Tap water or Other?

Oh, and other foodie recommendations:

I've heard good things about Purina One (I think Kai recommended that too) dry food, and this is available from some supermarkets
and wet food - the best quality ones I've found in the supermarkets are HiLife Pate and pouches. But online - Nutro wet, and Animonda and Miamor are quite good too, and easier on the pocket!..

I use tap water--we really don't have enough money to buy tons of bottled water for the cats every week. Does anybody know if boiling the water beforehand would help and make it safer/healthier for them?

I use filtered water the smae that I drink./...

I would read the hi life , if memory serves they do have a low end line and a quality line... wet food cats always smell more than dry , homemade or raw... but unless you want to cook or uncook for kitty wet is way better than dry... In a dry food look for the least amount of grains..

Thanks Everyone!

Some brilliant advice there, this forum is great, will scour the pet shops for a more healthier brand with the ones mentioned in mind, and will probebly still give tap water and maybe try bottled to see if it makes a difference.
Sometimes you dont always notice them drinking so he mite be doing it when im not looking.He was brought up on tap water near to us (yorkshire,UK) so it might just be me worrying too much.
Will also see what the vet says when we take him on tues, next thing will be how to keep him calm during the injections...........

Originally Posted by bengalsmum

Thanks Everyone!

Some brilliant advice there, this forum is great, will scour the pet shops for a more healthier brand with the ones mentioned in mind, and will probebly still give tap water and maybe try bottled to see if it makes a difference.
Sometimes you dont always notice them drinking so he mite be doing it when im not looking.He was brought up on tap water near to us (yorkshire,UK) so it might just be me worrying too much.
Will also see what the vet says when we take him on tues, next thing will be how to keep him calm during the injections...........

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A good vet can do it quick and easy kitty will hardly know anything happened

Since we got the pet fountain, I notice Bijou and Mika are both drinking more water. I don't know if it tastes better for being filtered through the charcoal or not but they definitely are drinking more.

I filter my tap water at home, so that is what my cats drink. I also have a pet fountain, which they love, and the water is filtered once again there with another charcoal filter. I was thinking that perhaps your cats do not like the bowl of sitting water.

My cats drink the tap water. I had the well water tested before moving in, and according to the inspectors, it was very good. They do like to drink from the petmate fountain which has a charcoal filter. One likes to drink from the toilet. Before we moved, had a filter and gave them the city water, which didn't seem too chlorinated, they didn't drink as much. Def switch him off of whiskas-mine only get that as a snack treat occ.

Whatever is easier. We have a filter tap and a normal tap and I just give them whatever I put my hand on first.

The water at our house is really rotten. There are large amounts or rust & Nitrates in it. We don't drink it & none of our pets do either. The kitteis have a Petmate Fresh Flow Fountain that they love to drink from, but also have several bowls of water & a watering can(don't worry, no harmful chemicals were ever used in it, bought just for my babies! ). We get water from my grandma(who lives in the city). It is fine for people to drink, but out of concern for my babies, I filter it through a Brita pitcher for them.

A fountain for some reason stimulates a cat to drink more. I know that Twitch drank more after we got her a fountain.

My baby only gets bottled water!

I use bottled water because I won't drink the tap water, so I don't trust it for the babies. They have petsmart or something like that water filters for 29.99 on ebay or at petco. The replacement filters run at 3.99 or 4.99.... good luck!!

our water tastes really bad straight out of the tap. so the kitties get what we drink, water run through the pur filter pitcher. they like it much better than tap water or distilled.

We drink the tap water at our apartment, and so do our cats. Although I've heard other people complain about the water in my city, I don't find it to be bad at all (and I drink a lot of water!), and we haven't really enough room in our apartment to put in a water cooler (nor do we really have the storage space in our fridge or on the shelves for a lot of bottled water). If I still lived on university property (the local university has its own filtration system), I would probably make the effort to use only bottled or distilled water, but that was because I had had problems with their water when I still lived in residence. (I kept fish at the time, and would periodically notice strange outbreaks of things growing in the tank that couldn't be explained other than that they came in with the water change; however, I'm by no means an expert with regards to fish!)

My parents, on the other hand, have a water cooler and their spoiled 17-year-old cat drinks only that. They use the water cooler for everything, though, because they don't like the smell or taste of the local water (it smells like the lake, which to me is a pleasant smell, but to them ... not so much!).

If we had concerns about our water, I'd get a water cooler and make it fit somehow, but so far I have no complaints, and I know our water is safe to drink.

Originally Posted by chupi

As for the smelly poop - thats to be expected on whiskas. We feed our cats a dry food called Nutro Complete Care - among other things it promises to reduce stool odour and volume (!), and it definitely seems to do the trick..

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I feed Nutro too, it's the best I've found and both Alfie and Max love it. Whiskas/Go Cat etc have way too many additives in them, and they gave Max awful diarrhea.

Water wise - they both get tap water. Max has actually just decided he wants to drink direct from the tap, so he stands by the sink and looks all cute til I turn it on for him

Originally Posted by chupi

Oh, and other foodie recommendations:

I've heard good things about Purina One (I think Kai recommended that too) dry food, and this is available from some supermarkets
and wet food - the best quality ones I've found in the supermarkets are HiLife Pate and pouches. But online - Nutro wet, and Animonda and Miamor are quite good too, and easier on the pocket!..

Click to expand...

I'd also recommend Almo Nature, Cosma (zooplus's "house brand"), and Schesir. They're a bit pricey, but almost entirely meat and/or fish, similar to the Miamor fine fillets, and ideal if you're feeding them in combination with dry food.

My girls both get tap. I use tap for things like tea and cocoa, but I if i'm drinking plain water i get bottled because i'm picky. We have well water though, so I don't think we have any added chemicals or things to hurt them.

Originally Posted by Yosemite

We have a pet fountain that is also filtered through charcoal but I still only use bottled water in that.

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Ditto. I don't drink tap water myself, so I wouldn't feel right giving it to Cupid. I don't even cook with tap water.

Filtered water, tap only in a pinch. The water here tastes awful and there have been serious issues recently with heavy metal contamination.

Originally Posted by td128

My girls both get tap. I use tap for things like tea and cocoa, but I if i'm drinking plain water i get bottled because i'm picky. We have well water though, so I don't think we have any added chemicals or things to hurt them.

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Lucky...I grew up in the country so I am a well water snob! I love city life but I still miss being able to turn on the tap, fill a glass, and drink it straight down!