Caturday - From A DIY Solution Of Elevating Food Bowls To A New Bamboo System

Kittens grow up

And Maesi has been complaining and letting us know she's not happy with the water and food situation every single day. Yet it took me some time before I realised that this was not only running water vs still water related but maybe also the height of the bowls causing her discomfort somehow.

They aren't those cute fluffy tiny kittens anymore since the ladies both turned one years old recently so I was looking for a better solution for a while now. Sadly, the running water bowl with 3 litres of water was not a match because every day (several times!) Maesi would move the bowl, somehow push off the lid with faucet and then everything would be soaking wet. Add to that the cable that was not convenient and we decided the fountain would be returned to Amazon.

But what then?

They were so demanding every time someone entered the bathroom to go to the toilet or brush the teeth and there would be 2 cats (as I said, who are quite big by now) begging for us to open the tap so they could wash their paws and drink from it. It resulted in us having no space to brush our teeth (LOL) and in the end everything was covered in paw prints and Luna's hair.

It drove me nuts and I said no more of this. The tap was supposed to solve that, so that they'd have their own water tap. Maesi messed it up, Luna was completely satisfied with it. We considered buying another one but I practically rejected most options before buying this one and some of the others were less heavy so Maesi would definitely take off the top part from these others. This was when I started referring to Maesi as "your cat" to my boyfriend, because "my cat" would just sit and drink or wash her paws in peace, while she'd have to make a mess every damn time, lol.

Jokes aside

Even though what I said was the truth and is written on paper (one is actually his cat and the other is registered under my name), of course they are both our cats and we have to figure out how to fix this issue. Truth be told that most designs of other bowls were either rejected instantly due to bad quality or design and others were just way overpriced while we didn't even really like the design so we skipped these.

The solution for a few months

Was to put two glasses of water on the table (one on each table) and let them drink from these glasses. But as soon as there'd be 1 cm less water, Maesi would start to complain and the past weeks, she started moving these glasses from the middle of the glass table. What could possibly go wrong?

Right, we woke up a few days ago and the whole freaking floor was filled with water. I still don't see how it ended where it was (It wasn't pee thankfully) but the glass was on its side and the water on the floor. I had enough right there as we have a tile floor, I don't want any accidents during the night.

Finally! I found something..

I was browsing for elevated systems so that the cats don't have to lay almost flat to eat and drink, because you know, I wouldn't like that either, haha. I guess Maesi Ming had reason to complain. But we didn't want to end up with yet another plastic set of waste that was not good enough. We wanted something more solid and heavy, hoping she'd not start moving it around.

I found a bamboo elevated system with 1,2 or 3 bowls and I could chose either ceramics or steel. We both thought that the ceramic ones might break by accident and we should go for the steel ones, in my head I was dealing with stainless steel, btw. I assumed and didn't read properly, so I know now. I picked the 3 bowl set because they're always pushing each other aside to eat and this would give them both a place to eat with a drinking bowl in the middle. Getting a huge discount for the first order was definitely making me pull the trigger on the 3 bowl set faster as well.

The waiting time would be about 10 working days and with a late delivery 5 euro coupon in the account. Not bad, let's see. But I wanted the glasses gone from the table now and thought about a DIY solution until then.

DIY solution

We have these huge soup bowls which we use just a few times a year, aka they're taking in too much space anyway so I thought if I place these plastic bowls I still have on top of them, they might be a perfect fit.

Aha! I was right, this will hold for a week or two, of course Maesi had to get to the bottom of this and first tried to lift up the bowls, but that stopped fairly quick. I think she was ok with this solution for a bit.

As per my expectations, Luna would approve but also instantly take the opportunity to wash her paws in the water:

Maesi didn't approve

So one thing that I found weird myself, and apparently I was not wrong about it seeing how much Maesi started to complain to me about this new system, is the fact that the bowls kept turning black-ish even after a good wash and polish. As soon as Measi kept complaining I removed the water bowl as I don't want them to get a metal poison or anything because clearly this is not stainless steel. I needed to think about how to solve it and instantly regret not buying the ceramic bowls version.

A ceramic bowl inside the metal one

As I have a few tapas bowls which are made from ceramics and they have been drinking from it for a long time as well, I decided to place it inside the metal bowl because it's not big enough to hang in the system.

Not the prettiest solution but as soon as I placed this bowl there, Maesi came to cuddle me, give me head bumps and started eating:

Unsharp, but the only picture I have from them together with this new system

Now what?

I thought maybe if I send a support ticket they can swap the metal bowls for the ceramic ones. I got a standard response in this case you can return the item and get a refund, does that solve your problem? I said no, because I love the bamboo system, it's the perfect hight for them and I only want them to have better bowls, this surely isn't stainless steel and they don't want to drink from it. I don't think it's healthy either, I said.

Refund and more

What happened next was surprising, "dear customer we are happy to inform you that you can be refunded as well as well as I get to keep the item. I figured that's fine and hoped I could find some bowls of this size to use for the bamboo system. They said right now we can only refund it to the original payment method, fine. Just a minute later, I saw 25 euros in my account as credits and I thought they made an error by refunding me the full price so that I could buy a new one seeing that I don't have a new customer discount anymore with the second order.

Link to shop

Sadly, most systems only had the metal bowls left, and I figured I didn't need a three bowl system as a second one because if I'd buy one with 2 bowls now, I could just keep using the metal ones for the dry food (which they seem to be ok with) and use one ceramic for the water in each system until I hopefully find more ceramic bowls to replace the other three later.

Quite happy

I was happy with this solution as now I'd finally have the opportunity to put water and food at two places in the house, I suspect during the summer all rooms will have to have open doors to not feel like you're dying from the heat (two of them don't have airco and one of them is very small so it already feels like there's a lack of oxygen sometimes). This means there needs to be a second drink and food station in the back of the home and I will most likely have to allow them back into the big bed room.

It could also mean that Maesi could finally have her own bowl without Luna putting her paws in the drink water as soon as I put it there. But I figured that's just hope because most likely I can place 10 bowls around the house and Luna will do it in all of them. My cat likes to keep her white paws, you see.

Apologies

Then I found out that I received a separate email about the credit refund and I think the "I don't think it's healthy for the cats" comment made them do this and noticed that they are also refunding the 11 something to my bank. So I soon will have 2 of these systems (the bamboo part which you can adjust is great and looks better than anything we had so far) and I didn't pay anything for it, I even made a profit, wow. Happy shopping!

I really hope the ceramic bowls arrive in one piece and everything is in order with that part because the whole thing is great if it weren't for the metal bowls.

Happy Caturday!

---

All pictures above are my own, besides the one linked to the shop where I bought it.

Posted Using InLeo Alpha