Loving our family pets

[Dillon_C_Rau]

Thank you. That is such a good name.

I have been away from WB for a while now. This is the reason why. My cat, Sunny has been in a decline in health recently. He has enjoyed 13 years of life. He had some serious kidney problems.

However he has made a jump for the best. Gaining some weight and been a lot more active. He use to struggle jumping onto my bed. Now he is jumping up my 10 foot fence with ease.

I used to have a Orange tabby named Sergeant Murphy, he looked a lot like your Sunny. I am glad to hear he is doing better and your back on WB.

[Jim Mathias]

Welcome back, Dillon.
I've some experience with cats who have had kidney problems. Beware when they stop eating, drinking, and their eyes become sunken-looking in their sockets. It's about that time a cat will expire.

[Supremely White]

So my question for others here with indoor pets is why they prefer to go through the trouble of drinking from the toilet when they have enough fresh clean water nearby? This has always baffled me.

It may be the taste of freshly oxygenated water. The process of flushing causes the toilet tank to refill, allowing water out of the pipes to come into contact with air. Tap water also has a bit more minerals in it, some of which we need in our diet. My cat gets RO filtered water that's placed in a dish with a recirculating pump to oxygenate it, and she drinks it, but will occasionally like to get it straight out of the tap from a sink nearby. I'd give her tap water all the time but suspect that the chlorides used to kill the microorganism within it may be the cause of some feline issues such as kidney failure.

I’m happy to report that in the past several weeks or so, as I noticed that she’s been drinking both the water from her dishes and from the toilets, she has filled back out a bit. I don’t have anything to reliably weigh her on, but I imagine she’s at least above the 7 pound mark. When I pet her, I don’t feel the sharp vertebrae poking out these days. She’s an old gal, but she also seems to have enough spirit to keep on living for a while longer.