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Cats and drinking water - help needed

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Hi

 

1st of all soooo happy us pet owners have a special part of the forum!!! only found it by accident!!

 

Well my cat missy is now 16 months and she doesnt drink much water she never has done.

 

She will lap up whiskers milk, but a bowl of water will go untouched she will sometimes sip dripping tap or condensation on windows or around the toilet.

 

I got one of them water fountains but she was not impressed!!!

 

Just wondered if any one had any ideas

 

FA and Missy

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Hi,

 

One of our cats would much rather eat than drink, whilst the other would rather drink than eat (works out well when feeding time comes round!)

 

I wouldn't worry, personally, I wouldn't give Missy the milk in case she thinks she'll leave the water until she gets something better. You could just make things worse for yourself by letting her get fussy.

 

I'd just make sure that the bowl is always full and the water is always fresh(ditch the water fountain if she doesn't like it, a bowl will do fine) so that she can drink if she needs to. Change the water in the bowl as often as you remember or every couple of hours if possible.

 

She won't hurt herself, if she get thirsty she'll drink. Does she eat much? Does she have dry or tinned food?

 

If she doesn't eat a lot and/or eats tinned food, she's likely to need less water than if she was to eat dry food.

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if you feed her on tinned cat food you have the answer, tinned cat food contains about 80% moisture.Hope this helps.

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My four prefer puddles, dripping taps and the fish pond to the nice clean fresh water supplied for them. I do leave a bowl outside to catch rain water and they seem to like that too (particularly if it has dead leaves and a bit of green stuff in it!) :loopy:

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Well she eats whiskers / felix pouchers soi guess they contain water.

 

She is fine just understand water is important for her.

 

But she wees a lot so i guess there is some water going in!!

 

FA

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Parcher - ours too! :lol:

 

Firthandy - I wouldn't worry, if she eats pouches she will need far less water than she would if she ate dry food.

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Cats drink when your not looking!

Don't worry, she will be fine.

:)

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Hi

 

If she's happy, healthy and doing all the normal things that cats do (including the 3 Ps- playing, pooing and peeing) then I don't think you need worry. As other people have said, meaty cat food contains lots of water, as does fresh meat.

 

Add this together with the fact that cat kidneys are much more efficient at filtering out the waste products and recycling the water than human ones are, and I think it's safe to say that Missy is either getting all of the water she needs from her food and milk, or she's sneaking some water from unidentified sources while you're not looking. My lot ask to go outside to drink from my water feature and ignore the big bowls of clean water in the house- it must taste better.

 

One of the things that you could do to improve her diet though- introduce some of a good quality dry food to help keep her teeth clean and reduce potential problems for the future. If you do this you'll find that she'll start drinking a lot more- vets recommend dry diets partly because of the dental benefits, and partly because it works out a lot cheaper than wet food.

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Medusa is good on her knowledge of cats.Like she advised good quality dry food is best.Pets n pals at chapeltown have a good range.

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We have two cats, both on dry food, they drink a lot, but not from their bowls. Any scummy puddle will do, or a dice with death drinking from our lurcher's bowl. They also drink from the toilet, and will appear to do battle with the hosepipe, getting soaked in the process. Life is never boring as that's just the cat's idiosyncracies, we have three dogs and three kids too.

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Ours drinks from the pond; endless hours of fun as we try and make her jump so she falls in... (would serve her right for shunning the clean water bowl)

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