[kboese]

I hope somebody has had a similar experience and can offer some advice. Marcel is a little over a year old and has taken to "scooping" or "splashing" all of his water out of his watering dish. This is ruining my floor, but more importantly, he is having to go long periods of time without any water, as his bowl will sit empty until I get home from work.

He did not begin this behavior until I purchased a new watering dish. The new dish looks like a miniature office water cooler. It has a 2 quart jug that fits into the dish upside down and keeps the bowl at a constant full level. Marcel immediately figured out that by lowering the level of the water he could cause the jug to gurgle, which absolutely fascinated him. It wasn't long until he was scooping out all the water to watch the bubbles gurgle to the top. After 3 weeks of cleaning up 2 quarts of water every day from my floor and making no headway in trying to get him to stop, I switched back to his old watering dish. Unfortunately, he is now scooping the water out of this dish too! Although the daily mess is considerably less water, as I mentioned before, I'm afraid he's not getting enough water.

Can anyone help me?? Has anyone experienced a similar situation?? Have I created a monster?? Is there another kind of watering dish that I could/should be using??

Any/all advice will be *greatly* appreciated!! Thank you in advance!!!

 

[kboese]

Thank you very much for the quick response Holly!! I ran right out and bought one of those 'spill-less' water dishes at my local PetCo and set it out this morning before my shower. When I got out of the shower, the water was all over the floor again!! ARGH!!!

Any other ideas?? I did read the subsequent post, and I do believe he is just having fun. I am hesitant to use any disciplinary action since the activity involves his water/food, and I by no means want him to associate discipline with eathing/drinking.

He is a great cat. Really.