Why Does My CAT Drink Water With Their PAW?

You must have seen many scenes like this:

Kitty owners will complain about the problem that kitty don’t like drinking water, and then cat usually not drink water or drink water well!

Why can't cats drink water normally, and have to shake their paws in the water bowl first?

After questioning the surrounding cat slaves, I found that there are quite a few cats with this habit. Dip it on the claws and drink it. Does it smell good?

But why do cats like to drinking with claws dipped in water?

▲ Because the water bowl is too small, cats are prone to "whisker fatigue"

What is whisker fatigue?

The cat's beard is not just a facial decoration, it is a super-sensitive organ. At the end of a cat’s whiskers, there is a type of sensing device called a proprioceptor, which can collect information on its texture, strength, and distance based on the touched object, and convert stimulus signals into nerve impulses to be transmitted to the nerve center.

When the water bowl is too narrow, every time the cat drinks water as the whiskers will touch the inner walls on both sides of the water bowl. The frequency of receiving information by the whiskers is too high, which is easy to cause "whisker fatigue"; whisker fatigue will cause a lot of stress on the cat, Irritability, So the paw will avoid the behavior of continuing to oppress the beard.

Same as cat bowl designed for whisker protection( Paw shaped handmade Double-glass Cat food bowl)

Therefore, the smaller and narrower the water bowl, the more likely it is to become a cat’s "footbath", with claws dipped in water to drink.

▲ The position of the water bowl makes the cat uncomfortable

If the water bowl is placed too close to the wall or even stuck in the corner of the wall, the cat needs to hold his head against the wall to drink the water, which makes the cat even more uncomfortable. Therefore, it sometimes uses its claws to reach into the bowl to make it easier to drink water when it wants to put the bowl in a proper position. Therefore, the position of the water bowl must be left around to make the cat drink more comfortably.

▲ Cats like to drink moving water. 

When they put their claws in a bowl of water, they try to imitate the flowing water by causing the wave of water by the motion of the claws. Flowing water looks fresher and therefore more attractive to cats. Some water that has been left for a long time will give off some smell, and cats can smell the smell they don't like.

 

 

Then, Choose a fresh and clean moving water fountain for your feline will be a good choice to avoid your water cup become a “Kitty footbath”!