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Random Cat Question
A buddy went away for a week and asked me to look in on their cat every few days. He said that he would leave out a big bowl of food that should last her so really I'm just going over there to make sure the furnace is still on and play with the cat for a while.
So, I go over today and I notice; I don't see any water anywhere for her. I checked around and couldn't find any. While I was checking around she disappeared; and I found her drinking from the toilet.
My friend had turned off the water in the house, so I went home and grabbed a couple of bottles of water and put out a water dish for her. She is a small cat but probably drank 50 ML right away.
Question for the CP cat owners; is there any reason you would leave your cat without water for a week? Her food is dry; and it does say something on the bag about being good for cats with urinary tract infections.
We have a cat and she drinks about half a cereal sized bowl of water everyday. So I have no idea why your friend didn't leave out a water dish. As mentioned above me, if the toilet is the cat's regular source of water, no wonder it has problems. That is pretty terrible actually. You need to tell your friend to knock it off and give it a water dish.
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The cat wasn't very comfortable drinking from the toilet; she looked pretty shakey on the seat so I'm guessing it was a "last resort" kind of thing; not the usual. Or maybe she was showing me this in hopes I would actually put out some water for her.
Well cats generally hate stale water. They adore fresh water. My cat won't drink water that's a couple hours old, so when I fill his dish with fresh, he slurps it down.
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Hope you know this person well enough and are comfortable enough to correct this.
Also, cats (especially male) need to have wet food at least every other day. That dry food will crystallize in a male cat's urethra...then the poor thing will need surgery to (gulp) have it's penis removed. Probably not to good for a female cat to have nothing but dry food every day either.
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Yes, cats need fresh water - as mentioned above they do not like stale water. They also do not like deep dishes as they hate it when their whiskers get wet. Just like people, cats need water - especially when all they are eating is VERY DRY KIBBLE.
My friend Amber's cat recently had a Urinary Tract Infection and since the cats food is targeted for that, it is safe to assume this cat had a UTI. One of the best ways to prevent a UTI is or a cat to get enough water/fluid.
So please give this kitty enough water and advise your friend to make sure the kitty gets enough water...its abuse not to give the cat some water. They need it just like we do (and at least we get some liquid/hydration from our food). Imagine if all you got were some corn pops or kibbles all day and nothing to wash them down with?
Well cats generally hate stale water. They adore fresh water. My cat won't drink water that's a couple hours old, so when I fill his dish with fresh, he slurps it down.
Heh, no kidding.
One of our cats comes running upstairs after every meal, and waits by the tap for a drink. Me or my wife turn it on to a trickle, and the cat just laps away for a couple minutes.
One of ours sits on top of the water dispenser we have for them, and bats at the other cat as he tries to drink. Then she will daintily put her paw in the water dish, and lap the water off of it....and repeat until she is done. She's a little bit slow.
my cat shares 2 drinking bowls with our dog. she doesnt seem to mind if the waters been out for a few hours, but she definitly prefers the shallower dish.
edit: wow what a useless post, i contributed next to nothing except how my cat likes her water.
But seriously, yes, especially if there's history of any sort of UTI or kidney problems, lots and lots of fresh water. I adopted a stray recently and it took me months to get her to stop drinking out of the toilet. Not so much for health issues, but because of the wet paw prints on the seat.
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Hope you know this person well enough and are comfortable enough to correct this.
Also, cats (especially male) need to have wet food at least every other day. That dry food will crystallize in a male cat's urethra...then the poor thing will need surgery to (gulp) have it's penis removed. Probably not to good for a female cat to have nothing but dry food every day either.
what? i grew up with cats as pets my entire childhood, mostly male, and they never had canned cat food. it was always the dry bagged stuff, and none of them ever had problems. in fact the last cat i had at home before moving to Calgary just passed away a couple of years ago, and the best we can figure he was around 14 years old (he was adopted as an adult). he didn't even like the wet canned cat food, i tried giving him it once as a treat and all he did was sniff at it before going back to his dry kibble
i'm quite positive we never had to take any of our cats to the vet to have their junk chopped off
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Also, cats (especially male) need to have wet food at least every other day. That dry food will crystallize in a male cat's urethra...then the poor thing will need surgery to (gulp) have it's penis removed. Probably not to good for a female cat to have nothing but dry food every day either.
Hope you know this person well enough and are comfortable enough to correct this.
Also, cats (especially male) need to have wet food at least every other day. That dry food will crystallize in a male cat's urethra...then the poor thing will need surgery to (gulp) have it's penis removed. Probably not to good for a female cat to have nothing but dry food every day either.
For the doubters, urinary crystals do happen on dry food diets when they're not hydrated enough. Here's a good article on the dry/wet food debate. This article is also good about pointing out that the worst thing about most dry foods is the grains. I've got all my felines on strict grain-free free diets, mixed wet and dry food. More expensive, but they're much healthier (one has had major GI problems) and have thrived into their twenties.
Pretty sure that is true. When I got a cat a few years ago I was told to feed him a little bit of wet food every day.
I don't think that is necessary. We have purebreds that we used to show, and while we gave our cats wet food as a treat every once in a while, high quality kibble was the norm with most of the people we knew in the field. Don't buy the cheap kibbles though.
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I don't think that is necessary. We have purebreds that we used to show, and while we gave our cats wet food as a treat every once in a while, high quality kibble was the norm with most of the people we knew in the field. Don't buy the cheap kibbles though.
Most "Dry" cat foods are actually pretty moist, Ours comes in a zip bag to keep the moisture in.
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