toilet drinking and cut whiskers?

My cat Crookshanks hasn't drank out of the toilet in a long time, but recently she started doing it again. Does she do that because her water isn't fresh? We clean her bowl pretty often.

My aunt has a fourteen week old kitten and the other day we noticed that some of her whiskers we short. It almost looked like someone cut them, and my aunt thought that maybe her godson cut them because he doesn't like cats and had been picking on the kitten. But then I went to Petco the other day and I saw another kitten with short whiskers there. My cat never had really short whiskers as a kitten, but do some kittens cut their own whiskers with their claws or something by accident?

Crookshanks (love that name!) may not think her water is fresh enough . That doesn't mean you are a bad mommy, or don't keep it clean enough for the Pope to drink out of...some cats just prefer "running" water, and the toilet is about as close as they can get indoors. They do have kitty water fountain dishes, so rest assured you are not alone. If she is insisting on drinking out of the toilet, just be sure not to have any of those self-cleaning disk type things in it, or use really strong cleaning products so she doesn't accidently poison herself.

I have heard of mother cats chewing off kittens' whiskers to try to keep them close, but it doesn't sound like your aunt's kitten is with her feline mother. If her godson "hates cats" as she said, I would suggest making sure the kitten isn't around the boy - ever. I'm sure she would hate it if something worse than cutting whiskers happened...

Whiskers are important to cats and trimming them short can cause the cat to become disoriented and even fall over (depending on how short they are trimmed) At night, when a cat moves around the room he uses his whiskers to test the air current and can tell when the air is moving around and when it is stationary, thus he knows where the objects are in the room so he won't run into them. And though it is true that whiskers do fall out and grow back, I would be concerned that someone (the godson perhaps) is trimming the whiskers off.

Toilet water is full of contaminents from when the humans have defecated, such as e-coli. Unless you scrub your toilet after each and every time someone uses it, and then rinse it throughly each time to get out every last drop of cleaning residue, no animal should be drinking from a toilet.

Many cats will not drink from a water bowl next to their food. Try moving the water bowl across the room, or in another room. Have more than one water "station". My cats love to drink from a water bowl kept in the bathtub. That's the one they use the most, and one will meow and meow if it is empty. Try something like that. Some cats like those pet fountains. Do NOT use plastic bowls. Water takes on the taste of plastic, which certainly repels me, and surely does cats too.

I'd not ever leave the kitten with the boy- never, ever.

I just have one question for you Glanesgranny, Does this mean that my kitty shouldn't clean himself or eat dead animals. Oh Heavens he could get e-coli.... I even let him eat bugs. Bacteria is everywhere! You can get e-coli from licking the floor or looking at beef wrong. OH PLEASE I have never heard of any animal dying from e-coli. What about lions? Zoo's don't cook meat to a proper temperature, they just feed the animals. Cats are naturally carnivores. Just keep your REAL children, not your fur children from drinking out of the toilet and you should be fine.

Nippiesmommy,

Yes, there are many types of bacteria, some good, some benign and some bad. Different types of bacteria are everywhere, each supposed to be in it's own proper place. The bacteria a cat would ingest from normal grooming after being in normal environmental situation would not be bad for the cats. Any bacteria on live bugs would not be a problem. Fresh killed bugs are a goood snack for cats (provided it's not a roach who just ate roach poison). E-coli originate in the intestinal tract, then gets on the solid waste. E-coli in human waste is bad to ingest. Humans and animals have gotten ill from food or water contaminated with feces, whether it was e-coli or some other fecal bacteria. There are other organisms in fecal matter that is not to be ingested, such as giardia, which mammals can get from drinking water contaminated with it. Cats get it too. see http://www.vetcentric.com/userportal...e=EncycIllness "Giardia is a parasite found in the intestines of humans and most types of domesticated animals throughout the world, including cats. It is also a common cause of diarrhea in cats, especially among cats in catteries and group housing situations....Transmission occurs when the cat swallows the Giardia cysts that are found in the feces of an infected animal, or in contaminated food or water sources. The cysts cause infection when swallowed by a cat." It is normal for people and cats to have a certain level of e-coli and giardia in their intestines, but they are not supposed to ingest them via their mouths to then pass into their stomachs. Natural amounts ok in intestines. Bad in stomachs.

When animals, such as cats and lions eat live prey, or already killed slabs of meat, they are eating the flesh part of the animal, not it's solid wastes product. There is a big difference. If the raw meat served to cats, or lions, was contaminated in the processing plant, or the food prep area, then they could get ill, and it has happened to zoo animals and household pets fed contaminated, raw meat. Not all meat is contaminated with e-coli or contaminated with anything at all, but some is. Fresh killed animals eaten immediately (such as a cat killing and eating a mouse)would not be a problem. Carniverous animals don't naturally drink from toilets contaminated with particles of human fecal matter and cleaning products. They don't drink much at all, as a matter of fact, getting their moisture from the blood of the animals they kill and eat. Cats don't eat already dead animals lying around decaying. They eat fresh killed animals. They don't eat human fecal matter.

Responsible zoos *do* keep meat at proper temperatures before feeding them to the animals. OH PLEASE, as you would say, where do you come up with your ideas that zoos "don't cook meat to a proper temperature" and that they feed partly cooked meat at all? Again, there is a difference between properly handled raw meat and contamination with fecal matter. Fecal matter is in toilets. It is not supposed to be ingested. Read about the great care taken in food prep and food serving to tigers at a zoo here= http://www.5tigers.org/Zoos/Husbandr...al/husman4.htm Here is an except for your enlightenment:
"Food preparation and handling is an area of special concern. If the diet is mixed within the institutions, all ingredients should be scrupulously maintained free of contamination from chemicals, pests or microorganisms. Avoid allowing raw diets to warm to room temperature for long periods of time prior to feeding. The practice promotes the rapid growth of bacterial organisms. Frozen ingredients should be properly thawed to reduce bacterial growth and diets fed as soon as possible after mixing. Commercial diets are thawed under clean conditions, free from external contamination, and fed immediately after thawing. Some institutions actually feed the diet while still frozen allowing tigers to eat as it thaws."

Unless you keep in frequent touch with many vets or other animal health workers or zoo officials, getting detailed information, it's not likely you would know what various animals around the world and in different environments have become ill from or what they died from. It's not like vets report to the newpapers, and have it printed, every time one of their animal patients gets ill or dies, detailing the cause of death. Just because you never heard of something, does not mean it is not true or doesn't exist. Also, most people do not have autopsies done on their pets when they die, to detemine the exact cause of death, so even the vets wouldn't know for sure.

Toilet water is not good for any creature to drink due to the fecal contaminants plus traces of cleaning products in them.

Thank you all very much for your advice. Ever since I wrote the thread, Crookshanks hasn't been drinking out of the toilet. I basically think that she saw the toilet open and stepped up to opportunity. I do try and keep the toilet lid down, but with two brothers in the house.....! But, like I said, she hasn't been drinking out of the toilet since I posted the thread.

As for my aunt's kitten with the cut whiskers... I told her your advice.

Thanks again!

Tigger used to trim Scooter's whiskers constantly, & she wasn't even his mommy! :LOL: She nips at them, but doesn't trim them anymore, but there are a few stubs here & there. Now, her new thing is to trim his eyebrows to the point where they are barely there.:tounge2: I have a video of her doing this, too.