The boys drink from a fountain that aerates and filters the water. When the fountain is freshly cleaned, it spouts lovely streams of clean water from four spouts. The boys love it!

There is no magic timetable to use to clean the fountain. Some places say once a month. Others suggest more frequently. When you have two Persian kitties using it, however, that time is clear: When their shed hair clogs to openings and water mostly dribbles down the spouts.

This morning, I decided I’d better clean it while the water level was down. I have two of these fountains. I like to clean one before I dump the other because the boys become anxious when I remove their water.

I have to carry the fountain about twenty feet to empty any water in it. If you have cats, you know that I always have two of them weaving in and out in front and behind me for that short walk, and today was no exception. (You were especially naughty while doing it, too, Dougy! Bad kitty! I almost dumped the water two, maybe three times.)

The cleaning process if simple, even though there are lots of little parts on the inside, all of which are necessary, some of which can be assembled onto the stack at least two different ways, though there is only one way that works. Until I did this often enough to have the routine down, I used to have lots of “Oh sxxx!” moments where I had to dis- and reassemble the blasted thing to get it to work.  Those days are over!

I soak the parts on vinegar. The water here is heavily mineralized. Tastes good, but have a constant drip of it from a high place to a lower one, and you get a lesson in stalactite making! Or making kitty fountains look like crud even after they are cleaned. You can see the mineral deposits on the central column in the photo. Yes, it looks just that ugly in real life!

There are a couple solutions: switch to distilled water or immerse the parts in vinegar. I’m sure the distilled water would be a hit…! The vinegar soak, however, requires a fair amount of vinegar and a deep enough container to do it in. I typically use a full gallon of the stuff soaking the parts that need demineralization. The column never gets a full soak, just the bottom part. I try to scrape as much of the build up off as possible, but, as you can see, it still looks like hell. I rinse the soaked parts off in fresh water.

But the kitties run right to the fountain when I fill it up and lap up that most wonderful of all water, water that doesn’t taste like cat spit!

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I note that I am not promoting any particular brand of pet water fountain. This just happens to be the one I have. I suspect it works as well as any of them, but the main thing I like about it is the boys always have filtered aerated water. They drink it regularly, which is great since part of their diet is dry food. I was just kidding about the cat spit. The charcoal filter deals with that.