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Pumpkin had issues with not drinking enough shortly after I adopted him. I'm guessing this was due in part to his difficulty with adjusting from being outside all the time to becoming an indoor kitty. One of his vets told me that to encourage him to drink more I should have multiple water sources and it worked.Was he always this way with water bowls,when did this become problematic or has it been an ongoing issue? There's a few things going on here and I'm getting confused tbh
Many cats do not like the feeling of their whiskers touching the sides of water bowls- I know many people that feed colonies comment about not seeing the ferals drink and avoid water bowls- I always advise " plates- something very shallow and wide so their whiskers do not rub against anything- funny that it's mainly problematic with drinking and not eating but it's because most of their water sources are wide and shallow and it's familiar to them( puddles,streams,water on the ground from leaky pickets etc)
"Whisker stress" or " whisker fatigue" can make it seem a cat does not " like" particular bowls besides the fact Caspers Human explaining the avoidance of " new" things all about
So I don't know if this has been an ongoing issue and thsts why I am mentioning whiskers fatigue..... also,it's pretty difficult to estimate how much water your baby is actually drinking with so many bowls of water- one lick here,one lick there and might be an appropriate amount after all
My own cats use water dispensers where there is a tank that drips into a wide shallow reservoir-I bought these specifically for Timmy,7yr old feral before capture because he often showed up panting heavily when here in Florida we had hardly any rain in drought and he only drank from puddles- I splashed the water with my finger so he'd see it was safe to approach and then bought another when he transitioned to indoors.....anyway,try dispensers,fountains or anything he might be more comfortable with becsuse hydration is so very important
I had several fountains, none of which worked out for very long. The first one was a plastic round Drinkwell and that was around the time he had a reaction to plastic. It was a gift from a family member. The next one was the stainless steel version and it was very difficult to maintain. The third one was advertised as stainless but turned out to be aluminum so I sent it back.
I wanted to make sure that I had the right water bowls for him. I've got issues with our water here, so I purchased a water filtration system but am confused about the setup, so I'm waiting for the company to get back to me. I purchased stainless steel bowls to replace the ones he had but oftentimes new ones will have that black residue. After my OP, I finally got rid of that black stuff.
He's using a combination of the new stainless steel bowls and the new Correlle bowls, which are plain white with no design.
Today he finally drank out of one of his new Correlle bowls. They, along with the stainless steel ones, are fairly wide so I don't think they bother his whiskers.
So we were having issues with the water, which is being addressed; which type of bowl should he have and his chronic constipation. I ran to Wally World yesterday to get him some more catnip with Silvervine and he started to snap out of this after I gave it to him. He left a small log in his box this morning and had several more a few hours ago. He's back to normal now and is quite chipper.