10 Tips to Get Your Cat to Drink More Water | Laika Pets
Water is crucial essentials for humans, so it is to cats. When your cat is dehydrated, it can be highly stressful. If your cat's water intake is low, they can suffer severe complications. Urinary tract infections, kidney disease, etc., can result from low water consumption by your cat.
Ask yourself these questions:
Is my cat getting enough water every day?
How much water does my cat need a day?
What can I do to get my cat to drink more?
Now, explore the tricks that encourage your cat to drink more water than it would normally.
How Much Water Does a Cat Need Per Day?
The average amount of water that your cat's body requires ranges from 3.5 to 4.5 ounces per 5 pounds of her body weight. Thus, if your cat weighs about 10 pounds, it's suggested to feed 9 ounces of water daily.
Indeed, the amount of drinking water for your cat mostly depends on her body weight. Besides, her activity intensity, the weather, and how much wet food she takes can affect cat water intake.
So, decide a basic amount of your cat's water consumption, add more or less accordingly.
10 Tips to Encourage Your Cat to Drink More!
Adopting creative approaches to get your cat to drink more water won't be a problem! The below list contains the eight best ways to remove consistent dehydration in your cats.
1. Use a Quiet Cat Water Fountain
There's no other better substitute for enabling your cat to drink enough water than using a cat water fountain. A smart pet drinking product with a big water capacity and features to entice your cat to get involved. A water container over 2L ensures a large water amount for your cat. Your cat will never come across the situation of no water in bowls.
Most interestingly!
Being a cat parent, you'll notice that your cat loves to drink from the tap, as cats' instinct consider standing water isn't safe to drink. Thus, flowing water can draw your cat's attention and entice them to drink it.
That's exactly what a cat water fountain does. A cat water fountain carries filters to pure water, a motor inside to make water flow, a large capacity to ensure cat water intake. A perfect gadget to assist you in getting your cat to drink more water.
2. Feeding Your Cat Wet Food
Are you feeding your cat dry cereal regardless of her dehydration? If this is so, limit the amount! The water in cats comes from direct water intake and wet food, and as we know, cats aren't drinking lovers. So, feeding dry food instead of wet food may fail to meet your cat's everyday water consumption. And it's going to impact the health of your cat in the worst way.
Choose wet food.
Another best way to make your cat drink enough water is to feed her wet food. You're in luck if your cat loves to eat wet food; this is because she'll get additional water along with the daily food.
3. Add Catnip to the Water
Does your cat love to smell soothing aromas around? Well, if this is so, it can be the biggest plus point for you! Nothing beats triggering the happy hormones in your cat, since they help pets improve their behaviors towards new habits like drinking more water. You can make the cat water more appetizing by adding a little catnip to it.
Yes, you heard it right!
Your cat will love to smell the appetizing favor and will love lapping the entire water into the body.
4. Try Adding Some Ice to Water
Water temperature is also known to change the mind of a cat to drink it or not. Your cat will love to drink the cold water, since ice cubes in it will seem like a toy to her. Thus, if you're wondering about increasing your cat's water intake, you can add one or two ice cubes to the water bowl.
Most importantly!
Don't even dare to overload the water bowl with ice cubes, since the freezing water can make your furry fellow potentially sick.
5. Use Different Water Bowls
Don't you love to try out different cutlery to have your dinner every day? The same case is with your cats! They love to feed or drink from different bowls having funky colors and designs. Thus, if you have a hard time enabling your cat to have enough water in the daily meals, you should try using different water bowls.
Try it once to get better results!
The majority of the plastic and metal bowls change the color of water, thereby changing the cat's mind not to drink it. Thus, experts prefer using ceramic or glass bowls since they give a cleaner visual effect to the cats.
6. Place Water Bowls Everywhere
Location of the water bowls and food trays matters the most for your pet cats. You can't even imagine how the location of the feeding bowls leaves a psychological effect on your cat's mind. Thus, increasing the water bowl traffic around your house can make your cat's mind drink more water a day.
Moreover;
The majority of the cat breeds love to drink or eat at different house locations. The primary reason behind this behavior is plenty of options to choose from. Thus, you can increase your cat's daily water intake by keeping water bowls at every few steps. In such a way, water will never be too far from your cat to drink.
7. Keep Water Bowl Away from Litter Box
One of the most distinguishing biological factors about cats is their habit of not drinking water near their food or litter box. They don't like drinking near their toileting areas as well. The most probable reason behind this behavior of cats is their thought about the contamination of water.
Thus, make sure to keep your cat's water bowl away from the litter box. The separation of the litter box and water bowl will make her drink as much water as she wants.
8. Keep Water Bowls Away from Food Sources
Cats hate their food to get wet. Cats as messy picky drinkers themselves and who love to play with water, water splashes are bound to happen while they're drinking water. If there is a food bowl on the side, splashes will definitely get your cat's food in the water.
So no water bowls beside a food bowl.
Moreover, for some multiple-pet families, the floor on the drinking corner is always dripping after cats have water, which can easily make the spot look dirty and messy. That's more likely to put your cat off drinking from it.
9. Change Water Every Day
Cats prefer to drink water fresh water. If water in bowls does not often change, dust, dirt, and flying hair can easily collect in the water bowl, making the water thick and sticky. And water like that will be processed by cats as low-quality.
Fresh water always works.
To encourage your cat to drink more, you have to make sure the water in your cat's bowl is something they want. Changing water daily is the most effective way to achieve the goal. It's recommended to change the water at least once a day; 3-4 times frequency is better.
10. Keep Your Cat's Water Bowl Clean and Full
The cleanliness of the water bowl is one of those factors that attract cats to drink more and more water. Plus, cats don't like to lean their head to drink a small amount of water present in their bowls.
This is true!
Thus, you can try keeping the water bowl clean and full to provide the proper water intake to your cat. This trick will never fail since the clean bowls are the sole attraction of many cat breeds.
Hydration Always On the Top List
Water is considered one of the essential needs in a routine for the better health of your cat. Dehydration in cats leads to severe health issues that are hard to cure and recover. And as pet parents ourselves, we never want that to happen.
You don't have to roam around the vets to get medicines for making your cat drink more water. With the creative tricks mentioned above, boosting your cat's water intake is not a big deal anymore.
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