What kind of bowls do you use for food and water?

nekokaasan

TCS Member
Thread starter
Adult Cat
Joined
Sep 19, 2005
Messages
234
Purraise
2
Location
Huntsville, AL
I've been feeling worried about bacteria or something developing in the food bowls. I don't have any reason to worry about it, the boys are as healthy as ever and their bowls are cleaned daily, but I guess I'm overprotective and paranoid.

What kind of food/water dishes do you use?
 

tnr1

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Oct 5, 2003
Messages
7,980
Purraise
13
Location
Northern Virginia
Originally Posted by Trouts mom

I just use 2 seperate plastic dishes...nothing special as long as you clean them.
I had a plastic water fountain and cleaned it frequently and yet...my cat now has an infection due to chin acne....just be careful.

Katie
 

rapunzel47

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Jul 20, 2003
Messages
30,725
Purraise
8
Location
Lotus Land
I have earthenware dishes for their wet food, and for their water, and plastic non-skid things for their dry. They all clean up easily. At one point I tried stainless steel -- they avoided them.
 

urbantigers

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Apr 30, 2006
Messages
2,175
Purraise
7
Location
UK
I use shallow earthenware bowls for their food (wet topped by a sprinkling of dry) and deeper earthenware ones for water.
 

kai bengals

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Sep 5, 2005
Messages
3,931
Purraise
17
Location
North Carolina
I use paper plates for their food, because I feed a raw diet. When they're through eating, the plate goes in the trash. Easy clean-up.
Any dry food is offered in a shallow glass blowl.
Water is offered in glass or stainless steel bowls.

Plastic bowls caused a few of my cats to develope acne on their chins, so I avoid these altogether........no more acne problems.
 

cearbhaill

TCS Member
Super Cat
Joined
Jan 5, 2006
Messages
824
Purraise
6
Location
Podunk USA
No matter how well you disinfect plastic you can never get it really clean due to the porous nature of plastic- microscopic nooks and crannies allow bacteria to adhere. If you experience zero problems then you've been very lucky, or a very good scrubber upper. I have seen some plastic made with newer technology that looks fairly dense and I expect as manufacturing improves it will get better.

I feed wet and raw on paper plates, dry in ceramic, and water in stainless steel.
 

lucat

TCS Member
Alpha Cat
Joined
May 8, 2005
Messages
420
Purraise
1
Location
Dancing thru the Universe
I use earthenware for dry & water-glass for wet-have stainless steel but haven't tried them yet-had 2 cats who developed feline acne on chin when I used plastic.
 

dawnofsierra

TCS Member
Veteran
Joined
Feb 24, 2004
Messages
16,678
Purraise
24
Location
Loving my beautiful baby girl
Sierra and Serenity have crystal dishes right now, and I was them carefully after each meal. For water, they have their Drinkwell fountain, as well as two glasses and two mugs of water around the house which are washed daily, along with whatever glass of water I'm drinking at any given time.
 

zak&rocky

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Dec 27, 2004
Messages
1,597
Purraise
1
Location
Connecticut
We use the petmate drinkwell. Kitties enjoy it and it way cut down on toilet drinking.

For wet I mostly use corelle bowls. Cheap, easy to clean, don't break that easily. I usually find them at tag sales. For dry I use a couple of ceramic kitty dishes and I also have a stainless steel bowl with holders.
I do have a couple old plastic dishes, which I am phasing out. I may just toss them this weekend.
 

jcat

Mo(w)gli's can opener
Veteran
Joined
Feb 13, 2003
Messages
73,213
Purraise
9,851
Location
Mo(w)gli Monster's Lair
I have a whole collection of bowls: glass salad dishes for canned food, ceramic and stainless steel for dry, china for cat milk, and ceramic for water. Everything goes through the dishwasher, so I've got several of each type. The only plastic I use is the Petmate fountain, which also goes through the dishwasher once a week. The funniest thing is that we can't use the "wrong" type of bowl, for example, put canned food in a steel bowl, or cat milk in a glass dish, as Jamie will complain and refuse to eat or drink.
It drives my husband crazy, and makes my mother-in-law paranoid when she cat sits. When he was a kitten, I would just grab the nearest bowl and fill it, but he had his own ideas about "proper" bowls for certain things, and now there are ironclad rules.
I stopped using plastic years ago, when we had a dog that would tip all his bowls - I finally started giving him his food and water in heavy stainless steel pots.
 

goldenkitty45

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Aug 29, 2005
Messages
19,900
Purraise
44
Location
SW Minnesota
Ceramic or stainless steel. NEVER use plastic for food or water - hard to sanatize properly and seems to cause acne on the chin. The food gets into the tiny cracks and you just can't get it out.

And you also should have SEPARATE bowls - not the combo food/water dish as you need to change the water often.
 

babyharley

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
25,708
Purraise
2
Location
Minnesota
Harley uses seperate ceramic dishes for his water and dry food (really cute blue with fish and cats on them!), and a special ceramic one for his wet food (plain white and tan), that gets washed after each feeding
I have to have different colors, so when I'm gone for the weekends, John knows what dish is for what feeding


His water bowl gets cleaned out more often, only because I have found out that he likes to drop his dry food in his water bowl, which causes a big mess, and results in him not drinking the water! Silly kitty!
 

ashleynicole

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Sep 16, 2005
Messages
1,503
Purraise
1
Location
Tennessee
Out of curiousity, what would kitty chin acne look like? I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary with Marlee, but I don't exactly scrutinize her chin much either. Reading this made me a little paranoid because I have a plastic food dish and a plastic self-waterer. I just want to check her and make sure there is no probs.
 

missymotus

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
May 8, 2005
Messages
9,234
Purraise
254
I use stainless steel with cute little paws embossed in the rim.
 
Top