Cat playing with drinking water

[KateKyleen]

Hello there! We need advice about curbing our cat's desire to play with drinking water.
Here's some back story - we have 2 cats, and the younger one is our newest addition as of a year ago. The naughty cat consistently "scoops" out water from our fountain style water bowl. Our fountain style water bowl includes filters and has continuous moving water for the cat's health in mind, but it's been very frustrating having to clean up weekly if not daily after the naughty cat plays in it. The water and drinking station has been relocated to a boot tray so that the water doesn't damage our floors, but still we would like to curb the behavior as it can lead to nasty mold when dropped food gets in the mix. Please help!
Thank You,
Katie

[Ruth B]

Unfortunately I can't give any help, some cats naturally play with with water and I've never found a way to stop them, your best options are lo look at ways of stopping it damaging your home. We had a water fountain on a tray as one of my previous cats would insist on putting his head under the running water and letting it run down off him. The same cat would insist on 'digging' for water when using a normal bowl not a fountain, we ended up putting off cuts of carpet down so he wouldn't ruin the main one. One of our current cats liked to play with the light weight plastic bowl we used, so we had to get a large ceramic one. Unfortunately when you have cats cleaning up after them is just part of looking after them. You have to clean the litter trays several times a day, clean up the wet food when they decide to drag it out of the bowl and clean and refill water bowls, so really having to clean a tray a water bowl sits on every other day isn't that much extra work, I would suggest having at least a couple of trays so you can slip a new one in place and then clean the old one properly. Just make sure the tray under the fountain is big enough to contain any water splashed out but doesn't interfere with the cat getting to the water to drink, and that the fountain is big enough that the the water the cat takes out of it doesn't run it low enough to damage the motor.

[alanc]

The scooping action is an instinctive cat play, mimicking how they catch fish.