Good for the cats, not great for me (Catit Fresh & Clear Small Drinking Fountain)

Member Name: AnnieeR

Product:	Catit Fresh & Clear Small Drinking Fountain
Date:	29/08/09 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gets cats drinking more, stable so it won't tip over, filter lasts longer than promised

Disadvantages: Noisy vibration, bit of a hassle to clean, leaks unless put together very carefully

Oh dear. What do you do when you hate something that your cat loves? That's the quandary I'm presently in thanks to the Catit drinking fountain.

I'll start with the positives and the biggest is that both of my cats love it. They definitely drink a lot more water now. From my perspective it's a reasonable size and the filter, as another reviewer has mentioned, definitely lasts longer than is recommended. Perhaps the biggest bonus for me is that one of the cats was forever tipping the water bowl over - but this fountain is very stable - he can't tip this baby over though which is a massive relief.

However.... for some weird reason it's noisy. I top it up regularly but if it goes down below a certain level (and not a very low level either) it vibrates very loudly. To the point that I can hear it upstairs even. Sometimes moving it around a bit will lessen the noise, but it eventually starts in again. It also is sort of a pain to clean. It doesn't need cleaning often, especially in comparison to a normal bowl, but it does go slimy around the top if you don't give it a good clean about once week or so. Now obviously I know anything like this needs cleaning but because you have to unplug it and take it apart to properly clean it, it's not a task I particularly relish. But perhaps the most annoying part is that if you don't put it back together quite carefully it leaks - many times I've cleaned it, put it back, filled it, and found a puddle of water coming from it shortly thereafter. Maybe that's operator error, but it's happened often and I do try to be quite careful about putting it back together properly.

So all-in-all, it's got the cats drinking a lot more water and it's nice and stable so it doesn't get tipped over, and so I'll keep it. But it is a bit of a hassle.

Summary: It's worked well for the cats, but it's far from perfect.