one of them) also likes to do this. It’s cute and all but it had an unfortunate unintended consequence for my tabby.
I was taking a leak one day and looked down to see my cat standing on her back legs swatting at the stream of pee. I yelled at her of course and (as usual) she completely ignored me and continued with her playing. Trying not to pee all over the toilet and bathroom I had to sort of kneel and shove her away with my knees. Fortunately it seems she manged to only get one good swipe at the stream so cleaning her wasn’t too bad.
Needless to say I pay better attention when going to the bathroom nowadays or just keep the door shut (which obviously bothers her as well as evidenced by the scratching at the door or the paw stuck under it swatting at air).
My cats both LOVE the water. As several other poster have recounted, my cats are also fascinated by the shower running, water dripping, people peeing, etc., and often jump up to whatever the best vantage point is to watch these things. They also love to jump into a recently turned-off shower to skid around, or curl up in the bathroom sink after we’re done using it (an action which is actively discouraged by my wife and I.)
As for bathing them- they love that too. The trick is, I think, to fill the tub up however much you’re going to BEFORE bringing the cat into the bathroom. If you start with water in the tub, you circumvent the noise of the tap freaking out your cat. YMMV
Where did you guys get cats like **that?[b/] I only got my old cat to get even a little wet when he was at the vets, unconscious and so didn’t really have much of a say.
Kinsey:
My cats did that too. I got a large water bottle for them (the kind you use for hamsters only bigger). They drink from it just fine and the water stays nice & clean. Also holds more than a dish.
Dijon Warlock:
I have two. Wouldn’t trade them for anything. And they do love water!
One of my cats doesn’t love the water, but he’s forever climbing up on to the ledge of the pool, so he’s obviously not afraid of it. In a shocking turn of events last summer, he pestered my mom non-stop as she tried to skim the pool, and, uh, was pushed in. He didn’t like it, but he stopped playing with the pool skimer.