Photo above: the bigger the better! What can I say about cat water bowls? Well at least four things come to mind.
The first is quite an interesting one. I place my cat’s water bowl quite a long way away from the food bowls. It is not in the same room. This might help cats to drink more as wild cats drink and eat in separate places. Cats are not that good at drinking water probably because in the wild they get a lot of moisture from their prey and some cats live in very arid conditions and can survive with a very low water intake – the sand cat for example.
Another thing that might be worth trying to get your cat to drink more is to use a clear bowl. Why is it important to try and get your cat to drink more? Urinary tract disease is the most common of all the cat’s illnesses. One problem is that the very convenient dry cat food available today results in a cat’s water intake dropping because a cat does not compensate sufficiently for the lack of water in the dry kibble by drinking more. A natural “cure” for UTIs is drinking a lot of water.
A third point is that feline acne can be caused by plastic water bowls because of trapped bacteria in the microscopic structure of the plastic. It is also claimed that ceramic cat water bowls and food bowls do not cause feline acne – see feline acne treatment.
One last point. Nearly all cat bowls are conventional in shape. Cats can be messy eaters. I have always thought that the cat bowl designers should think about how to minimise food escaping the bowl or being forced from the bowl. One way is to build in an overhanging lip as cats tend to push food up the side of the bowl. One of the bowls below has such a lip. Of course cats drink water using their tongue and only the tongue touches the water so a lip at the top is not required in a water bowl but these bowls are often duel purpose.
USA Market
I have selected some bowls from Amazon.com. I have deliberately not selected water fountains as I don’t like them and in any case this article is about cat water bowls, plain and simple (except for one called a “water fountain”. There are two ceramic ones in the carousel below. I would pick one of these to play safe if you have the funds. I would certainly pick one, if your cat has feline acne.
Update 5th September 2015 – Amazon have changed their coding and all the widgets no longer work! Great. I don’t have time to fix them all so I apologies. Thank you for visiting anyway.
One of the featured bowls is called, “Road Refresher No Spill Portable Pet Bowl”. From 23 reviews on Amazon it has a 4 star rating, which is good in my opinion. It is made from polypropylene. It is for cats and dogs which suggest a certain amount of compromise. It is good for travelling as movement doesn’t result in a spillage. The bowl fastens to a carpeted floor with Velcro (not sure how useful that is except in the car). Here it is:
Terribly sorry – Amazon changed everything and their widgets don’t work anymore and I don’t have the time or inclination to repair them.
Of course all the products are for the North American market.
UK Market
Below is a Amazon carousel of ten cat water bowls available in the UK:
Once again I am terribly sorry – Amazon changed everything and their widgets don’t work anymore and I don’t have the time or inclination to repair them.
For me the best one is probably the high sided one as it allows more water to be put down. The water is less liable to become stale etc. The bowl in the picture at the top of this page, which is not manufactured as a bowl for cats (as far as I can see), is in many ways ideal. This is the Amazon.co.uk one I am talking about:
There is no customer feedback for it though.
Associated Page: Cat Drinking Water
External links:
From Cat Water Bowls to Cat Health Problems
