It Ain’t the Trevi, but It’s Ours

We have a fountain. It gurgles. The gurgling is supposed to remind the cats to drink.

We installed it in the living room. The Quality always have a fountain in the living room.

It works but doesn’t fulfill its original purpose.

Ernest was skeptical. When he stuck his paw into the water, we knew he’d figured out what it’s for. He can’t drink without first dipping his paw into the water and licking it. Two or three times.

I’m not surprised it didn’t catch on. It’s poorly designed–as you can see from one of the pictures above, the squared-off front makes the bowl too small to drink from comfortably. There’s no room for whiskers.

I learned about whiskers from Mrs. Fricke in the fourth grade, but, because some of what I remember from fourth grade is no longer operative, I looked it up. Mrs. Fricke was correct. According to the VCA website, whiskers “prevent cats from getting into jams“:

“As a kitty approaches a narrow spot in the fence,  a slender space between rocks, or a small area between the living room chairs, whiskers help him determine if he can fit through the passage without getting stuck or turning over the furniture. This keeps the cat out of trouble in more ways than one!”

We tried raising the water level, but that didn’t help. Ernest sipped once from the stream. Since then, he’s ignored it.

With too much water, there’s no gurgling. David and I enjoy the gurgling, so we poured out the extra water.

The fountain still sits in the living room, gurgling away.

And after a day of suffering slings and arrows, and grunting and sweating and bearing whips and scorns and contumelies, not to mention fardels, David and I sit in our easy chairs, put our feet up, and chill out.

There’s nothing that gets rid of contumelies faster than a good gurgle.

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You probably noticed I included no pictures of William. There aren’t any. He cast a baleful eye on the fountain, gave us a “you-gotta-be-kidding” look, and sashayed off. William is a bit of a Luddite. He says technology is okay, but some things can’t be improved on, and his plastic water bowl is one of them. And he already knows when to drink, thank you very much. As for fardels, he wouldn’t know one if it jumped up and bit him.