Kitty Won't Drink...At All

Hi there everyone. I've got a 10 month old kitty who just will not drink water. At all. I've tried everything I can think of, changing the water twice a day, cleaning the water bowl daily, I even bought a pet fountain but the most she's done is paw at it and walk away. She use to play with the tap when it's on but she doesn't even do that anymore. I have her on wet food, the stew kind that had more water in it and she'll eat all of that but I don't think that's enough. I don't know if this issue is related but she's been constipated for the last little while as well. When she does go her poops are small and dark, not quite black but darker brown.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to get her to drink more?  

I've found wet food eaters tend to drink little to no water. If you consider a cat catching a prey animal, that tends to be around 60% moisture, but the commercial wet foods available usually have 78-82% water. That's already more than a cat would get from a usual meal. A lot of us here also water down our cats' food depending on how tolerant they are of it. I can make one cat's food into a soup where there's almost as much water as there is food, but the other cat, if I add more than a table spoon (she gets about 1.5 tablespoons of food per meal) of water, she snubs it.

When I fed dry, one cat would drink water constantly and the other would only drink water if he was feeling sick. Now that they both eat wet, neither ever approaches the water bowls or fountain.

Having fresh water available all the time, and the running water like the fountain is really the best you can do to entice her to drink. Some people may also make a plain chicken broth for their cats so they'll lap it up for the flavour, and of course stewing meat and bones can source good nutrition to add to the water.

If the food and water situation have been the same since her regular poops and constipated ones, you may want to call and ask your vet about it. I'm sure other members who have more experience with constipation will come by with their input too.

I agree with everything Pinkdagger said.  My cats are on a all canned diet and I hardly ever catch them drinking water.  However I don't think any of them have ever been constipated.  Not sure how normal that is.  

To echo pinkdagger, if you're feeding only canned, then your cat is getting enough water. This article expands on it: http://www.thecatsite.com/a/tips-to-increase-your-cat-s-water-intake

I also add more water into my cats food just to be sure. You'll have to experiment to find their tolerance level.