What is it with cats and water?

[TimO]

Talisker always has fresh clean water to drink, but this afternoon, after winging at me for a fair time, decided to go out through his cat flap, and drink water from a puddle on a paving slab.  After this he came back in again.

It's the only time I've seen him go out today, it's been cold and/or wet all day, and he didn't do anything else, go to the loo, go for a hunt etc.

Why is it cats seem to prefer their water from anywhere but a bowl of water?

[border-rider]

One of ours insists on drinking the condensation on the windows.

The other sits in the sink in the utility room (where their bowls are) and squeaks pitifully, or drinks from the birdbath

[ChrisO]

Ours will drink from her bowl, but her favourite place is the glass of water that I leave at the side of my bed.

[border-rider]

Oh yes.  leaving water on the bedside table results in "sharing" it with a furry friend.  Every time.

[Pingu]

The fresh tap water may have a trace of chlorine in it.

[TimO]

The fresh tap water may have a trace of chlorine in it.

I've heard this before, but it doesn't make any difference if I leave the water for a few days.  In  general this seems like a bad idea, since the water ends up with a covering of dust, hair etc.  At least the rainwater he was just drinking was freshly rained!

[redshift]

Yep, it's the chlorine.  The glass beside your bed will gradually release any gases that affect the taste - just wait overnight and you can usually see the bubbles form on the side of the glass.

There's a (clean) paint tray out in our back garden kept topped up by rain water, which Bonnington and any visiting moggies use for drinking.  They seem to like the tray better than a bowl - I presume that's to do with the height of the edge.  Only when the weather's very dry do we need to keep it topped up with boiled water.

[nuttycyclist]

My sister-in-law's cat will only drink from the cold tap whilst sitting in the sink.

[TimO]

I just remembered hat my parents old cat would normally drink from the bird bath in the garden.  My Mum filled it up with clean tap water everyday, so I don't think Chlorine had anything to do with that.

[Palinurus]

Our cat sits in the bath waiting for someone to appear and turn the tap on. We put out water but he doesn't touch it.

[little miss mac]

Our cats decided that my bedside pint glass was theirs, and I wasn't keen on sharing, so they won  . So there's one in our bedroom and one in the kitchen. (On the kitchen surface. I'm sure clean freaks would freak, but it doesn't bother me...)

Apparently cats don't like water to be near their food - or loo, who can blame them - which is why we positioned the second pint glass well away from either.

[Mrs Pingu]

The fresh tap water may have a trace of chlorine in it.

I've heard this before, but it doesn't make any difference if I leave the water for a few days.  In  general this seems like a bad idea, since the water ends up with a covering of dust, hair etc.  At least the rainwater he was just drinking was freshly rained!

Depending on where you live and how much organic matter starts off in your water you can get traces of other things like phenols in the water (as a by product of the chlorination process) which might be less likely to evaporate overnight.
You could always trying collecting rainwater with a bottle & a funnel!

[TimO]

Apparently cats don't like water to be near their food - or loo, who can blame them - which is why we positioned the second pint glass well away from either.

That's interesting, his water bowl is right next to his food, and both are equidistant from his litter tray, which is in the utility area, along with his cat flap to the outside world.  I'll try putting the water somewhere else and see what happens.

Having said that, he'll try and drink from the sink, and that's only a couple of feet from his food, although also several feet above his food, in case that makes some difference.

[ChrisO]

Interesting about the chlorine etc but the slightly odd twist there is that she only ever drinks from my glass. Never from Mrs C's.

My glass is a metal beaker type (not dissimilar to her bowl) and it isn't very wide - she has to squeeze her face inside to reach the water.

Trying to work out cats is the path to madness.

[Mrs Pingu]

I sometime feed a neighbour's cat when she's away for the weekend - he likes his water from a glass tumbler left on the hearth.
We have a chinese takeaway container on our hearth as well as a bowl between the 2 food bowls. I reckon the chinese water gets more of a hammering.

[TimO]

A lot of cats seem to like their water from cups, I looked after a friends cat for a few days when her Landlord was doing some work on her flat (which had a "no pets" rule !)  The cat would only drink her water from one of the cups that her owner used as a "cone" to skate around (for some reason Ikea cups are popular to use as markers when skating slalom in Hyde Park, and probably elsewhere).

Maybe it's at more of a convenient height for their heads, and works better when you have to lap your water.

Oddly enough, I realised that Talisker is quite happy to drink milk from a bowl 2 inches away from his food.  Maybe milk doesn't count as "water" but as food ?

[TimO]

That was weird, I enabled the "VET" mode on the cat flap, since Talisker is going for a checkup this morning, and this stops him from getting out and disappearing for hours.  After he'd eaten some of his breakfast I guess he wanted a drink, and since he couldn't go out using the cat flap, was forced to drink from his bowl.

First he "scraped" in front of the bowl using his front paws, then he actually dipped his front paw in the water, and licked it off a couple of times.  After that, he drank from the bowl as normal.

I decided to give in to him, and let him outside anyway (it's several hours before the vet), and he wandered off for a few minutes, presumably to find a puddle to drink from.

[FatBloke]

My sister-in-law's cat will only drink from the cold tap whilst sitting in the sink.

+1

[mike]

My sister-in-law's cat will only drink from the cold tap whilst sitting in the sink.

+1

how the hell do you get in the sink?

[PaulR]

My parents had a cat that used to drink from the loo

nice

[TimO]

My parents had a cat that used to drink from the loo

Pretty common with dogs, I suspect most cats don't do it, since being somewhat smaller, they run quite a high risk of falling in!

[PaulR]

Oh, yes, fell in it did, more than once

[docsquid]

All our four like drinking from the pond in preference to the bowl.  Cindy likes paddling in the pond too.  Squeaker likes to drink from the bidet tap, although she isn't very good at it, and tends to bite at the water rather than drink it.  Ozzy is the only one who doesn't really mind where the water comes from.

We solved the problem of cats drinking the bedside glass of water by putting it in a bidon...

[FatBloke]

Just taken <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/T8dyDoSf2DA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/T8dyDoSf2DA&rel=1</a> video of our cat.

Note the shortened tail!   

[TimO]

Just taken <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/T8dyDoSf2DA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/T8dyDoSf2DA&rel=1</a> video of our cat.

Note the shortened tail!   

LOL, doesn't (s)he get a bit wet on the face fur, drinking like that?

I put a bowl of water upstairs, just inside the bathroom door, for Talisker.  He drank more from it in the first few days than he did in a week from the bowl next to his food.  Since I refilled it, he seems to have decided to ignore it.

Changeable little furry bugger.

Ah well, he has anything up to about five bowls in the kitchen anyway, so one more is no big issue (Five bowls are: Iams, wet food for breakfast, cat milk, water, and if he's managed to beg some bits of ham/beef/chicken/cheese from me making my sandwiches).