I was wondering how my cats went through their water so quickly, even after I bought them a bigger bowl, so I decided to watch. Apparently, my divakitty goes up to the full bowl, dips her paw in, then shakes it, scattering water around the room. Sometimes she repeats this; sometimes she dips her paw in again and scoops water out onto the floor. Some people have suggested that she might not like tap water, and would prefer bottled water. It looks to me like she’s just playing. Is there a way to stop it?
Two of our cats do this as well.
The idea they might prefer bottled water doesn’t make sense, especially if they’ve never tasted bottled water. Besides, much of the time tap water is better (and safer) than bottled water. Our cats drink the same tap water we do, filtered through a PUR water filter. They don’t complain.
I would not worry about it.
Now if they did this with a fine chablis, I would be a bit concerned …
Sounds to me like she’s playing.
I give my cats bottled or filtered water (lots of chlorine in the water here, I don’t drink it myself because it smells more like you’d ought to swim in it), and one of them plays with it, so he does go through it really fast.
But hey, even if it’s tap water, if the cat really needs water she will drink it.
She might like a fountain although personally I think it looks like a footbath. (We are planning to get our cats one for Christmas. We have told them Christmas is later this month. Okay, so we’re lying to our cats.)
Heidi does this, too, and we have no idea why. She leaves little wet pawprints around the kitchen when she is through, and to be honest, I have never noticed whether she actually drinks any of the water.
Occasionally I will toss an ice cube in her water bowl. The “Ting!” sound it makes brings her or one of the other cats running to see what new toy we have given them. Of course, they must then fish it out, which they often succeed at, leaving a melting ice cube on the kitchen floor for us to deal with: “Oh, boy? There is an ice cube on the floor. I am finished playing with it. Take care of it. Now.”
My Sweetie call the cats our living, breathing home entertainment center.
Yeah, when we put an ice cube in the cat’s water dish, he feels compelled to remove it.
“What the hell are you putting in my water?!” he must be wondering 
My cat Scooter has always done that. She is 4 and I have never been able to break her of it. It annoyed me at first, but not anymore, I figure it is one of her quirks. I think she does it for extra clean feet :D. She also paws food out of the bowl and onto the floor. None of my other cats do either of these things.
(I have that cat fountain- my cats like it and actually drink more water because if it)
My black longhair does that too. She just loves playing in water. She even used to climb in the shower with me. I have self-filling water bowls with reservoirs so there is usually some water left when she’s done splashing. I also have mats under the bowls to soak up some of the excess. The rest I just mop up. I just accept it like I do other family members’ quirks.
Our male cat MUST have a milk jug ring in either the food or water dish, preferably all three. We have two food bowls because we have two cats, and they won’t share the food. If he finds that the bowls are all devoid of milk jug rings, he goes to the nearest human and cries that he’s hungry or thirsty, but the food or water is Unacceptable, and will we please bless it with a milk jug ring. Nobody will get any peace until there’s a milk jug ring in one of the bowls.
Both cats have pretty much given up drinking from the water bowl in the kitchen, even though it must have a milk jug ring if at all possible. Instead, they both prefer to drink out of my husband’s glass of water that he keeps by his TV watching seat. He, of course, doesn’t like them to do that, so now he has to have TWO glasses of water there, one for the cats and one for himself. The boycat does not insist on a milkjug ring in THIS water source, but I figure it’s only a matter of time.
My kitten does this too. He would also scratch at the bowl and slide it around the floor, so we bought a double dog bowl in a solid metal holder that doesn’t slide. Now he perches his front paws right on the edge of the water bowl and drinks from the far side… No, I don’t have a clue why he does this, but he’s stopped dipping his paws.
That’s easily one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard, and I’ve worked in a vet clinic, and had cats all my life.
Is this the same ring that is left on the milk jug after you take the cap off? What do they do with it?
Sometimes, though, you have to be careful with this type of thing. It’s not quite the same thing as this, but we got our cats two “water coolers”; they look somewhat like a regular water dish, but with a tiny Sparkletts water bottle behind and above it. As the cats drink, fresh water flows into the bowl. The trouble was, however, that as the water level got lower, air bubbles would rise to the surface, just as in an old-fashioned office water cooler. Our youngest cat believed very strongly that these bubbles should be attacked. Which he’d proceeded to do, usually knocking the entire thing base over apex and spilling all the water on the floor.
My cats do this too. I have two water bowls, one with a jug attached so it will refill - it looks like a water cooler and the other is one of the fountain ones that you have to plug in so it circulates the water. The fountains are actually rather annoying, it still gets dirty and needs to be cleaned out, plus if all the water runs out it makes a horrible noise. Maybe a better one would hold more water and shut off automatically? Anyway, I had that one sitting on my counter for a while needing to be cleaned and was just using the other one. Once I cleaned the fountain and put it back on the floor I kept finding cat toys in it on a daily basis.
The other water dish gets a crowd. They will all gather around it and play in the water. I suppose they may be talking about the previous night’s episode of Lost or Desperate Housewives but I’m not so sure. Usually they will sit there and stick their paws in it and pull it toward them, then another cat will do the same. Last night someone, probably the kitten, knocked the whole thing over (fortunately the jug part wasn’t full). She then played in the spilled water. The kitten will also try to get in the shower with me to play with the water.
I have one cat that dips his paws in the water bowl. My other cat must remove the pieces of food from the dish and put them on the floor before he will eat them. My kitchen floor is always a friggin’ mess, but it’s the price I pay for receiving their unconditional love, being covered in cat hair at all times, and being walked all over … hey, wait a minute! 
My cat Lilo has some unusual habits involving water, too. When I’m in the bathroom, she visits me. She’ll jump in the bathtub. She wants me to take a shower, then turn off the water and get out. This is because she wants catch the dripping water on her paw and then lick it off.
She also likes to jump up into the bathroom sink. There, she wants me to turn the water on to a tiny stream so she can drink it.
Maybe an explanation can be found here. In short, perhaps it is just to allow your kitty to see where the top of the water is, so that he doesn’t stick his entire head in.
Ja, Tosha’s a slob, too. We’ll watch her play in the water - more than once I’ve been cooking, hear “splish, plop, ploosh” sounds, look over like “the hell?” and it’s Tosh.
When she’s serious about drinking water, she’ll lay down on her side and sort of drape herself over the waterbowl. I don’t know why; she eats from the food bowl using the normal crouch. But she won’t drink that way, even though it’s the same sort of bowl. She gets the whole side of her face and neck wet after she’s had a good drink.
One time, she must have played in the water, then walked into something, because we came home from vacation and saw patty paw prints that trailed up the stairs and into our bedroom. Although they were cute, they did get cleaned up later.
I don’t get what’s weird about this. Don’t ALL cats have to have bizarro preferences for our entertainment and frustration?
Cara (our retarded kitty) needs milk jug rings, too. She carries them around like they are her kittens. She also tosses them into the air to play catch with them, and occasionally will bring them to us and insist that we carry them around for a while. If we set them down, she will pick them up and bring them back to us. If we toss them, she will fetch them.
Tee plays in the water, and likes to dunk his paws in my coffee cups, too, then he licks the liquid off his paws and (I’m pretty sure) laughs at me when I make “yuck” noises and go get fresh coffee. He’s another one who scoops food out of the bowl and eats it off the floor. My husband has a theory about the waterplay - since Tee’s the only cat who has ever lived outdoors (he’s a rescued stray) and the only one who paws the water, the WryGuy thinks Tee is “breaking the ice” on the surface of a puddle to get to the liquid water below.
It’s not unusual to me. Our dearly departed cat, Pants, loved the milk jug ring. It was his favorite toy. Sometimes he’d eat it and then puke it back up again, because that’s what cats do. When he died, I buried him with a milk jug ring.
Gail, your post reminded me that I’ve caught one of our cats turning on the faucet for our reverse osmosis drinking water system, taking a drink, and turning it back off again.
I should have clarified that the milk jug ring did not kill him.
My cats do this too, or at least some of them do. Scrubby always does it before he drinks, and I do think it’s a depth perception thing with him, because he’s very careful to just skim the surface with his paw. He looks rather like he’s skipping stones.
Some of the other cats insist on batting the water that drips from the faucet. They somehow fling it all over hell and back, and then I have to wipe everything down. (But hey! It’s clean then!)
My sister used to have a beautiful cat who would only drink water from a tall vintage Fiesta vase that cost a small fortune. She (the cat, I mean) did the most delicate toe-dip-examine-toe-lick thing I ever saw. I don’t know how she survived using her method.