How could your cat possibly know which water is the best water for them to drink? They don’t watch tv or listen to the radio so being told what they should like by the marketing types won’t help. They rarely listen to humans unless food or a welcoming lap to sit on is involved. Their choice of water must be based purely on some “cat like” sense.
Seeing in believing
In today’s world, outside of nature, it’s difficult to find anything that doesn’t have a sales pitch or someone’s agenda attached to it. Fortunately, the animal kingdom provides us with plenty of “evidence” that is unspoiled by mankind if you are willing to look.
My home office looks out over a natural (no chemicals to keep it sparkling clean) fountain in our yard. I watch animals drinking out of the fountain every day except when it is full of snow. Why do cats, dogs, squirrels, chipmunks, a skunk, and even the neighborhood fox drink the murky water from our fountain every day when other sources of “clean” water are readily available.
Much to the chagrin of my wife, I don’t clean out the water in our fountain very often and I definitely don’t add disinfectant to make the water “pretty”. As an animal lover and observer, I have come to learn that animals prefer to drink water that has leaves and other wonders of nature in it.
It seems that animals just instinctively know which water is best for them. They seem to know without visiting the internet or attending a “business opportunity” meeting. How? I don’t have a clue. However, if you look at the contents of what lands in an outdoor water fountain, you will find that the water is full of minerals and organic matter. That seems to me like a good place to start looking when it comes to considering what makes the “best” water.
Trust your cat
In my case, it should say “trust your cats”. Our daughter loves cats. How much? We have 8 cats and if I wasn’t the family “meanie”, the number would be definitely be much higher.
As a water fanatic, I also have several different brands of water ionizers in our home. Surely the combination of 8 cats and multiple brands of water ionizers makes our family unique in the world. Who else would be that crazy?
With such a widespread array of water samples to choose from (including my testing of different brands of bottled water), which type of water do the cats prefer? This is definitely not a scientific study, but our cats unanimously choose to drink water produced by our alkaline water pitcher or from the taps that we have natural alkaline water filters attached to.
When I set out a bowl of tap water for the cats just to be evil “in the name of science of course”, they will just sit and wait and give me the “look” until I dump the tap water and replace it with alkaline water. Yup, our cats have become water snobs. I find that a treat for sucking up to the cats afterwards is a good idea to get back in their good graces when you try out this experiment yourself
I have a natural water ionizer hooked up to the sink in my office. We also have another natural water ionizer hooked up to the kitchen sink. Like our cats, we have all become water snobs in our family. Everyday, there is an parade of cats that come into my office, jump up on the counter, step into the sink, and lick the water droplets off the bottom of the sink or from the tap itself to get the drip in the spout. My wife doesn’t like the cats going near her tap in the kitchen, but they are sneaky and visit when she is not around. The cats don’t show the same loyalty to the electric water ionizers in my lab despite their need to watch everything I do.
Do the cats drink other water in the house? Yes. Just yesterday, I caught Clyde with his head in the toilet. Maybe he was just being curious but I think old habits are just too hard to break, even for cats.
- Tags: cats, Water Ionizers
I think patch should be removed from the study, due to lack of jumping ability and a bad attitude, thus making it 7 out of 7 cats preferring non-electric water ionizers. lol
This little study is actually incredibly helpful, when knew health treatments/practices come about and the technology or phenomena isn’t quite understood yet, we have to be guided by intuition and empirical observation.
Intuition was telling me that electric or artificial ionizers are inferior to natural just by their definition alone; however, some things are counter-intuitive so intuition alone doesn’t satisfy my curiosity.
Now seeing that 7 out of 7 of your cats, preferred water that we intuitively thought was healthier, i’m going to put further research on this subject on the back burner and start recommending natural water ionizers to those who were waiting/relying one me to do so.
Thanks for this and all your blog posts. Amazing work your doing.
Hi Cliff:
Too funny!….bad attitude. We can’t remove Patch as she is the Matriarch of the cat clan. She loves the morning sun that streams into my office. She lies on her back on the floor with her paws in the air and suns her belly until another four legged feline disturbs her reverrie with a mandatory sniff of her privates. Then all hell typically breaks loose.
My little study is anything but scientific, but the one thing about cats is that they are not susceptible to marketing campagings or sales pitches. The timing of my response is ironic as Clyde just jumped up on the counter for a quick shot of mineral water.
Thanks for spreading the word. I can use all the help I can get.
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I just Google “alkaline cats” because my cat Millie ALWAYS tries to drink my alkaline water (out of my glass!), even when her water dish (tap water) is full, fresh and cool. I had read that cats’natural pH is supposed to be lower than ours, so I don’t give them alkaline water. Clearly, Millie is not.the only cat that prefers the alkaline. I guess I’ll start giving them all alkaline water!
Hi Greta:
Your comment made me smile.
There is no question in my mind that cats like the minerals concentration in the water. But in a pinch, they have no problem drinking out of a toilet
IS ALKALINE WATER SAFE FOR CATS AND DOGS?
There is a lot of hype about the benefits of drinking alkaline water. Alkaline water is said to balance out the body’s acidity.
If we look back to high school science class, we may remember the PH scale of acids and bases. If you remember, acid, a corrosive is 1 and milk of magnesia, a base, is 14. It is proclaimed that the healthiest body systems maintain around a level 7 PH.
Many people believe that in today’s food market of fast foods and other poor health choices, our bodies contain a higher level of acid than they should, and that drinking alkaline water can help to balance out our PH levels. They even go on to say that consumption of alkaline water will boost our metabolisms and allow out bodies to absorb nutrients more easily.
ALKALINE WATER AND OUR ANIMALS
Most consumers are completely unaware that processed cat and dog food (even the best quality) contains a high amount of magnesium- the opposite of acid; acid being the reason companies are marketing alkaline water. In fact, many cat food brands especially have been under the microscope for adding too much magnesium to their wet foods. You may be wondering what little old magnesium could do to harm an animal? Simply put, magnesium increases the amount of ammonia in an animal’s system. If the ammonia level in an animal becomes too high for her or his body, painful results are likely. This is because ammonia is extremely high on the PH scale and puts the animal’s body systems in jeopardy. Painful urination, bladder crystals, UTI’s, bladder stones, even kidney stones and eventually kidney failure are possible. If these symptoms are caught early enough they are completely reversible by your holistic animal care practitioner. If you fail to notice the symptom building over time, this can be fatal.
Given that alkaline water is also high on the PH scale as we discussed earlier, combining the two- store bought processed food of ANY nature; from the lowest to highest quality and alkaline water, we can absolutely cause sudden and permanent damage to our animals if we are not careful. Cat food is much higher in magnesium, and they do retain it more than dogs and dog food. However, both cats and dogs are at risk here.
The next time you hear about alkaline water, even though your heart may be in the right place, keep it away from your animals!
Hello Slim,
I have 2 cats and one of them, a Maine Coon mix, had already his 4th bout with blogged urethra and crystals in hid bladder. It has always been a very expensive affair to keep him alive. in the last seven years about $15K. I used to. buy the top of the line cat food the I switched and I am now making their raw food for the last 5 years. They used to get dry cat food as a treat about 5-10 morsels a day. Now we even stoped that. 3 week ago he had again crystals in his bladder and I am now considering the water issue. We are giving them the fluoride and chloride free water free water using a Berki filter. Now I am wondering if this filter is also filtering out all the minerals my cats need. As I am writing this I had a thought; how about I add a table spoon of dissolved Himalayan brim to a half gallon water which will have all the minerals known to men? I will give a go and see if my cats drink more water.
Rhonda
Hi Rhonda:
From years of witnessing our 8 cats (which are now down to 5 because every time one of our kids moves out, they have to take a cat), I can tell you that cats love minerals in their water. We intentionally leave out giant shells in our yard that collect water and leaves and whatever happens to find its way into the shell. Our cats head straight to the shells to drink whatever concoction nature has provided them while they turn their noses up at tap water (unless it comes from a toilet!!!!)
Himalayan salt typically has lots of trace minerals, so you might want to give it a try.
One of our cats used to get crystals and we got him a special type of dietary dry food from our vet which has worked for years. I’m not sure of the brand but I’m sure most vets carry something similar.