Water Flavouring Idea, Please help!

Hi My cat became blocked up with struvite crystals and urinary tract problems from years of eating dry food and had to have a few operations to unblock, I found out this is because basically he wasn't getting enough moisture in his diet.

Although my cat and most cats have access to fresh water daily, they don't naturally drink it as in the wild they get most of their moisture from hunting their food. Even dehydrated cats may not drink water.

To get my cat to drink more I mixed a small amount of tuna water or chicken broth into his water bowl and he goes mad for it and drinks loads. Now I know this isn't ideal because it is only possible if you are eating chicken or fish etc and have some left over and also because they aren't ideal as they can have too much salt or other ingredients which cats shouldn't consume.

On that basis I want to create a safe water flavouring to encourage cats to drink more water. I wondered if anyone had any idea if there is currently anything like this on the market and if you think it is a good idea or not? If you would buy it? or any other feedback!

Thanks!

John

The best way for cats to get more water is to feed them wet food. They aren't big on drinking.

But, if you want to provide a flavored water, boiling chicken or other meat and using the boiling water (after it's cooled down of course) should work, without a lot of additives or salt.

I don't think a product of this nature could be shelf-stable without a lot of additives so I don't think I'd buy anything like that.

Willowy said:

The best way for cats to get more water is to feed them wet food. They aren't big on drinking.

But, if you want to provide a flavored water, boiling chicken or other meat and using the boiling water (after it's cooled down of course) should work, without a lot of additives or salt.

I don't think a product of this nature could be shelf-stable without a lot of additives so I don't think I'd buy anything like that.

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I agree about feeding them wet food. I know many owners feed a dry food diet only as they see it as convenient, so really I want to make something that these owners can just pick off the shelf and add to their cats water for convenience and hopefully educate these owners so in future they may decide to buy wet food instead because they would now understand the importance of providing their cats with a diet high in moisture!

I'm frustrated that I wasn't aware of the potential problems feeding a dry food diet can cause, the marketing of the products on TV and in the shop gave me no reason to suspect they would do harm but yet after reading up I realise that the big companies pulled the wool over my eyes and are looking just to make money at the expense of my cats health.

That is a fair point about the additives, I will have to research that and see if I can prolong the shelf life of such a product without compromising the quality and the cats health in the long term.

Thanks for your input!

Actually if it was in powdered form it shouldn't need any additives or preservatives as dehydrating it would preserve it in the first place, that way it could just be mixed with water. If it was in a bottle and you added a few drops to the water then that would probably need additives.

Very interesting idea

How often would you need to change the water completely and put fresh down ? Every day ?
How would this work with cat water fountains ? Would it clog the filter up ?

There are flavored water for pets on the market. I don't know how many of the businesses below are still in business. Mollie's I think is not.

http://inventorspot.com/articles/bottled_pet_water_18506

GemsGem said:

Very interesting idea

How often would you need to change the water completely and put fresh down ? Every day ?
How would this work with cat water fountains ? Would it clog the filter up ?

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Yeah you would still need to provide fresh water daily, I'm guessing if it was in a concentrated liquid which you added a few drops then it wouldn't affect a fountain, if it was in powder form then I'd have to experiment with that to ensure it wouldn't clog up any filters and that it dissolved well.

Raintyger said:

There are flavored water for pets on the market. I don't know how many of the businesses below are still in business. Mollie's I think is not.

http://inventorspot.com/articles/bottled_pet_water_18506

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Thanks for the link, they all seem to be pre mixed, so you're paying for the water as well and you'd need several bottles instead of 1 concentrated solution or powder. Interesting to see what they are flavoured with though, thanks for that, both given me things to think about :-)

Compounding pharmacies can make medicines taste like chicken or tuna for pets. I wonder if whatever flavoring they're using for the pills would work?

Raintyger said:

 
Compounding pharmacies can make medicines taste like chicken or tuna for pets. I wonder if whatever flavoring they're using for the pills would work?

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Oh that's cool, I'll have a look into that thanks!