Cats: The Water Tower Tippers. Foiled?
Earlier this week on Facebook, I lamented the overnight water tower tipping antics of the cats. Lady and Tarzan, in their “teen” months had a history of playing with the water tower and spilling water from it. With thirteen “teenage” pounds of Pretty Boy Floyd (yes, he did it while I was around to see, so I’m sure he’s the culprit) energy, the one-gallon water tower was getting tipped nightly.
Not only was this messy, but it was not good. We tend to leave the cats to their own devices for up to four days at a time — plenty of litter pans, two food towers, and two water towers (just to be sure), and they’re good. Litter pans are more than ready to be scooped, and food is low, but water is usually fine. Unless they decide to tip it the first night we’re gone or something. That could be a problem, and we need to counter that.
Mr. L had an idea, and it’s an easy one to implement. Since several people on Facebook asked me to let them know who our solution worked (apparently our cats are not the only water tower tippers), I’m making this post to update everyone on the status of our solution, implemented on Wednesday afternoon. That’s three nights and while the cover was skewed one morning, the water has been unmolested.
What’s the solution? The lid from a covered litter box. We removed the lids from our litter boxes over a year ago, and they’ve just been sitting around the garage. Mr. L saw one and made the connection. He cut a hole in the top to allow the top of the water tower to poke through, and the cats stick their heads in the opening at the front to drink. This is what it looks like:
We have another tower we keep upstairs for the cat’s convenience that we’ll bring down when we leave them alone (we block them into two rooms to minimize what they have access to). Mr. L thinks another cover we have may be tall enough he doesn’t have to cut a hole in it — we’ll have to see.
Three days is too soon to make a definitive statement that we’ve foiled the cats, but this lid keeps them from wrapping their paws around the tower and wrestling with it, so we think it will be effective.
We came downstairs this morning to the remnants of what must have been an active kitty gym session last night. The water tower apparatus was moved about a foot, but only about a tablespoon of water had spilled, and that was an easy mop up.