Thread: Suggestion on how to deal with water...

I do have to warn anyone buying a fountain that while your cats may love them, you may grow to hate cleaning the darn things. They definitely tend to get mold growing in them and bits of food and hair can get into the pumps, so you periodically need to completely disassemble them (including disassembling the pump) and clean them well. One of ours is much easier to clean than the other, and this is something I would pay attention to when purchasing another one. I have found that ours can go only 3-4 days between minor cleanings (replacing all the water), and at least every two weeks you need to clean them quite well. The biggest pain is taking apart the pumps, but one of ours also has lots of little crevices in the top that get mold growth and are almost impossible to remove. You will almost certainly need brushes such as those sold specifically for the fountains. I cannot understand how not a single fountain that I have seen has a filter before the pump, to prevent debris from being sucked into the pump. They all have these "filters" that are mainly designed to remove chlorine, but do almost nothing about debris in the water.

Another consideration is that there are different designs in terms of water flow. Some just have water bubbling up, some allow it to flow down a slide, and others have a stream splashing into the base. I refuse to have a noisy splashing one, but we have one of each of the others, as two of our MCs like the bubbling action and one likes the flow. I actually took the top off the flow one so that it also has bubbling action. Thus, two of our cats will use both, one cat never ever uses the bubbling only fountain, and our fourth MC never uses either of the fountains (she like bowls in the sink).

I definitely feel they get our MCs to drink more water, but they are rather a pain!